[mxlm]

So I want a laptop. I haven't payed any attention to computer hardware for years. I have no idea which companies are good (well, I presume Alienware and Falcon both still do the 'omgwtfpricey' thing). I have no idea what hardware is good. And so on.

So, advice? Anyone? Please?

I'm thinking about $1500.

[General Battuta]

Get a Mac.

[Blue Lion]

Don't get a Mac.

[Admiral LSD]

Other than a general suggestion to avoid even remotely thinking about getting an AMD based laptop, it's difficult to recommend anything without a better idea of what you want it for.

[mxlm]

Why should I be avoiding an AMD laptop?

Uh, I want it for gaming, really. I know towers are/were substantially cheaper, but I move around enough to make them impractical (also, it's looking like I'll be spending the first seven months of 2010 on the road, so...). I'm certainly not looking for bleeding edge, Falcon Northwest hardware; I haven't been able to play 'new' games since 04/05, so I figure there's enough old stuff to keep me busy for a damn long time before I even think about Dragon Age, Modern Warfare and so on--although I would like to play those eventually.

Get a Mac.

No.

[Spicious]

Don't get a Mac.

Especially important if you have any sort of budget at all or want to play games.

[Admiral LSD]

Why should I be avoiding an AMD laptop?

They're slower, run hotter and suck more juice than the Intel offerings.

For all AMDs success in the past on the desktop, they've never been able to replicate it on in the mobile arena. Even when the Athlon 64s were whipping P4s their mobile offerings left a lot to be desired. This might change with the Bobcat and Bulldozer offerings, but they aren't due out until 2011.

Until then, Intel is your best bet.

[Colonol Dekker]

Does that apply to netbooks.
 
I'm still waiting to get my Samsung. Either an NC10 or the N110. They both suit my needs, not sure which is better though.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

With $1500, don't bother getting a Mac. You want a Mac, prepare to part with $2000.

[Nuke]

when i buy a gaming laptop i look at one thing an one thing only. what gpu does it have? does that gpu have dedicated video memory? find all the laptops with either amd or nvidia chipsets, leand twards ones with dedicated video memory,  and determine which one is best. pick the top 4 laptops, then you look at screen size/res, memory and cpu and other bs.

i bough this laptop some time last year for only around $800 and i thought it was fairly good, especially in terms of gaming performance (it could run crysis and medium settings and it ran red faction guerrilla ok at medium settings, though it did have some problems with farcry 2, the game would run but there was some texture issues) and hideously deformed keypad was not a bad bonus. the only real issue was the lack of drivers under any other os than vista.

Why should I be avoiding an AMD laptop?

They're slower, run hotter and suck more juice than the Intel offerings.

For all AMDs success in the past on the desktop, they've never been able to replicate it on in the mobile arena. Even when the Athlon 64s were whipping P4s their mobile offerings left a lot to be desired. This might change with the Bobcat and Bulldozer offerings, but they aren't due out until 2011.

Until then, Intel is your best bet.

this is true, my amd laptop, as good as it is for games sucks at battery life. it run out of power in 2 hours. intel has better power savings. laptops are always a trade off between performance and endurance. thats why slow ass netbooks are promoting 10 hour batteries, by removing mechanical devices and by running slower.

[CP5670]

I need to get a laptop soon too. My current one is over five years old now and has unstable memory and a lot of other problems. I hardly ever use it, but in the rare situations when I go somewhere it becomes a hassle to deal with it.

Battery life may or may not be that important. If you're like me, you take the laptop around with you but always run it powered.

[Colonol Dekker]

Netbook will be for uv mapping and ms office related work. Maybe even a bit of fredding now and then. It's gonna be my endurance lightweight work rig. After seeing Galemps one perform as well as it did with 3d apps i'm in no doubt that a netbook will meet my needs. As long as I get a teeny tiny mouse. And the ones mentioned above have a nearly full sized keyboard.
 
I'd rather not fork out a huge amount of cash for something which my tower does better, not that I have a strong urge to play games at work.

[Rian]

With $1500, don't bother getting a Mac. You want a Mac, prepare to part with $2000.

What? There are Macs available for under a thousand now. If he wants it for gaming then a Mac may not be the best option, but at least check your facts.

[Admiral LSD]

Does that apply to netbooks.
 
I'm still waiting to get my Samsung. Either an NC10 or the N110. They both suit my needs, not sure which is better though.

AMD doesn't really have a netbook CPU in the same vein as the Atom right now. The closest thing they have is the Athlon Neo which compares favourably with Atom on paper, but still suffers from AMDs traditional failings of higher power consumption and heat output. The reason for that here is that all AMD did to produce the Athlon Neo was underclock/undervolt an existing Athlon 64 design whereas Intel designed Atom from the ground up to be simple, cheap and low power parts.

The other major problem with the Athlon Neo platform is that AMD have specified the 690G chipset for it, mirroring Intels use of the 945 with the Atom. The key difference is that, while the 945 isn't entirely terrible and the problems it has are almost all due to its age, the 690G is absolute crap. The south bridge component in particular is downright shocking.

This is the market AMD are aiming the Bobcat family. If they can pull it off and, more importantly, secure the OEM connections to give it a significant presence in the marketplace, then Atom will have a problem, but that's 12-18 months away. In the meantime Atom is still the way to go for netbooks.

What? There are Macs available for under a thousand now. If he wants it for gaming then a Mac may not be the best option, but at least check your facts.

While it is true there are MacBooks in that price range, they all have 9400M IGP. The cheapest model with dedicated graphics (a now long in the tooth 9600M-GT though, to be fair, most of nVidias range falls into that category now) is USD$1999.

I'm interested to see how Apple handle the mobile Nehalems. There won't be an nVidia chipset available for them so they'll have to either use the Intel GMA engine integrated into the Arrandale CPUs (a move I can't say I'm entirely opposed to) or biting the bullet and fitting every model with a dedicated chip. Given the standard set by the 9400M, the latter is more likely, at least in the MBPs.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

What? There are Macs available for under a thousand now. If he wants it for gaming then a Mac may not be the best option, but at least check your facts.

* Androgeos Exeunt consults http://www.apple.com/mac/whichmacbook/compare.html.

Oh, oops. I wasn't thinking in terms of the US Dollar yesterday. My bad.

Consulting http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/macbook_pro/?aid=AIC-WWW-NAUS-K2-BYO-WHICHMAC-MACBOOKPRO-13-INCH, US$1500 should be good enough to buy the 2.53 GHz version of the 13-inch MacBook Pro with a dollar to spare.

[Nuke]

i really dont like computing on the go so i never really wanted a laptop. the one i got was because i was short a computer and needed something cheap in the interim. ive traveled around a lot in the past year so it actually came in handy. it definitely did on the 26 hour boat ride i was on from juneau recently. there was pretty much nothing to do on that ship (except where i blew 80 bucks at the ship's bar).

[Pred the Penguin]

Get a Mac.
But I think that's been stated before.

I use bootcamp on mine to play games.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

i really dont like computing on the go so i never really wanted a laptop. the one i got was because i was short a computer and needed something cheap in the interim. ive traveled around a lot in the past year so it actually came in handy. it definitely did on the 26 hour boat ride i was on from juneau recently. there was pretty much nothing to do on that ship (except where i blew 80 bucks at the ship's bar).

Now that you mention it, this MacBook that I'm using is rarely placed on my lap. I usually put it on a table.