College-bound; Need to start looking for a laptop! Suggestions!

[isaiahk]

You could look into the Gateway P series. It might be overkill for the GPU for image editing with the 9800GTS. Its pretty good for the price though, a bit on the hefty side to bring around college though.

Its more suited for gamers, but it could fit your wants if you look in the right places.

 

[dude_56013]

You could look into the Gateway P series. It might be overkill for the GPU for image editing with the 9800GTS. Its pretty good for the price though, a bit on the hefty side to bring around college though.

Its more suited for gamers, but it could fit your wants if you look in the right places.

Thank you. I did see them in my searching, but it seems they aren't available yet. I specifically liked the Gateway P-7807u FX Edition when I saw it, but I'm not so hot about the oddly positioned touch pad (must be a gaming thing?). I found it on NewEgg but it was jacked up in price. $1250 I think. Plus, I have a feeling battery life would be crap, even with the 9 cell. And the older version with the slower CPU is a available at BestBuy (yucky!), but I'm not sure about it. As I'm writing this, I noticed that the pad is moved over, probably because of the numpad feature. I'll look into this. If anyone can comment on batt. life on any of the models here, let me know.

Right now, the Sony is still in the lead.

EDIT: Wow. I've got notebookreview.com and cnet both saying 3.5 hours. That's GREAT. Anyone care to look and see how this compares to my Sony I'm looking at? I'm still searching to find a place that has the P series with the 8600/8700 CPU.

 

[isaiahk]

Yeah I heard they get decent battery life because of the battery size.
You can find older Gateway FX laptops on tigerdirect, like the 7807u and a refurbished model for much cheaper (around $800) without sacrificing much performance. I don't know how comfortable you are with buying refurbished though.

Anyways, the new Gateway P-7808u has a quad core centrino 2 chip instead of the regular dual core. It matters how much you are able to spend in the end.

7808u Review

It describes most of the features, and battery life and such. Gotta love ComputerTV.

 

[01001010]

Anyways, the new Gateway P-7808u has a quad core centrino 2 chip instead of the regular dual core. It matters how much you are able to spend in the end.

I don't understand why'd you need all this power in a notebook. If you're going to buy a gaming notebook, you mind as well purchase another desktop.

 

[dude_56013]

Um, yeah. I definitely don't need a quad. My desktop doesn't even have a freakin quad lmao.

To put it in simple terms; I'm putting most of my focus on finding something with good performance with outstanding battery life (extended battery options mostly) with a screen preferably bigger than 15.6". I'm still looking. I'll keep updating. My parents have okay'd the budget up to $1300-1400, so I have more room to work with. If anyone has suggestions in this area, let em rip.

 

[isaiahk]

I know, I know. I'm just throwing out suggestions, because it seems to be what he's looking for. He said he was also bringing his desktop to college, so the Gateway is definitely overkill, but it's really a good choice when you consider what he said he was looking for. Maybe not the quad-core version, because it'll probably cost a reasonable price more than the others.

I for one could never game on a laptop, far too uncomfortable.

 

[01001010]

You could take a look at the new ThinkPad W Series. I don't have an opinion on them yet, but they look like good machines.

 

[dude_56013]

I know, I know. I'm just throwing out suggestions

And I really do appreciate it!

I for one could never game on a laptop, far too uncomfortable.

And again, I'm not looking to game.

You could take a look at the new ThinkPad W Series. I don't have an opinion on them yet, but they look like good machines.

Thanks, I'll check them out.

 

[isaiahk]

Thanks, I'll check them out.

I know, I'm just making a reference to the Gateway FX line or any Gaming laptop line in general. Gaming on a laptop is just weird. Sorry for the confusion.

Umm, why not a Dell? What bad experience have you had with them?
Just curious because the Studio XPS 16s are pretty nice, my brother has one.

 

[dude_56013]

Umm, why not a Dell? What bad experience have you had with them?
Just curious because the Studio XPS 16s are pretty nice, my brother has one.

I run a computer business (build new, sell used, repair, upgrade, other misc. stuff) and by far the most computers I see come in my door are Dells. My cousin has a Dell laptop that's a piece and I used to have a desktop that was a piece as well. I will never recommend them to anyone. Ever. Period. I don't mean to sound testy or narrow minded about them, but that's just how I feel. When you have bad experiences, you get opinions like that. It's the same thing with me and Samsung now since I went through a whole ordeal of getting them to replace my under-warraty-42" plasma which involved dealing with retarded customer service reps for a MONTH. I won't be buying their products for myself or my customers for a while.