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Dell = Cheap trash?
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 Re: Dell = Cheap trash?
Posted by Crono on Thu Feb 16th at 6:12am 2006

AlienWare has really gone downhill in the last few years. I used to give them some accolade because they used some good parts, but now they're starting to use crap and overcharging for it. Such as if you built the same machine yourself (identical, mind you) it'd be ~$700 cheaper.

I would imagine the same ideas have gone into their laptops. However, with laptops you can't be too picky, since you can't really build your own since everything is very specialized.

I liked IBM's ThinkPads for a long time, but they've always had battery issues. I'd suggest a PowerBook or something as such because of the all around badass-ness of the laptop, but a lot of people refuse to make that type of switch. (and they're pricey ~$1500 for a 15")

Dell, Compaq, and Gateway are just things you shouldn't touch. HP (Compaq part II) has always had underhanded methods. Toshiba is alright. They have pretty broad support (covering many OS's) and they make a wide range of laptops (from bare stuff to tablet screen), But I'm not too sure about the specifics.
One thing I'll give IBM is they may hide things about batteries (their batteries really are not as good as advertised, there's a defect in all their "smart" chips) they will (on everything else) tell you how to replace or fix almost anything that can go wrong with the laptop. Which is damn nice and most companies don't do that.

But the biggest deciding factor is money. Also what you plan on doing with it. Playing games? Well ... something like AlienWare is pretty much all you can go with, since they're pretty much the only people who put beefy video in a laptop (some others are now too though)

I'd suggest trying to find an alternative to alienware though, if you can. Just because of their prices.

I'd personally get a 15 or 17" PowerBook. They're tough, nice to look at, accomodating ... and I wont use it for games, so the entire needing DirectX compatability goes out the window. But that's also the view of a programmer who uses a Unix environment.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



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 Re: Dell = Cheap trash?
Posted by Dark_Kilauea on Thu Feb 16th at 7:53pm 2006

With apple's switch to Intel processers, soon you should be able to run windows on an apple laptop. If you do however, I will personally hate you for defiling a nice machine like that <img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_smile.gif">


Dark_Kilauea
DVS Administration
http://www.dvstudio-production.com/




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