gobbledonk Posted September 22, 2008 Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 Hi All, Have resisted the urge for a long time (OK, 12 months ..) but some of the 'Media Centre' 17-inch laptops they are making now blow my tiny mind. Even with a worsening exchange rate, many of them can be had for less than 3K AUD : the same level of equipment was often double that a few years back. Anyhoo, I thought that one of you may have lashed out on something of this nature recently, and be willing to share your impressions. The kind of machine I am talking about has specs along these lines: - Intel Core 2 Duo (at least 2.3GHz and preferably Centrino 2) - 3GB RAM or better(4GB is overkill on a 32-bit machine, but I guess we'll get more gen-u-ine 64-bit apps one day) - 320 GB or better hard drive (terabyte in a laptop, anyone ?) - decent graphics (GeForce 8600M GT or better) - TV Tuner card - Blu-Ray drive Watching TV on your laptop is great if you are sitting close enough to the aerial connection thats currently plugged into, you guessed it, your TV ! Arrgghh ! Happy to hear from someone who has found a plug-in aerial that does a reasonable job. The other issue is that the component listing doesn't tell the whole story - I've seen benchmarks where two almost identical machines from different manufacturers have very different 3D scores, for example. Little cost-cutting efforts at Acme Computers can mean tears when you realise that yours is the only laptop on the shelf that struggles with 'Solitaire' (cure: install Windows XP straight over the top of Vista..) Finally, if you are playing Crysis with everything set to 'High', please PM me with your address so I can come over and watch the lights dim in your 'burb when you power that thing on. Cheers, Gobble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drogon Posted September 22, 2008 Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 I "played" crysis on maximum settings but the machine was a beast paid by the company... I confirm most people people would have killed to get this computer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zzzz Posted September 22, 2008 Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 I just pickued up the LOW END laptop for about $250 US that is perfect for my next trip to LOS. It weighs only 2.5 lbs and no moving parts to break: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted September 22, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 people would have killed to get this computer Heaven forbid, Drogon, heaven forbid ... :smirk: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted September 22, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 zzzz, I have one of the EEE PC's competitors, the Acer Aspire One, and I am very happy with it. Something you cannot do with either machine, however, is depicted here: Frightening to think that you need to shell out this kind of money to get some of the current games to play at 100%, but I guess thats showbiz. Gobble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamui Posted September 22, 2008 Report Share Posted September 22, 2008 Since you are a gamer, I presume an Apple MacBook Pro is not interesting for you. If yes, the most recent rumour says that Apple will upgrade it's notebook line between mid October and January. Link The MBP's are beautiful and powerful machines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drogon Posted September 23, 2008 Report Share Posted September 23, 2008 Yes it is scary the amount of money you have to put into upgrading your gaming equipment... For games I use an alienware laptop as until recently I was able to get good "prices" for this. Unfortunately this is no longer the case and I will have to pay the next one which will cost quite a bit if I buy it by myself. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gobbledonk Posted September 23, 2008 Author Report Share Posted September 23, 2008 I presume an Apple MacBook Pro is not interesting for you My 2.2GHz MBP survived 2 months in LOS, often perched precariously on the bed or on someone's knees, only to succumb to my stupidity when I came back to Oz. Coke has never done much for keyboards, but the rest of the machine still works really well . The real bargain the current Mac range is the iMac, IMO : granted, not a laptop but not the usual box+monitor desktop machine either. The problem is that I would still need to pay retail for a copy of Vista to run Direct X10 games using Bootcamp on an Intel Mac. Micro$oft are still charging an obscene amount of money for Vista here - OS X 'Leopard' retails for $150 and there is none of the 'Homo Basic'/'Homo Premium'/Homo Horribilis' crap .... One of the guys I worked with a few months back has a current-gen iMac, and the image quality on that screen is streets ahead of anything in the Macbook/MBP range, although they are offering 'higher resolution' upgrades for the MBP on the Apple Store site. If I were to purchase an Apple, I believe that the 'base' 24-inch iMac with the upgraded video card would do the job nicely, coming in a shade under 3K AUD: # 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo # 4 GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2 GB # 320GB Serial ATA Drive # NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB GDDR3 Still no sign of Blu-Ray being offered as an option tho, and that money will get you a similar spec machine (albeit with Windoze) from another manufacturer, complete with said Blu-Ray drive installed. Check out Youtube for lots of videos of folk playing current games on Intel Macs - just dont know if I can bring myself to pay cash for a boxed copy of Vista. Gobble Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The_Munchmaster Posted September 23, 2008 Report Share Posted September 23, 2008 ....Coke has never done much for keyboards,.... Prolonged use will fuck your nose up as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kamui Posted September 23, 2008 Report Share Posted September 23, 2008 I presume an Apple MacBook Pro is not interesting for you My 2.2GHz MBP survived 2 months in LOS, often perched precariously on the bed or on someone's knees, only to succumb to my stupidity when I came back to Oz. Coke has never done much for keyboards, but the rest of the machine still works really well . The real bargain the current Mac range is the iMac, IMO : granted, not a laptop but not the usual box+monitor desktop machine either. The problem is that I would still need to pay retail for a copy of Vista to run Direct X10 games using Bootcamp on an Intel Mac. Micro$oft are still charging an obscene amount of money for Vista here - OS X 'Leopard' retails for $150 and there is none of the 'Homo Basic'/'Homo Premium'/Homo Horribilis' crap .... One of the guys I worked with a few months back has a current-gen iMac, and the image quality on that screen is streets ahead of anything in the Macbook/MBP range, although they are offering 'higher resolution' upgrades for the MBP on the Apple Store site. If I were to purchase an Apple, I believe that the 'base' 24-inch iMac with the upgraded video card would do the job nicely, coming in a shade under 3K AUD: # 2.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo # 4 GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM - 2x2 GB # 320GB Serial ATA Drive # NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GS w/512MB GDDR3 Still no sign of Blu-Ray being offered as an option tho, and that money will get you a similar spec machine (albeit with Windoze) from another manufacturer, complete with said Blu-Ray drive installed. Check out Youtube for lots of videos of folk playing current games on Intel Macs - just dont know if I can bring myself to pay cash for a boxed copy of Vista. Gobble I am sitting in front of 24" iMac. It's a great machine and the screen is fantastic albeit a little bit glossy on a sunny day with the sun in my back. I need Windows as well (for MS Access) and I made the mistake to choose Vista Home Premium with Parallels. In this combination Vista is extremley slow. In hindsigight I should have chosen WinXP Prof. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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