Buying a Laptop

I need to get a Laptop for college at a price of $2000 USD or less but I also want it to be able to play games like Bioshock at a tolerable level at least. Does anyone know where I should shop for one?

Alienware

wow, nice budget :D

just try and get the best gfx chipset you can for the money, and maybe aim to get a screen with a resolution of 1200 x 800, which is low enough for you to probably play most games at the screen's native resolution.

I suggest you just find out what laptop you want, maybe try the display models in shops, and then search for it on eBay

May be a small bit over your budget, but the Dell XPS M1710 are very good, i have one :)

Bioshock runs pretty well on it.

hehe, are there any quadcores yet in laptopsQ

So overall what brand would be suggested? since there are mixed opinions out there

carrosion wrote: So overall what brand would be suggested? since there are mixed opinions out there

With your budget, go alienware. Heard nothing but good from them.

alienware are good, but overpriced. for your budget you may be better off with an XPS, but check both sites and compare the prices and specs.

I know this was not in your plan, but i would suggest buying a cheap laptop, nothing special just enough to do whatever you need for college, and then building yourself a gaming desktop rig, its much cheaper to get a gaming desktop together than a gaming laptop. Laptops are overpriced IMHO and for what you get for £500 here in england, you are likely to get for £250 in a normal desktop. Obviously there was the convenience and space factor, but now with ultra small form cases and flat screen monitors thats not an excuse to get a laptop anymore to be honest. You could even get a desktop and an External HDD if you can use computers at college.

If your set on a laptop though, try www.novatech.co.uk (i know its a Uk site, but i think they have a US branch.) ebuyer and Dell of course. thats probably be your best bet.

V1P3R wrote: alienware are good, but overpriced. for your budget you may be better off with an XPS, but check both sites and compare the prices and specs.

The only diffrence between an alienware and an XPS is the case and badge, other than that, same overpriced bullshit you can get for £500 cheaper by building it yourself.

I already have a desktop thats great for gaming but I need something that can let me kill time with HW or games since my classes are about 3 hours apart and I live about 20-30 minutes from campus, while driving 80+ MPH, and I cant aford to spend much on gasdriving back home and spending maybe an hour there and then drive back

well then get a cheap laptop and just start playing older games like duke nukem 3d :P

Personally, I'm buying a MacBook Pro and triple booting OSX, Linux (Either Debian or FC7, and maybe Xubuntu too, just for lightning speed), and an XP Pro crack with all the $hitware taken out.

2.4GHz, x86 compatable, great graphics (GeForce 8600M GT), good res (1920-by-1200), and at least 1GB RAM (I'll opt for 2GB) with a 250GB HD.

I know a lot of people don't like Macs, but who cares when it'll boot 3 OSs or can emulate them (several simultaneously, too!) as well as running natively?

Or alienware or XPS, all good choices. Or build your own :p but I havnet met many people who have done that!

here http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/ntbkx5c90s.asp?v=d#configurator_top just slap on the upgradable processor and anything else u want customized. i think for ur budget u cant go wrong with something like that

and yes, there are quad cores in laptops, just check out that link, its upgradable to quad core for an extra $734 or something like that

forget alienware, way overpriced although very nice name and very good service. i put the default settings on the cyberpower laptop and the alienware laptop and heres the results:

alienware proccessors go up to 2.33 core 2 duo and its $700 more expensive than a 1.66 core 2 duo on alienware O.o, for that extra dough u might as well get a quad core on cyberpower. next: everything else being very close in specs the alienware with a 2.33 core 2 duo costs $2,849.00 and the cyberpower with a 2.4 core 2 duo costs (insert drumroll here) $1576.00. now u can upgrade the cyberpower really nicely if u can afford a bit more than 2k but a 2.4 ghz processor with 2gb ram, and a 512 mb video card just blows alienware out of the water in terms of pricing. and u get a nice built in webcam on the cyberpower too ;)

forget about the xps, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too expensive for a piece of crap.