deciding on a Laptop

[Dunleavy]

I’m pulling out my hair spending the last few hours surfing for Laptop reviews, but there are just too many sites and laptops for me to keep it all straight. I know what I want, I’m just not sure what laptop it is. Here is what I’m looking for in order of importance.


Most important

-Battery life. By far the #1 thing I’m looking for in a laptop

-Lots of space, 100 GB, 512 Ram

-Processing speed, 2+ ghz

-Bluetooth

-Screen, 17 inch, high quality

-Video card. Think Rise of Nations, not Halo. Not top of the line, but above average.

-Mobility. Not too heavy if possible

-Price not an issue if it’s what I want



Hope I didn’t forget anything, not an expert at this. This would be my first laptop, I have a desktop and basically I want the laptop to be able to do everything the desktop can regardless if I’m in the other room or 3,000 miles away. Biggest issue is battery life, need to use hours at a time away from an outlet.


Any help appreciated, if you know of a laptop that fits me or just a great laptop website (been to notebookforums.com, pretty good but couldn’t register :(

[Samdari]

Well, the best way to improve battery life is to get a less powerful machine. No company has an inherent advantage over the others in terms of battery - they all use the same ones. So, the key is to get a laptop that uses less power. Again, no company has any advantage here, they all use essentially the same components, so really the only way to conserve power is to get a processor that runs slowly (fast ones use more power).

[Cringer]

stay away from HP laptops. I didn't learn my lesson ith number 1, bought number 2 and now have the same power problem I had with the first one. this one took a lot longer to develop, but its the same damn thing.

[PilotMan]

I was never a big fan of the dell laptops, however while doing research to decided what to get, almost every businessman, and frequent traveler liked the dells better than any other laptop. I ended up getting a dell, and have been happy with it. But I don't have enough to compare it to, to decide if it's better than any other.

[Crapshoot]

IBM's are amazing, but you do pay a premium for them. If its not an issue, then that may be the way to go.

As for games, the problem is that when unplugged, laptops are running a lot slower than their advertised speed- most games will be fairly slow on them. you can speed up this power, but you trade of battery life for it.