Laptop Gurus???

Hey everyone, I'm looking to buy a new laptop/portable PC.....with 18" - 20", 16:9 HD display.....and high-end performance for graphics, games, movies, and music creation.....

I would love a beautiful 20" HD display, the new solid-state drive technology, and screaming graphic card setup all in a portable machine.....but to the best of my knowledge, that animal doesn't exist all together yet.....or does it???

The i7 looks like the best drive, but could only find it in very expensive "Xtreme Force" laptops (around $5000+)......and I want to keep the total around $2500.00....

The Duos and Extreme Duos actually clock faster than the quads for some reason.....anyone know why???

Last, does anyone know which graphics card setup is the best performer.....single Nvidia with 1 gig.....crossfire dual ATI each with 512 meg....or is there something else???

I prefer the setup and quality of ASUS over Clevo, Sager, and Rock machines.....and this ASUS machine seems to be the best "bang-for-the-buck" within the $2500 range that I can find.....

http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-w90vpa1-order-p-2562.html

Video of base model without upgrades (after a quick ad runs first).....

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/asus-...?tag=mncol

Gotta love researching by video.....

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/buy...3587781930

Craig, shoot'em-up gaming video for ya.....

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/asu...3977404908

If anyone knows of anything better than this within a $2500 price range (with an 18"-20" 16:9 HD Display), I would love to know about it.....

yes.

and, that asus w90vp looks pretty sweet. i wonder how they're addressing that 6 gigs of ram they claim to have?

hehe, a solid state drive would be nice, but, that's likely going to raise the price out of your range, at least for a year or two. those arent going to be cheap, i'm guessing.

hehehe, i hear ya, brother!

Quote
Carl wrote: what have you choosen

The "Asus W90VP-A1" (links above) looks like it's definitely the one. It's really a high-end graphics/gaming/multimedia desktop machine crammed into a laptop.....desktop motherboard, cores, RAM, graphic cards, fans, HD display, sound system, etc.....with "mobility" being the deciding factor!!! The only way to beat it is the same machine upgraded with solid-state drives.....which actually might become available in this machine.....but like Craig said, the price will probably jump up significantly out of my price range......

I really would love to have the solid-state drive technology because it drastically lowers the heat/cooling requirements.....making it a completely quiet machine without needing 3+ fans running to cool it down.....and a much longer life (no disk error/corruption/de-magnitized issues) over the current magnetic drive technology. I'm currently trying to find out if they are at least going to make solid-state drives available to upgrade the W90 in the future.....thus preventing it from being outdated so fast without any way to upgrade it in the future to keep up with everything.....

......and yes, I research the hell ot of things before I buy.....

PS..... Service is a huge issue too.....which knocked HP, Sony, and others right out of consideration.....because their service totally sucks!!! On top of that, you end up getting someone in India or South America who can barely speak English and you can hardly understand a word they are saying......so I'm done dealing with that type of crap!!! XoticPC (who sells the W90) has excellent service, they're extremely fast about getting things done, and they speak English clearly .....and wiil price match if I can find it cheaper somewhere else (which I can't).....so I'm going to buy through them.....

At least 18".....

I found this M-Tech that's going to be released in June.....18", duo quad, 8 gig RAM, and with the new Nvidia GTX 280M SLI.....

http://www.mtechlaptops.com/future/m9...elease.htm

These are sweet too......only 17"......but have the new solid-state drive technology.....

http://www.workstationspecialist.com/laptop/

Quote
Kraellin wrote: 8 gigs of ram

Yeah, pretty slick, eh???

Quote
Kraellin wrote: these have to be 64 bit cpu/motherboards and 64 bit vista.

No.....most of the high-end graphics workstations are actually staying with XP Pro.....and if whatever machine I get only comes with Vista, I'll be "upgrading" it to XP Pro as well.....

Quote
Kraellin wrote: here's a page for you

Yeah, I actually read that before.....although doing that saves money, it would kill all warrantee coverage/tech support on your machine in the event of something going wrong.....

rofl on the SS drives and you going nuts

uhm, xp cannot access 8 gigs of ram. it's physically impossible, i believe, the way it's set up. study those ads again; i remember reading in one of those you linked to, that it was only vista 32 and vista 64 bit. so, i'd take a look again. xp can only physically access 3 gigs of ram, and that's if you've gotten the special patch to add that last gig. you can stick 4 gigs in there, but windows xp wont use that other gig.

frankly, my advice on the SS drives would be dont wait. the highest size i've seen is 128 gig and that costs like $8,000 or some weirdly high number. the 80 gig run about $500-700 and the 64 gig are quite a bit less, maybe the $150-300 range. so, i wouldnt wait. i'd get the standard drive. you can always upgrade later. or, buy a cheap 32 gig and use that as your photoshop workspace drive or, i believe windows will allow you to assign a drive as your swap file, so you use the SS drive for that and that shld speed up any system.

so, if you're drooling over the Asus and it's within your price range, i'd go with that and fuss with the SS drives later.

i also would certainly be a bit concerned over having to go vista, but, depending on what you want to do and how much old software you're going to try to use, try and test or read reviews. vista has gotten a bit better, but it does still have some legacy software problems and is still a hog. windows7, while it is in beta now, has just too many rumors around it for anyone to be seriously considering it as a main workstation at this point.

but, you are doing the right thing... research. just try not to drool too much on the keyboard; it tends to short out

ok, i fell asleep somewhere while writing what i did yesterday. sure, xp can do 8 gigs, IF YOU HAVE 64 bit XP. 32 bit anything cannot access 8 gigs. 64 bit can. or, at least that's my understanding (which certainly isnt always right. lol ).

adobe allows for one to direct a 'workspace' file anywhere one wants on a drive. some folks even use whole partitions, but most programs dont do this and leave that all up to windows. however, i believe you can also tell windows where to do this, but it's been a while since i tried, so i'm not sure where that is. i know you can allocate the amount of workspace in windows; i'm just not sure you can tell it where to allocate. so, you'd want to check that. and, having your workspace in the solid state makes a lot of sense, since the access times on the SS stuff are quite a bit faster than a normal harddrive.

3x the ram... hmmm. i'll have to try that. currently mine is about the same size as ram, but paint shop pro does tend to crash when i hit the ram and swap file limits. thanks

Have to give it a try