Neverside

New Laptop Questions

I just got accepted to college for graphic and webdesign, and I want to get a good laptop to make school life a bit easier. I've been looking mainly at Dell and Alienware laptops, as they seem to be the best and most reasonably prices. I need somthing fairly highend.
From Alienware I can get the following or a pretty much identical laptop from Dell:

Area51m 7700
Intel® Pentium® 4 530J Desktop Processor w/ HT Technology 3.0GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB Cache
512MB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz 2 x 256M
17" WideXGA+ 1400 x 900 LCD Display
NVIDIA GeForceâ?¢ Go 6800 Ultra with 256MB of DDR3 memory
60GB 5400 RPM ATA100 (7200 rpm $170 more, or 120bg 5400 rpm for $140)
24x10x24 CD-RW / 8X DVD Combo w/Software MPEG2 Decoder
External Wireless 802.11a/b/g PCMCIA Card

$2,746.00 (Canadian)

For $450 more, I can upgrade to the P4 3.2ghz and the NVIDIA Quadro FX Go 1400.

Again, pretty much the same price compared to Dell. Now, I'm not really sure what the difference between the GeForce Go 6800 Ultra and the Quadro FX Go 1400 are, is it worth the extra money? Is there anywhere else where I can get a comparable laptop for less money?

Also, my Dad can get IBM laptops at employee discount through his work - but they dont offer anything with the kind of graphic card I want/need. Is it possible to put one of the high end card in? How would I go about finding out what would fit in an IBM laptop?

Thanks for any help you guys can offer!

What are you going to be doing with this laptop? If you aren't going to be seriously gaming, I'd get a mac for a webdesign school. A highend power book would be perfect.

As much as I hate macs, I would recommend one for a design school as well. My brother is a film major and he loves his powerbook type thing.

Yah, as much as I know macs are more stable and whatnot for design work, I like my windows And....I do play a fair amount of computer games too But, I guess its somthing to look into as well. I guess I can sacrifice the games to graduate college....

Yeah gaming plays a huge role in buying a laptop....You could either get a good laptop that isn't for gaming that has like an 8 hour battery life or one that will do great in gaming that has like a 2-3 hour battery life....All up to you....

Find out what the school uses. If you will be there for four years, might as well use what they use, then switch to whatever you want afterward (as much as I hate MACS, but if the school I went to when I went used mainly MACs, then, its the smart move)...

of course I am a stubborn SOB sometimes and I would probably say F*** them, I'll do it in PC and use MACs whe they make me

Either way learn how MACs operate so you will at least be good for whatever job you decide to get later in life.

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Neversidian Editor

Yah, the program I'm in is only 6 months...its a concentrated course - non of that humanities crap. Just web/graphic design. They say both Macs and PCs are used there. Virtually all the stuff we do will be cross-compatible, so we wont run into to many problems. Does the Macromedia software (Flash, Freehand, etc) run on MACs?

Originally posted by Pax:

Does the Macromedia software (Flash, Freehand, etc) run on MACs?

Yes

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Alex Ford
Neversidian General Editor and Columnist
http://www.lexmediaconsulting.com/

Anyone know if the upgraded graphic card (NVIDIA Quadro FX Go 1400) is worth the money? Whats so special about the Quadro FX Go 1400 anyways?

Well that depends on what you want to be doing. The GeForce 6800 is more of a consumer grade card while the Quadro FX 1400 is a professional grade card. GeForce 6800 is best for general computing and hard core gaming but if you're going to be doing rendering or video editing then Quadro FX 1400 is definetly the way to go.

For more information read this: http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/support/faq.asp?faqlineid=44

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Last edited by DarkFire, July 22nd, 2005 03:47 AM (Edited 1 times)