Laptop Xmas present

[Spackward]

I wouldn't trust a dell machine for advanced computer graphics. I say go with the Sager, anything with 1 GB+ RAM works good with the programs you want to run on it. But thats comin from someone whos stuck on 512MB RDRAM :sad:


But hey man merry christmas :)

[Signal2Noise]

I've always used Dell laptops for most of my CG work without any problems. I still use an older Inspiron 8200 with a bunch of aftermarket upgrades and it still screams. I just ordered a maxed out Inspiron 9400 for my wife's xmas present. She does photo-editing & Office type stuff so it'll do her for a long while. I don't know anyone who has used Sager products so can't comment on them.

For that Precision you specced out...

-Why not take the Vista upgrade? It's cheap and your new laptop will be screaming in 64-bit mode.

-Why no wireless card? Even if you don't have a wireless network having the card may come in handy one day.

-You're probably trying to build a nice laptop as cheap as possible but I wouldn't skimp on the RAM. Get at least 1 GB and then later on buy after market RAM for cheaper and max that puppy out at 4GB!

Anyway, whatever you decide have fun with it! :)

[Cronholio]

For me it came down to the M90 vs the XPS M1710, and I went with the XPS because I felt like I was getting a little more bang for the buck. Personally I like the look of the M90 better, the LED's all over the XPS are ridiculous, luckily you can disable them. Either way you can't go wrong.

I wish they still made a 15.4 inch laptop with these high end specs because personally I like my laptop to be a bit more portable. Go with the Dell. A 19 inch laptop sounds cool, but it's really not portable, and once you have a laptop you are going to want it to take it places. I've lugged this laptop around a few places in a backpack and it is a bit cumbersome, I get welts on my shoulder and back if I carry it too long, I couldn't imagine lugging around an even bigger laptop. When you are working at home, you can easily hook it up to a huge widescreen monitor if you want.

Don't worry about performance with either the XPS or the M90, they scream. I bought this laptop thinking it would be my secondary workstation but it's become my main machine because it's so much better than my AMD desktop.

Deffintiely get a wireless card, and 1 gig of RAM, buy more later. I would suggest going with the DVD burner and bluetooth as well. Also, if you can swing it, bump up to the 2 Ghz Processor as well. The processors in these machines are easily upgradable, but the 2 Ghz is sort of the sweet spot for price/performance right now. That'll bring the total to around 2500.00. If you can't swing it, the way you have it speced is OK, you can upgrade later, but I think you should at least strongly consider the wireless card, and the RAM if you can afford it. You are going to want to get a wireless bluetooth travel mouse immediately, I can almost guarantee it. Microsft make a really nice laser mouse that goes for about 35 dollars. It's tiny but suprisingly comfortable, considering I have huge hands.

Have fun, and Merry Christmas.

[maX_Andrews]

I've been around a few 19-inch laptops and you might as well get a desktop in that case, since they weigh over ten pounds.
I'd go with the M90.

I wish they still made a 15.4 inch laptop with these high end specs because personally I like my laptop to be a bit more portable.
They do, it's just made by apple these days ;)

[Cronholio]

They do, it's just made by apple these days ;)

I had a 17 inch Mac Book Pro. It was my first choice, but it had a lot of problems, and I killed it dead within 7 days of buying it. I returned it and got a Dell after considering Sager, Boxx, and even rolling my own laptop with a barebones Asus system.

My problems with the Mac Book Pro; I was uncertain about the ATI card because Houdini is my main 3D app and I use Linux. After trying both on the Mac Book I've decided I will never buy an ATI product. The performance in Windows using Houdini was so horrible that it was better to run Houdini with no hardware support, not to mention I'd get this grain effect in any accelerated view. As far as Linux is concerned, ATI may as well not provide a driver at all since it seems to hae a memory leak or something that will lock up X at least a couple times a day. The other thing was that the keyboard did not function properly in Win XP in certain apps. Some applications didn't recongnize keys like "Delete" and random other keys, which was a real deal breaker. The other thing was even though I tried sever applications to emmulate a 3 button mouse under Windows, none of them worked quite right.

I was prepared to just sort of work around or live with the problems I was having until I finally killed the Mac Book. What happend was I had been reading about these overheating problems and I was concerned because my Mac book was really hot and I wasn't even taxing the CPU. I never heard the cpu fans kick on once in almost a week of owning the thing. So, I decided to tax both cores to see how hot it would get. I started a thread on each core that just would cat "Hello World" to /dev/null repeatedly in OSX. Within 60 seconds the temperature shot up to over 90c, the fanes didn't kick on, the CPUs didn't throttle, the laptop shut down, never to reboot again. The Mac genius at the store couldn't boot it either, so that was it, no more Mac for me.

Not saying it's a bad machine, I probably just got a lemon. I'd consider getting another if they'd put an Nvidia card in it. I like OSX, but I'm much happier with this Dell.

[maX_Andrews]

Yeah the video card is the biggest thing holding it back from serious windows CG use IMO. Under OSX the ATi drivers are fine, but in windows it seems a 50/50 split of whether you'll have problems or not. In any case, the newer macbook models are a lot better than the first set, and are very cost effective considering they offer the 2.33ghz core2duo for at least $500 less than other brands. It's just too bad theew is not a high-end nvidia gfx option...

But yeah, for windows CG use you're best off with the dell M90. It's a heavy thick beast of a machine but if you must, you must...

[evanfotis]

Well, I have already got the Sager 5760 V (http://www.powernotebooks.com/specs/Sager/5760specs.php)from Powernotebooks.com and must say I'm more than happy...
If you are going for such a 17'er beast, which is like a small desktop it is nice to have the customization of the components that desktops offer.
I chose the Sager over Dell and the rest, for these reasons:
Great wuxga display(LG-Philips)!
powerfull vga card
Customizable and upgradable (cpu, ram hdd, vga)
Full keyboard with numbpad (when using AE and other apps, it is great for hokeys)
Fits up to 2 HDD, running at 7200
Nice design (subjective, but i prefer it to the M90)
and some nifty goodies like embedded webcam, wireless etc.

[lots]

Now that ATI is part of AMD, I can imagine that Intel will want Apple to use either thier own solution or Nvidia's. So perhaps a Nvidia based MBP is in our future, which I wouldn't mind.

Either that, or AMD is good for ATI and the drivers get a serious rework...

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