I have $2850.00 and need to spend it

Best choice is XPS Gen 2.

1) Pentium-M hasn't come to the 3Ghz mark yet. If you want that, you are have to get Pentium-4, which I don't recommend. They are hot, battery life sucks.

Other than that, your choice is the Dell XPS Gen2 mentioned above. You could setting down to the i9300, but it doesn't have the ultra card, just the normal 6800 PCI-E

Why 3 ghz? you do realize a pentium M 2.0ghz is faster than a 3.0ghz p4, right?

pentium 4 is a longer pipeline which is less efficient, the P-Ms pipeline is much shorter, and thus it doesn't have to run as fast to get the same amout of work done.

think of it as such:
P4: you have to drive 60mph to get to your destination 60 miles away in an hour
P-M: you have to walk 3 miles at 3mph to get to your destination in an hour.


a fair comparison of P-M to P4 is a ratio of 1.5. That is, multiply the speed of a P-M by 1.5 and that will give you an estimate of how it performs in comparison to a P4.

For instance, my laptop has a 2ghz AMD64 in it, but its rated at "3200+" which means it performs in about the same ballpark as a 3.2 P4, even though it is only 2.0ghz. Its the same thing for P-M.

P-M only go up to 2.13 (2.26 comming soon) at the time. but thats plenty good, because it will whip a 3.0ghz P4 in all tasks (except for maybe DV)


as for the topic of dell, although i would never get a dell laptop (i think they look crappy and are cheap plastic), though the XPS2 is deffinatly the best and most solid dell lappy out there (its actually pretty solid compared to some other lappies on the market). I do own a Dell Axim X50v however, and my BT keyboard broke, a DHL truck was at my door 3 days after i called up with a brand new keyboard. So i wouldn't worry much about their service. I also own a desktop thats 5, going on 6 years old, had no issues with it at all. I also owned another desktop (just got rid of it like a month ago), it was a P1 MMX 233mhz, made in 1997/8 and that thing was rock solid, never failed me once.

I edited my post above to address quality issues.


As for motherboards, i don't think you have to worry about it, because in all honesty the latest mobos are very good. I would worry more about the ram and the video card giving you a hard time.


Dell is also the only company at this point to offer a 6800 in their laptops, if you are willing to downgrade to a 6600, or ati x700, you will have A LOT more options to choose from.

and for the price question, are they the cheapest, well, with a $700 or a 40% coupon they are.

The XPS2 right now is the best 'bang for the buck' IMO esp. if one of the big % coupons come along.

The hardware should be fine, but remember that people yell and complain more when they have a problem. You don't hear from the happy people as much.

As for the last one, I really can't help you.

did you look at the coupon section of the forums? cause if you did, then you would probably have a coupon....guess you didn't look hard enough

Sager 5320 maxed out Fully maxed with tv tuner and all $2574

2.26ghz.. 2gb ram..120gb sata drive.. xp pro.. etc.. etc

unless u really want a faster than a x700 vidcard :P

there is always the 9880 with the X800 or the new upcomming clevo with the AMD X2.....

Do you even play games? Why on earth do you want to spend 3 grand on a laptop??

i see. well, my lappy is only a 9700 128mb, for when i got it last year, it was as high as they would go (wait..well, there was the 9800 xps). anyway...long story short, today it still plays HL2 at mid-high settings quite well at 40-50fps (my screen is @60 refresh rate so anything over 60fps is just useless crap)

get minimum ram and then buy 2 sticks off of newegg. Im sure this will put 2gigs in your price range.

Anyways I dunno if XPS2 are still 40% off but if you can get this coupon then you will most likely beable to get an XPS 2 for less than 2500 dollars.