Qosmio G20 Gs2...or... XPS M170 You make the call! - Page 2

1280x800 resolution monitor.

Shoot me.

M170 all the way. There is no way to match a 1920x1200 screen when you've used one.

It's a beast! And it weighs a ton less than the Toshiba. Not to mention better performance.

If you're throwing that much money around on a laptop, go the toshiba. It's more elitist

Yeah, it's so heavy that you need a Rolls Royce sized bag to tote it around in.

Don't tell me what to do, you don't even know me keyboard warrior.

m170 eats this toshiba for breakfast

One of my friends has this one (toshiba g20).
Its VERY slick, looks nice and shiny with cool looking speakers, cool blue leds and special touch-sensitive multimedia buttons. It also has a bright screen and it has a tv tuner

However, from experience, it has shit battery life. Its dual HDD's, and a small battery makes it suck for much battery/non mains use. And for the price, I would have expected more then a 6600go. Also, as other have said, it gets covered in fingerprints real fast. Go well with a cleaning cloth...

Oh, AND the price. Here in Australia I've seen it for well above 4000
Its really more of a statement then a laptop. It looks great, stunning even, but on a value or performance/$ basis, it falls flat.
If I was looking for something like this, I would get apples 17" powerbook...

I think I saw one for $5999, once...

Regardless of some of the more biased comments here, both are fine computers. I ruled out the Qosmio because of the low resolution it could offer on the screen, I already had that resolution on my 15" ACER TravelMate and wanted more (on a bigger screen) and I dont regret choosing the M170 instead (and yes, I am running it with no enlarged fonts, I still have good eye sight).

/pJ

Well I guess I did say well above 4000...
Seriously tho, 5999? Are you sure, even considering its a toshiba, that sounds a bit high.
I meant more like 4500-4999, but I guess it depends on what specs you get.

Well, it definitely ended in 999... It was at harvey norman and I think it was the ubermost of the uber, and I remember thinking 'how the hell is a laptop that expensive?'... I guess it could have been $4999. That's still a freaking lot of money to be spending on a laptop.

Not even M170 eats Qosmio for breakfast. i9300 eats Qosmio for sure

xps 170 imo

again this is not a comparison, find two compariable laptops then start a thread.

Apple's 17" Powerbook becomes uncomfortably hot in your lap. Same goes with the XPS Gen 2/XPS M170. If anything, the "Hybrid-DTR" Qosmio G20 is better for his fertility (and... who wants to become infertile anyways :P).

Having been using a XPS Gen 2 for the last 5 or 6 months, I like it, but I actually don't use the potential graphical power as much as I'd have thought I would 5 months ago. Don't get me wrong though, the 6800 Go Ultra is a beast in most modern games (though the 7800 go GTX is even moreso). I played the F.E.A.R. demo at 1440x900 with all settings set to medium, minus physics, which was set to maximum. It was "pretty" playable at about, subjectively > 20FPS average (for some people, this is arguable - they require 1337 > 60 FPS in any game, with all the bells and whistles on). If anything, I use it more of as a general notebook (which one can hardly call general, given it's 8.4lb weight) that I cart between home and school (which will be sure to have some consequence on my back in future years). Makes me wonder if I should have considered a tablet PC instead, like the Tecra M4. Or an ultralight portable one, like the Dell X1 or the 700m, or that Acer lightweight, or more recently, the Toshiba Libretto. All of which would suit my current needs much better than this hulking beast of a laptop.

Also, having a laptop running at 1920x1200 on a 17" screen can really strain your eyes. So, unless you have very good eyesight, I'd avoid the XPS M170 because the native resolution is too large. 1280x800 is too big for the real estate offered by a 17" screen (text wise). 1440x900 is a sweet spot. 1650x1080 may be too small. However, widescrreen resolutions are definately nice to have on a notebook. I'd never buy a normal 4:3 ratio notebook unless the reasons for outweighed it.

Another thing is that MCE 2005 is sorta a resource hog, due to the ehome, escheduler, and the entire media centre set of services. Granted that the Qosmio G20 has it standard, whereas the M170 has the option of moving to professional or home, the M170 would win here. Media Centre is only good if you want to use your notebook as a HTPC (Or rather, HTnotebook).

Also, what people have said about 2 hard drives is true; it will decrease the amount of battery life significantly. However, you could take one of the hard drives out of the Q20, thus eliminating that problem. I don't see how you will need more than 60GB if you are just using it for general purpose computing.

Designwise, the Qosmio wins by a longshot. The black glossy surface is *nice*. The blue LEDs are *nice*. The slot loading DVD drive is *nice*. Almost everything about the notebook is nice. Save for the stickers, which I absolutely hate. However, like people have stated, the glossy surface is very much prone to fingerprints. So, if you want the notebook looking like a solar panel, then you will have to have a cleaning cloth at all times. The M170 Silver thing at the back is just ugly. Same for the selected Silvery-Grey part of the notebook. I would have preferred if it were all black. The LEDs are unnecessary glamour. The Dell/XPS logos on the Gen 2 are ugly and intrusive (not sure if they are still there on the M170).

I'm not sure about technical support from either company, so I can't really comment on that aspect with first hand knowledge. However, from what I read on the forums, Dell techies are, well, loaded with BS. They're just as bad as people who don't know what the hell they are talking about. Occasionally, you'll find somebody who understands, but that's far and few (this is based on a general view of the techsupport sector). Toshiba, well, definately don't know anything about them.

Regardless, the point I try to make is that he is looking for a basic notebook with some sleekness and power, and not some uber gaming rig. Thus, the needing of the M170 is completely unwarrented, IMO. He'd be better going along with the Qosmio, or maybe the Inspiron 9300, as someone had mentioned, with X300 GPU and 1.73GHz Pentium M, which would be far cheaper. (note that I9300 is still nowhere near as sleek as the Qosmio. And will never be.)

In fact, I'd actually argue against a 17" notebook. I'd recommend something more portable, thus being a little bit more functional, minus the Powerbook 17", as someone else mentioned - the unpleasant cooking effect, and the fact that it's OSX, which in turn means buying all new software and getting used to a new OS. The I6000 doesn't look too shabby for your requirements, nor does any 15.4" laptop.

Yet, if you are serious about buying a 17" notebook, I'd reccommend at least looking at the Acer and Asus offerings, as well as the other Pentium-M/7800 Go GTX combination ( http://www.gamepc.com/shop/systemfam...?family=noteb5 ). Or Sony if you want sleekness (albeit extremely overpriced).

Oh, and just ignore anything with the phrase "Pentium 4" or "Athlon 64 DTR" or "Athlon 64 X2" in a notebook, cause those are just hints for > 10lb laptops. (Generally.)

Wow, long statement.
Anyway I'm surprised to hear the 17" powerbook gets hot, but I've never used one in my lap. But, considering its so slim, they probably had limited space for cooling.

Anyway, what you say about the resolution really depends on the person. Personally I have no problem with 1920*1200 at 17", and my eyesight isn't spectacular. Initially, when I got the laptop it felt weird, but now using any 'normal' 1200*1024 17" just feels wrong...

As for removing the hdd's, yes that makes a difference, But the g20 still has a poor batterylife due to its 'low' capacity battery. Bearing in mind there may be different capacity batteries...

What you say about the G20's design is definitly true. It really looks great. But it all comes at a cost, so it really depends on wheather you value the hardware or the exterior.

I was faced with a similar dilemma, when I was looking at the Qosmio versus the new (at the time) XPS Gen 2. My situation was a little more complicated because I own one of the old Toshiba Notebooks (one of the 5005 Series notebooks). Some of you might recognize that as the problem child of Toshiba's, and the owners of that Laptop (me included) participated in a Class Action suit against Toshiba. We won obviously, and the many plaintiffs all have three choices:

1. $500.00 in cash and a brand new 3 year warranty on the Laptop (this involves keeping the Laptop).

2. $1,000.00 Cash, which involves sending in the Laptop and being basically paid the $1,000.00 for it.

3. $1,500.00 CREDIT towards any Toshiba product (including a new Notebook...which of course had me looking at the Qosmio).

I think you see where I am going with this.

Because even though the Qosmio at the time, was less expensive than the XPS Gen 2, and I could have had an ADDITIONAL $500.00 toward its purchase, if I went with the Toshiba. Even with all of those factors though, I felt (and still do by the way) that the XPS Gen 2 was the better buy!

Now since the M170 is actually a better machine than my XPS Gen 2, to me at least, the choice is clear.

However!!! And this is important. I am an avid gamer. The RAID setup obviously gives the Quosmio an edge for many things, and I believe the processor is a little faster as well. However, anything that requires state of the art grapchics processing will show, in my opinion, that the M170 and the XPS Gen 2 are leaps and bounds ahead of anything that Toshiba can put out, Qosmio included.

The M170 is built far better and has a graphics card the qosmio cannot compare too. The qosmio only has an ati x700 card and also the finish on the qosmio is very prone to finger prints and looks bad and cheap. Another problem with the qosmio is that it has a "slot in" optical drive, like in cars, you pop the disk at the front and it slides in, well these "slot in" drives scratch the hell out of your optical disks and is NOT a good option to have on ANY computer. Qosmio holds promise for the future, the speakers are nice, but the fore mentioned problems outweigh any advantage to those speakers for sure!!!

For the purposes mentioned, I would look at a Sony, Fujitsu, Dell 9300 instead. You don't need any graphical power for your needs. The Qosmio has a very poor price/performance ratio, and you can get the same performance for half the price. If you want to spend $3000 for what you're proposing, get a 17" Powerbook then.