What is a good gaming/school notebook?

The 8600 is a great machine will all the right pieces (great screen as long as you don't get the Hitachi WXGA+, 7200 rpm hard drive, 333 MHz RAM), except for the touchpad, which is the device you use ALL the time. I found it extermely frustrating to use compared to the touchpad on my old Inspiron and returned it.

If the touchpad performance is not important to you, the 8600 is a good choice. I didn't find it to be too big or heavy at all. Otherwise, take a look at the HP nc8000, IBM T41p or R50p. Of course the IBM's are pricey, but are lighter for carrying around at school. You should be able to get a 10% student discount on the HP. There are many other machines that others will recommend that I have nothing against, I just don't know them as well (Sager, Asus, VooDoo, iBuyPower, etc.).

I would not recommend a Dell 8600. When equipped with ATI 9600 graphics, the 8600 gets so hot in operation that it can't be used on your lap and sometimes crashes. The trackpoint buttons on the 8600 are very hard to press and often unusable. The keyboard is mushy on one side. The case creaks and flexes. Finally, Dell has outsourced their consumer technical support to a group of people in India who are neither technically competent nor fluent in English.

If you have ATI 9600 graphics, it is not necessary to have 128MB of video RAM to get good gaming performance. 64MB works nearly as well especially if you do not have an ultra-high resolution screen.

I recommend the Gateway M505. It is very solidly built by Wistron, the same company that manufactures the highly rated X- and R-series ThinkPads for IBM. Gateway M505 reviews and comments are here.

Yeah - I gotta kinda agree with BargainSeeker - you really don't need 128 meg of video memory - most games are going to play just fine on a strong 64 meg card. Sure there are always going to be concerns with your gear becoming obsolete - but that's simply the price paid for trying to keep up with the gaming industry.

As spendy as the few systems are that pack 128 vid-mem gpu's I'd look instead at something light and fast that has a strong 64 meg card.

A number of folks have been getting deals on eBay for IBM T40p's with 1.6 Pentium M's and 64 meg FireGL 9000's. Usually around 1800.00 or so. Also - Acer has that new Ferrari based laptop with AMD CPU and 128 meg ATI 9200 for around 1800. Both are thin, light, and should be plenty fast.

I know a couple folks with Dell 8600's and while I personally think they're pretty nice - they're also pretty *big* - and might be a bit more than you're wanting to lug from class to class. Still - you're mileage may vary there - what's too much for some is just fine for others.

Shop around for a bit and see what you find. If you're really set on buying a system with a 128 video card - maybe best to wait for the next round of high speed mobile GPU's to start hitting - then the 128 systems are sure to be more available and thus - much cheaper.

While these may be good notebooks, both have graphics based on the previous generation ATI M9 GPU. The M9 will have roughly half of the gaming performance of an M10 (ATI 9600) on current games and roughly a third of the gaming performance on directX version 9 games. Personally, I would not recommend them to a gamer when good quality notebooks that offer ATI 9600 graphics are available for the same price or less.

$$$

Yeah - M10 based systems are going to be a lot faster - but from what I (thought) was implied - was that he was looking for something that might fit various bills (gaming/school/not a boat anchor) equally well.

The M9 based systems are going to play games just fine for a good bit longer - they're just not going to make the frame-rate freaks raise an eye-brow any more.

It's all relative - in 10 months the M10 series GPU's are going to be yesterday's cheese too. So best to find a balance for the $$

Right?

Ohh...follow-up - now that I think of it - can you point me to some of those 64 meg M10 based systems? I guess I just haven't seen any.

Some Centrino/M10 notebooks

Some Centrino/M10 notebooks:

Asus M6N
Gateway M505X/L
Elitegroup G556/Voodoo m:460
Dell I8600
AOpen 1557G/ABS zForce F2

How do you get that? Am I missing something?

How do I go about buying a Asus M6N? I seen no way of ordering one from their site.

Thanks,

Asus only sell to distributors and OEM's. Simply point your browser to: stipc.com or starpcs.net. They are two of Asus' resellers that are currently offering the M6N. If you are patient you can wait for escstore to offer this model. ESC Tech will sell it for a lot less.

So these Asus notebooks aren't actually marked Asus on the notebooks?

I thought the Dell 8600 was a 128 9600 Pro only?

They are supplied with the asus brand on it, but also sold under other brands. With the asus brand you can configure them before buying, if your dealer allows it.

This post has a link to where you can get a student discount:
http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?p=130180

Forgive me if "school" is not "college" ... I believe the discount on this page is for college students.

Thanks Flyer... Too bad that I ordered my nc6000 last friday, without 10% discount of course...

So where can I buy a self configured Asus branded one?

stipc.com allows you to customize several models from Asus' line.