I want the BEST possible laptop for college! Please give me your advice!

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=22187

I don't know why that thread isn't a sticky, but it damn well should be.

It’s really hard to tell you what the best laptop is. Everyone here probably has a favorite, and most won’t agree what the absolute best laptop is. But from what you are looking for it sounds like you options are on the Compal CL56 line of laptops. It’s a 15” Centrino with really great battery life. Me personally, I think Falcon Northwest’s Fragbook TL is the way to go. They are very expensive, but you get a great pixel police and warranty with that. Another option is the powernotebooks.com PowerPro M 5:6 if you want something a little cheaper.

I just finished my first year of college. I just bought a refurbed HP Pavillion ZE4560US for $879 shipped. I have 90 days to buy a 3 year warranty for $179. SO for under $1100 I think Its a good deal. I am a Die Hard AMD fan, I got the following specs:

AMD XP-M 2500+ (128kb L1, 512kb L2 cache) Powernow, 3DNOW, MXX
40 GB 4200 Rpm HD
512MB (2x256 PC2100 DDR)
Broadcom integrated Wireless lan 802.11g
15"TFT 1024x768 32bit color
ATI shared graphics (64MB)

I spent weeks and weeks, asking people, googling, checking forums, etc. PRICE/PERFORMANCE is what sold me on this one.

PS This is not a used laptop, these are discontinued(?) Off lease or prebuilt systems. There was not one blemish on this laptop. And it came with a brand spankin new battery. No wonder they are shipping more laptops than anybody.

I just found this site looking for benchmarking tips. Look forward to checking in with you all here.

That's pretty easy. Since money doesn't seem to be a problem, HP nc8000/nw8000 and IBM T41p/T42p are excellent choices. You may also want to consider Dell Precision M600. All with top components, of course. (Just check that IBMs have firewire connectors, all of them do not have that.)

Cheers,

Tommi

Because Hypersonic-pc is such a small company, they offer incredible service although it takes them 3-4 weeks to ship the lappy to you. The model I reccomend is the CX6 from hypersonic. You can get the 1.7GHz Pentium M (Centrino is the name for a bundle consisting of Pentium M, Intel's wireless internet card, and the 855 chipset.) The 1.7GHz shows comparable performace to 2.8GHz P4.
Next you can get the 80GB 5400rpm drive which is very fast due to the drives increased density.
Best part of the system is the ATI MR9700 128mb video card. Best card on the market for doing any game.
The system has a 15.4WXGA screen (what the hell would you want a 14" screen for. The CX6 weighs in at 6.5lbs even though it has the large screen. wow that is like carrying air!
One more thing: 4-5 hour battery life!!!!!!
Final price: around $2200.

A Cardinal? Me too!

Funny, I'm about to go to Stanford in the fall as well, and also stuck trying to find a laptop.

The advice I've heard uttered most often when people want the "BEST possible laptop" is to figure out when you ABSOLUTELY need the laptop, and buy the laptop so that you receive it then. There's always new technology coming out, so this seems to be the smartest thing to do.

If you just need it for college, you probably don't want to buy a laptop right now. I hear there's a new chipset coming out in the fall that should let the new Dothan processors shine. Also, even though money doesn't seem to be an object to you, Stanford does have a deal with... Dell? I think? to give students discounts that you may want to look into.

Lastly, did you go to Admit Weekend? If you did, where'd you room?

I'd say for top of the line performance the 8790 right now but its heavy, noisey, and big.

for something a little more mobile the 5690 is slightly smaller and lighter

both laptops however suffer from limited mobile time on battery

if you want to compromise some performance with mobility
consider

compalcl56 (also known as voodoo m:360)
acer ferrari 3200
mitac 8050 (also known as hypersonic cx-7)

those all will get you 3, 4, or even 5 hours of mobile time

as opposed to the first 2, which get you only 1 or 1.5 hours

Since money isnt an issue....IBM T41p. It will run you about 4k for top of the line configuration but you get an INCREDIBLE notebook.

My brother recently got the regular E-series (it has a 9600 with 64 mb of RAM rather than the newer 9700). I must say that it is a pretty good machine. It's reasonable to expect a 3+ hour battery life on that thing. Performance is excellent for the price. Overall, it's a good choice especially considering that they recently updated the graphics on it.

Some bad things: the speakers suck and the media buttons near the screen are just about useless (I can't figure out how to remap them).

By the way, the Battalion 101 E series uses the AOpen 1557G chassis.

According to Stanford's website, they seem to really encourage the use of Macs on campus ('tis a shame mine doesn't )

Anyhow, based on that information, I would gladly recommend you look into the purchase of a 12" Powerbook (or larger, depending on your needs).

Not only would it look spiffy in the chic Californian environment, but Mac OS X would become your new best friend

1) Where to buy?

If you are holding firm to that money isn't an issue statement I would say go with Falcon Northwest TL gaming book. Falcon Northwest is very expensive, but their service is the best...plain and simple. Their dead pixel policy is the best and included, their overnight warranty is very handy (I used to have a Falcon Northwest desktop), their customer service is great, and they are based out of Oregon...which is pretty close to California. Which you will appreciate if only get a 1 year warranty and have to ship your notebook back for repairs.

Look to spend about 3,000 at Falcon NW.

If that price scares you...I would look at powernotebooks.com. I believe their M5:6 is the same ODM as Falcon's TL gaming book...which basically translates into its the same computer. What you lose when you go with powernotebooks.com...amazing dead pixel policy, "overnight" warranty, and the paint job. However, according to the reviews you don't lose the great customer service/quality of build and you gain about 1,000 bucks in savings. I have a laptop which should be shipping next week from these guys and will be glad to let you know of what I think of the laptop.

2) Virus/hacker protection?

Well hacker protection is fairly simple because your at a college. The college should have a firewall protecting everyone on the campus network from outside attacks. However if you want security within the network you can buy a router with NAT and run your internet connection thru that or you can download some free firewalls such as Zonealarm basic.

Virus protection I recommend Panda Titanium Antivirus...it is by far the BEST AV solution out there. Norton is ok but it misses things that Panda doesn't, and is mostly popular for its corporate accomodations (which are the best).
Check them out at www.pandasoftware.com, or if you can wait until your stanford.edu email account is open you can get Panda Platinum (includes AV scanner, firewall, and spam guard I think) for free check it out.

If you are really curious about virus protection read this post over at anandtech...its really large but compares a lot virus scanners in depth and in real world test situations.

AT AV comparision thread

I would go with the Acer Ferrari 3200. It's a combination of all available features, 64-bit, thin, 6.5lbs, Radeon 9700 / 128MB, around 3 hours batterylife, Low power mobile A64, DVD+/-RW. Under $2000. Since you got the money, why not put and extra 512MB for a total of 1 GIG RAM and a 7200rpm harddrive. Then I think you would pretty much set to take on anything. If you need 4 hours + batterylife and/or don't want to carry an extra battery with you, you might wan't to re-consider though...

http://rescomp.stanford.edu/student/...s/mailing.html

There it be

It sounds like it's a toss-up between PC and Mac users on campus...they have a ton of both...though they recommend AND actively support Macs...simply awesome

Berkeley College of Music at Boston requires students to purchase Mac notebooks. I know because a friend goes there.

aanorway check your private messages.