Buy now, or buy later...

Buy now. You can't always keep up with technologies. You can wait, but why the time you got what you wanted, something new will come out. I have the 3790, and it's incredible.

The 12 cell is great. I'll get that over the 6 cell anytime.

I don't think anything special will be coming out in the light category soon.

I would recomend the ACER ferrari and some upgrades in RAM and HD especially seeing you'e budget.

I would also look at a 2.0 GHZ PM notebook also, some where a little while back someone said price cuts were coming in october of near 33% for the 2.0 GHZ iirc.

You can get what you're after for the lower end of your budget - around $2K would get you the 3790. I'd also suggest the Asus M6N not just because I have one, but also because it is lighter than the 3790, has a longer battery life, and can also take an internal second battery or second hard drive.

Cheers

Steve

Thinkpad T42p

If you're worried about compilation times, check this out:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...px?i=2129&p=11

Athlon 64 3000+ performs as well as P4 2.0Ghz for a much much smaller price. Pentium 4 lags far behind.

I would recomment Athlon 64 for Visual Studio development for best performance.

Acer ferrari is only 6.6lbs.

yeah, and my centrino is also 6.6lbs.

dani: thats a pm at 2.0 ghz, not a p4. small typo.

Well, I am going to give the answer you aren't looking for - buy when you actually need it. People in this forum and many others tend to speculate if they tell you something like "there is nothing new coming out in the next several months/year" or the other way around. Unless they are part of the developement/management team at Asus, Sony, etc. there is no way they can tell you that for sure.
So, again, revise the subject of your search.

When I bought my current laptop 2 years ago, I spent at least 6 months shopping around. I had absolutely no preference in brand, so all I looked at were the details. I wanted a gaming laptop that didn't break the bank. In the end, what made me choose Dell over the rest, (price of most was within 10%), was their warranty. The accidental damage coverage was the thing that did it for me. I travel far and often. The idea that I could get this thing fixed if I dropped it off the roof of a cab was the clincher. Except for a hard drive that went to peripheral heaven, (it took some doing but I got the HD shipped to Australia), all has been well. This poor beast played Call of Duty like a champ so I can wait for PCI-E to play Far Cry, Half Life II, and Doom III,(unless I can get out tech in Yemen to spring for an x800xt for our shop system). Everyone has their own set of criteria. All things being equal, I like the security blanket of the warrentee to compensate for me being a klutz.....and sometimes, just unlucky. Perhaps not relevant, but there's no accounting for timing. Thank you.

I know of what you speak. I love the fact that I can take my compter with me wherever I go, (even if it is a heavy pig).

It sounds like you have access to a lot of pretty decent machines. I was going to bring up the need thing, but instead, how about the "need right now", thing? I've only started looking for a new one but the only big news, (according to my techies), is PCI Express.

It's not only a video interface, but it'll be used for a lot of other stuff as well....but mostly for video. Most other things are pretty happy with firewire or usb 2.0. I assume it'll go into the desktop replacements first. If you already have a gaming capable machine at home and you don't play games when you move around, why worry about PCI-E? It seems an ATI 9700/9800 or similar Nvidia product will play anything out right now...just at smaller resolutions.

Just think carefully about, not only, what you will be doing with the laptop now, but what you might want it to do for you in the next year or two. It's a lot of cash to lay down if you're going to be kicking yourself because it's missing something in a month or two. After that, just pick your favorite brand that'll do the job for the best price.

Good luck.

however, for many people, they dont NEED a laptop, they WANT one. So the argument, "buy one when you need is" is irrelevant.

I have to disagree.....if I want something bad enough, it becomes, de facto, need.....that's good enough for me. I would have somehow struggled on with my life if I never bought it, but I like it, so there.

What I was speaking of, is future need. That's why the, "need right now", comment. It all depends on what it's for. If you're not going to want to play Half Life V with it, why wait? If you think you may want to, at least, leave the option open to do it, make do until more information comes out. Acer already has a PCI-E notebook out, (granted, bigger than you want), but the wait might not be that long to find one you wants, for the right price, or it might be. There's more news coming out every day....but it's brand new stuff....are the bugs out..?

If waiting is not an option, I'm sure you'll be pleased with something available now. I've found too many times that i can never keep up with new improvements. But knowing what you do now about other milestone improvements, what would your recommendation to one of you customers be if the next new thing, just coming out, was pci, agp, P-II, usb, sdram or acive matrix screens? My first computer was a P-1 when I could have waited a month or so for a P-II. I should have waited. My point is basically that PCI-E is going to start another whole new thing....and not just with video. Extremely fast gpu's are coming out at the same time as a format that allows for the easy user upgrade of video cards. That's worth a little wait to me....just for the potential alone. On the other hand, I wouldn't wait for my preferred AMD chip to come out in PCI-E. I'd live with Big Blue, no problem.

I've had this 8200 for over 2 years and farcry is the first game to totally bring it to it's knees. I'm glad I went as high up as I could at the time. That's a pretty good lifespan and there are tons of good games my machine will still play. For everything else, it's a real trooper....and will be for some time to come.

For tweeking, your sager option would be fabulous and, odds are, you'll get a couple of years of playing, (if you got bored with all that work, work work), out of it as well. (just in case the tweekee wants a bedtime lan party).

Useful life is one thing I definitely look at when dropping that kind of cash....on anything. I hate shopping for something I really, really want when there are so many options. I can only express my opinions and wish you the best of luck.

Ps.....an irrelevant is a large mammal with a trunk.

Ok....just one more thing....to add further options to your decision. You can always go to an SFF desktop. There are some very good units out there, portable, you can get one right now and it's upgradeable. I was very, very close to buying a Biostar instead of waiting a while to see what's up in laptop world. Put an x800xt in it and an Athlon64+, and it'll eat anything you can throw at it for years to come.

Off Topic....
I can help you out with both of these. I've got a time share that I resverve in San Francisco (I live in the SF Bay Area) and then rent it out to tourists wishing to visit.

There's also a guy I know who sells and installs Xpel /3M clear bra in the SF Bay Area. He did my 530i not too long ago.

PM me if you are interested.