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Notebook shopping!

post #1 of 21
3/2/05 at 9:54pm
Thread Starter 
Highschool is nearly over and college is a footstep away. I look at my 4 year old baby, p4 1.8 desktop. We have been through so much together: upgrades, hardware dying, new cases. I thought it would be a grand time to drop kick the desktop and move to a notebook. For the past couple weeks i have been looking for that perfect book: Good gaming, big display, ok battery life, under $2,000, good cooling... a multimedia machine! The first book i came upon was the ABS Mayhem G3. then i dug through all the reviews and articles at cnet.com and found the HP Pavilion zd8060us. When i saw the HP i about fell inlove.

So where i'm going with all this is the good ol' n()()b question "what do i do?"

-Is hp reliable?
-Do i fork out the extra $300 for the 3 year warrenty?
-What rpm does the 100 gb hard drive spin at?
-A better notebook i should be looking into?

I spent the last couple days searching for the best notebook forum and i think i found it. hopefully you all can help me with this... a lot of money and hard work is going into this machine.
Thank you
goffer
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post #2 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:08pm
Well, some prelimary questions.

Do you want widescreen? (16:10 aspect ration vs 4:3 aspect ratio)
Do you want mobility? (The two laptop you listed have the P4 and AM64, which aren't very mobile. Check out the Pentium M.)
Do you want a 15" display or 17"?
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post #3 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:09pm
in my past... HP sucks... but it seems more in the cheaper lappys.... ive heard good things about the busisness lines... by bigger do you mean 15 or 17...
check out Compal CL 56, Sager 3790, and Asus M6n for 15inch and sager 4750, 4791, or 9860 if you can afford it... might also look at the dell xps2... if you can get the 750 off coupons they put out its not bad...

Oh... and if you buy any of those lappys they are much more easily customized and you get a lappy where you know what all the parts are... HPs motherboards suck... my sister went through 7 in 2 years... and i went through 2... and i'd hop on that warrenty
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post #4 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:11pm
Thread Starter 
Yea a 17" wide screen would be nice and i know the amd 64 and p4's arent mobile at all so its not that big of a deal... are the M's any good? Well besides the obvious power saving feature.
thanks
goffer
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post #5 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:13pm
well... thats the big debate... pentiums are great... but they are about at the end of their capacity without going to the dual core... the AMDs are more the wave of the future... when windows comes out with longhorn it will show the real beauty behind the AMD 64... but until then you'll only see a difference running 64 bit in linux... for gaming... the differences are minimal... its more to do with your graphics card

And P4s suck in lappys..
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post #6 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:14pm
Pentium M's are very good. They outperform AMD64s and P4s in some areas. Dell even has the PM in it's new powerhouse: the Dell XPS2.

I think it will be difficult to find 17" notebooks that are close to top-of-the line for $2000. If you are willing to pay more, check out the XPS2 and Sager 9860.
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post #7 of 21
3/2/05 at 10:17pm
i think you can get the xps2 under 2 grand with the coupons... just wait till they come out in a week or 2
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post #8 of 21
3/2/05 at 11:25pm
Thread Starter 
I just looked into the Entry Level XPS gen 2... thats a fine lookin' machine i'll tell you what. With the $500 off coupon, shipping, and tax its $2,431.30 thats $400 off of budget when will the $750 off coupon come out? Any other recommendations? Are HP motherboards really that bad? Good thing i didnt go ahead and buy it.
Thanks
goffer
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post #9 of 21
3/2/05 at 11:35pm
well... the coupons usually come out every week or 2.... id hop on the 750 coupons when they first come out cause they usually get used up in a few days.. this batch of coupons expires on the 3rd... soo id say... sometime before the 10th they shoudl be out with more... just a guesstimate... but still... i dont konw if it was just the motherboard in this model of lappys... but both me, my sister and her friend have all had numerous problems... her hd failed 2 times... went through 7 motherboards... and just last month circuit city declared hers a lemon and she got a credit and got herself a toshiba... she got to keep her old lappy so im going transplant her working cd drive and a few other parts into mine and it should be an almost working lappy... the big problem with the HD in the HP is the etherenet port and the power port... both poorly designed and they are connected directly and when they are moved a bit they break off and the connections are terrible... a website about the power cord is http://broken.typepad.com/b/2004/03/..._laptop_p.html
i emailed them about it saying that it was abuse... but it seems the new gen pavilions have a new plug design for the power plug and the ethernet.. but oh well... its your choice, but i woudl get the warrenty...
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post #10 of 21
3/2/05 at 11:44pm
Thread Starter 
eeek... the dell is really tickling my fancy and only a couple 100 more... crap. i read a few reviews on the xps2 and all it gets is praise. It has better video card, longer battery life, lighter and faster than the HP i was gandering at. Well i get to talk to my dad about helping me out with paying for it (hoping to be a graduation gift) then i can ask good ol' grandma to help me, maybe i can pull through *crosses fingers*
thanks for all the help
goffer

**was jsut thinking, anyone know the rpm speed of the 60gb in the Entry-level XPS gen 2
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post #11 of 21
3/3/05 at 12:01am
grandmas are wonderful... im in england for 4 months studying for the semester and i get poor every few weeks from to much drinking and i just call her up and she puts more money in the bank... and then i get to go on some trips... all she wants in return are a few pictures.... gotta love the rich grandparents...

email dell about the 60 gig... id get the brand of it too... just for reference... and id wait for to see what lappys get the turion in april... im guessing you dont need it till august... and thus.... wait as long as you can before you throw 2k down on this... the price may drop... or something better might be around the corner...
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post #12 of 21
3/3/05 at 12:27am
Thread Starter 
yea i can only hope for grandma to pull through... as for the wait... i wish i could. My PC is about to die and day now. And me without a PC of any kind is bad news. I'd loose it after a few days. And august is damn far away. By august it'll probably drop a few hundred though. i dispise the PC industry!
i'll just hope for that $750 off coupon to blossum soon.
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post #13 of 21
3/3/05 at 12:35am
welll they just came out a few days ago and i almost hoped on a 700m... but opted to wait for the turions.... good luck with the coupons... just keep checking the forum section for dell coupons....
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post #14 of 21
3/3/05 at 1:30pm
Thread Starter 
I was hoping maybe the 750 off coupon would be up today but only the 10% off with the usual free shipping. Damn! the wait is killing me!
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post #15 of 21
3/3/05 at 1:53pm
haha... good luck... keep checking
http://notebookforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104
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post #16 of 21
3/3/05 at 4:37pm
The ABS Mayham G3 is the Uniwill 258 series. You could get that at other places for cheaper price if you are leading towards it because of cost and price differences between Dell

It is a solid great laptop you should seriously consider
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post #17 of 21
3/3/05 at 6:38pm
http://www.gamers-depot.com/hardware...abs/g3/001.htm
Quote:
ABS PC is one of the more prominent custom PC builders which have a knack for putting out high-end systems at prices that “Wal-Mart” the competition. Their quality has seemed high for the most part, and typically is held in high regard. Based out of Southern California, ABS are avid sponsors of LAN events like GDFest and others – and are really pro-gamer when it comes to showing support for the community. Its basic philosophy is to sell the best-possible hardware at prices that are far more affordable.

System builders like ABS have to depend on ODM companies for notebook PCs as they aren’t large enough to have their own in-house design and manufacturing facilities. It should come as no surprise then that its latest “Gaming Notebook”, the G3 doesn’t look all too different from other competitive notebooks in the marketplace. However, keep in mind that ABS does get to pick-out certain parameters of the system components and general specs. To that end, our test model of the G3 was outfitted with an Athlon64 3400+ CPU, ATI M12 GPU and enough other extra “goodies” to help it perform rather decently.

The overall design of the G3 is a wide-bodied, slim profile PC that looks great but has a good deal of weight to it – almost 8lbs in fact – not exactly the lightest notebook around, but also not quite as heavy as the likes of Dell’s XPS unit. Fit and finish are exceptional but not the best we’ve seen. There are plenty of expansion and connectivity ports and the overall presentation is rather nice.

The decision to not include a glidestick is a bummer to this reviewer as it’s my favorite form of notebook mouse control – outside of an external mouse of course. Keyboard layout is a full-sized solution but does not have a dedicated 10-key pad area.

I/O ports include 3 USB 2.0, 1 x 1394a, 1 x 10/100Mbps NIC, 1 CRT port, 1 S-Video TV out, 1 Microphone-In Jack, 1 Audio-Out Jack/SPDIF out, 1 Line-In Jack, 1 DC-In Jack, 1 FIR, 1 RJ-45 Jack, 1 RJ-11 Jack, 1 Print port, Memory Carder and MMC/SD/MS.

AMD’s Athlon 64 GPU is a formidable force to be reckoned with when it comes to game performance and the fact that it’s ready to take-on future versions of 64-bit Windows. The 3200+ runs at a clock rate of 2.2GHz, has 1MB of L2 cache and 128KB of L1 – its embedded memory controller help it to run, clock for clock, better than Intel’s solutions. Additionally, the Athlon64 also supports built-in virus protection when used with Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Mobile versions of Athlon64 have a feature called PowerNOW which performs auto-scaling of the clock speed to ensure top-battery savings and performance, regardless of the tasks you’re doing at the time. That said, we’re still very dissatisfied with batter life on the G3 – even conducting basic operations such as web-browsing and such yielded poor battery life compared to other notebooks we’ve reviewed. On average, the life expectancy we achieved as about 75minues.


hmmm decision, decision!
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post #18 of 21
3/3/05 at 8:42pm
Thread Starter 
I have my heart set on the dell as of right now but my heart was torn out when i talked to a dell representative about the XPS 2 (well about the next coupon out) He stated that the 10% we'll be gone in a week or so then it will sell for regualr price untill christmas this really sucks, should have got it yesturday when it was $500 off. Well hopefully the guy was just bullshitting *crosses fingers* Well i'm off to do more research.
goffer
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post #19 of 21
3/3/05 at 8:46pm
Well, if you work for a company that has deals with Dell, you could get an additional 20% coupon on top of it hehehe
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post #20 of 21
3/3/05 at 8:57pm
Thread Starter 
damn that would be nice, an extra $800 off... damn damn damn! i was getting all excited for the XPS 2... i guess i'll stick with HP unless you guys are certain the $750 off coupon will be out.
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