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ASUS Z71V
Good Processors Pentium M up to 2.13 GHz
1 GB of Ram if you plan to game
Good battery life 3-6 hours or 8 hours if you go dual battery (modular bay battery)
Nice graphic card striong enough for gaming, 6600go
But it might be a little too heavy at 6.5 lbs
It is a 15.4" widescreen, widescreen movies look good on wide screen lappys (I had a widescreen lappy for a day)

Dell Inspiron 9300

http://www.notebookreview.com/defaul...+Inspiron+9300

!!!

Are you me 6 months ago?

Lol... My name is Josh and I'm going to college soon and I'm looking for exactly that....



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SO I DO INVENT THE TIME MACHINE!!!

Though I love the specs of the XPS gen2 and the 71v, they are still not 64-bit cpu's whihc will make a difference in the near future. Though the shift from 32-bit to 64-bit will be years, it is starting to happen and Win XP 64 is going to be released within a few weeks.


Early next year the Pentium Ms will get a new socket and a dual-core cpu, Yonah. This may or may not be 64 bit.

So I think the best criteria would to purchase would be whether the cpu is 64 bit, the power of the gpu, and the LCD.

But what do you intedn to use the laptop for? Will it primarily be in the dorm room or will you be taking it around campus and on trips? Thaty makes a a huge difference in your decison making process. It's intended use is a very vital component of this.

Agreed with a 6200 Go. It is the best all-around, though certainly not the most powerful as you hae the vanilla 6800 GO, 6800 Ultra, and x800 above it.

Also, what you use the NB for is all important. Are you encoding, doing DCC, playing games, and doing mutiple things?

If you can hold off for a few weeks and months, therte are going to be a bunch of notebooks released soon. Waiting for the next best thing is not always the best course of action, but rather timing it right and doing your homework. You have do find techonology that is going to become a trend in your niche and has lots of headroom and future proofing.

For example, you could buy a AW Area-51m 5500 (not on sale anymore) but if you did recently, it is still a great NB but doesn't have much of a future.

The AMD Turions look really compelling. But if i were to choose one right now, it would be the Asus 71v for all-around badness.

The transistion from 32 to 64 Bit is going to take awhile, way more than 1 or 2 years. Not everyone is going to jump on the 64 Bit market, public schools arent going to start buying AMD or 64 Bit P4s in bulk anytime soon, most can barerly afford bottom of the line P4s @ 1.8 GHz. Your average joe who works 9-5 and needs a computer to e-mail is gonna care less about 64 bit computing. I would say at least 5 years MINIMUM, BARE MINIMUM before 32 Bit programs are slowed down significantly.

I think that the way to go right now is to get laptops that have Centrino technology. AMD64 Mobility seems to me to be not as practical because of battery issues. Same with P4. If the Turion can deliver the same performance as the Centrino with no sacrafices, then I will definitely go for it. But so long as the power-battery ratio stays in the Centrino favor, I'm going for Centrino.

I'm still impatient to see the power-battery ratio of the Turion, in which case if it can deliver awesome performance on AC but idle back to perform medial tasks on battery, it will be perfect.

6.5 is heavy? For a 2 year old maybe.
I gotta say, people have been talking about "must get 64" bit for nearly a year now, which is 4 years too early. At any rate, I wouldn't worry about getting one now. You won't NEED a 64 bit processor to run any software for several years. There's not even a release version of Windows for the desktop/notebook in 64 bit yet, much less the rest of the apps you use.

Rant said, I think the Dell Inspiron 9300 or iXPS2 is the ultimate notebook right now, that's not too heavy or bulky or hot. The 9300 has the best battery life with a slight sacrifice in video powa.

Sonic... you just have this way of saying things... I might jump on the XPS2!

*sigh* It's still a toss up... lol

I don't think 64bit is a problem, when it's time to switch to 64bit just pick up your old 32bit and throw it away and buy a new notebook.

Hypersonic has the AviatorMX6 with 6600 and PM.. ,lightweight, good battery life and flashy paint job.

Completely agree on the 32-bit / 64-bit thing.

Unless you are an engineering student, and you know that your school/favorite apps are going to be released in 64-bit form really soon and you need a lot of number crunching power.... then and only perhaps then does the max extra 20-25% in calculation power really mean anything.

Also, do understand that almost all 32-bit apps benchmark slower on 64-bit Windows than on 32-bit windows (this has been shown by so many benchmarks everywhere, it should be practically tattooed onto 64-bit heavy advocates foreheads.

I'm not saying 64-bit is a dodo or that you don't absolutely need it, but most people won't, at least for another 2-4 years. And 3 years in Laptop-la-la-land is a really long time, especially for a laptop that travels a lot (i.e. college student).

It's bound to break a few times and you're bound to lose your data in three years. Dual-processors and what not will be released before 64-bit apps are so common that you can really take advantage of them.

So, ask really hard: what it is that you need:

- silence (if you want to concentrate and not disturb others in a library for example)
- really long battery life time (8 hours if you really can't get to a plug near you)
- sturdiness (you are going to be transporting it a lot?)
- good screen (how much will you stare at this thing? think of your eyes)
- good keyboard (are you a touch typist? do you have to write a lot, even on the go?)
- cpu power (will you do heavy calculations, how about heaviest gaming?)
- gpu power (do you do 3d work or does heavy gaming override battery life, weight, etc?)
- any other things you can come to think of

Personally I've noticed that many of us make the same mistake when buying a new (especially first) laptop: buying by specs and buying for power.

Many times the so called "secondary" factors (weight, battery lifetime, screen/keyboard quality, quality of construction, etc) turn out to be as important or even most important.

If you really are going to live long with that laptop, then shop around, go to stores to see actualy physical units, type on them, look at the screens and try to find real world battery run time tests (manufacturer propaganda is almost always way too optimistic).

that's my two cents worth.

Best of luck with your purchase!

Edit: Too late to bite tongue, so will just delete sarcastic comment.

Given you want to be portable, the P4 and AMD laptops are out.

Gameswise, the XPS2 is the most powerful laptop around. CPUwise, anything with the equivalent 2.0 or 2.13 processor will be the same.

However, battery life isn't going to be as great with an XPS.

It depends how much GPU you need.

If an x700 is OK, then the Asus mentioned above would be ideal. You can stick a second battery in the optical bay and get 6-8 hours.

There is no earthly reason to spend megabucks on a laptop. Most of them are made by the same people anyway and just branded differently.

I'd prioritize. If gaming is most important and you think you will keep the lappie for a year or two, get one of the Dells. If, like me, you upgrade very few months, get the Asus and flog it off when something better comes out.

Or, if you have the bucks, get an XPS and flog that when it is superceded. It will be soon.

The Fujitsu M 3468 (or something) would be ideal but doesn't come out until 3rd quarter.

Next year we will have dual core Dothans. Maybe the AMD Turion won't be a huge yawn. Who knows. I haven't kept a laptop longer than six months for the past three years.


Cheers

Steve

BannedNinja

1" - 1.2" thick
15"-15.4" WSXGA-WUXGA
Pentium M 2.13+ or Turion 22w 2.0+

3DMark05: 3800+

does this exist???

Asus Z71V

Not sure about the 3DMarks, and it is 1.4" thick according to www.istnc.com, but otherwise it's a 15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050) and you can put a PM 2.13 in it.

3DMark05 in the Asus Z71v reaches about 2300 currently.

I got it running stable (Z71V) at 2280 on 3DMark05..hehehe

PLayed EQ2 on it w/o any problem.

Given the news today:

http://www.neoseeker.com/news/story/4560/

You should probably wait, Dual Core notebooks might be out in a couple of weeks.

I doubt notebook manufacturers will leapfrog that quickly on to the dual core platform and hamstring the sales of their existing models.

That being said, if you always want to wait for that next technology to come out that'll blow all the old technology away, you might as well stop shopping for a laptop.

I recommend checking out the Asus W3V if mobility is top priority... Check it out here.

I also second the recommendations of the general populace here to check out the Asus Z71V if gaming is more important...

2lb might not seem like too much, until you have to carry it everywhere you go on campus. Of course I lug my 8lb DTR around like a nub anyways and rub my shoulders everytime I get to class, so I can't really preach on that topic...

if money is no problem then i would get the hp nw8240 with everything
6.1 pound - 1.1 thin - hi res wide screen - good battery life and will blow the acer8100 away

and it has a 3 year on site warranty!