zd8000?

I picked the ZD8000 over the others because of 2 reasons - price and processor. The XPS2, Alienware, and Sager are all significantly more expensive than the zd8000 and 9300. The Dell 9300 can be had for around the same price as the zd8000 but has the Pentium M chip. This is great for battery life but if it's going to be plugged in all the time, this shouldn't matter. I chose the zd8000 over the 9300 because the zd8000 has the 64 bit Intel P4s. This will allow me to see performance benefits from 64 bit programs written in the next year or two. I also do tons of video encoding and from my understanding the P4 does quite a bit better at encoding than the Pentium M. Now if you don't do any video encoding and can ignore the complaints about the 9300's LCD (light leakage/sparkles) and don't care about a 64 bit processor, then I'd definitely pick the 9300. If you're not concerned about battery life and want a beast in video encoding, pick the zd8000. I don't play many games either so the ATI X600 in the HP is sufficient for me. If you don't mind spending a gob of money and want the best gaming laptop out there, pick the XPS2. If you play a lot of games but are price concious, I'd pick the 9300.

my only complaint about the zd8000 is that my brother has had his for less than 2 months and has already had to have it serviced twice. beyond that though... when he has had it and its running, it runs like a scalded dog

I found the ATI x600 works great on my games. Plus, when you look at priceerformance ratio, you can't beat it. ***NOTE-only the 600 series of processors will run Win64, not the 500 series, so if that's important, make note of that when looking around.

This notebook is quite powerful (and power hungry). Yes, if it's plugged in, then you won't need to worry about battery life, but if you want to be more mobile, you may look into the Pentium M chip.

Sager (and for the matter, Alienware) are going to be expensive, and configured well, can get heavy. I configured a Sager and came out to $3,700 for my needs and wants. I paid $2,100 for my zd8000. Big difference. Also, the zd8000 (also the Sager/Alienware, and Gateway M680) all have a keypad onboard. A must in my computing world.

Looks are good to me. I love the way this notebook looks. The greyish-blue with silver works great. The Blue lighting is hot too (in my book). Haven't had any issues with mine. You will get your bad pc every now and then as noted in the post above, but I looked at a TON of reviews before purchasing and went with this one.



(Sorry if this seems all over the place. I'm sitting in a training class and am a little sporadic in my thoughts)

How about the 17 inch Gateway M680?

It's Pentium M with an x700, which is better than the x600, but not as good (or hot running) as the 6800go.

The HP with the Pentium 4 gets quite hot, or so I hear, but it's basically a desktop in a laptop case.

The only downsides I see to the zd8000 are the following:

-size and weight
-hotter and noisier than pentium m systems
-battery life

If those aren't a concern for you, then it should be a great system. I don't think half-life 2 will be a problem, but you might be pushing it with games that come out in the 2 or 3 years you mentioned.

I think the dell 9300 with the 6800go is also a good system and would solve the gaming issue, but whether or not you would like its screen would be hit or miss.

Are you speaking from experience scottman? On another thread two users claim their system does not have a heating problem.

http://notebookforums.com/showthread.php?t=61750

I've never owned one, but when I felt one that's been on all day at Best Buy, the area of the keyboard and mouse were very hot. But then another time at the store, I didn't notice the heat so much. The new 6xx series pentium 4's should have better power management, so it might not be as big an issue anymore. You'll see plenty of statements either way, where somebody thinks the system gets too hot and noisy, but someone else thinks its not (even in that thread you linked). But in general, pentium 4s won't run as cool as other processors and require more powerful fans. If possible, you should go check them out and try to stress one.