Advice for a new laptop

[KENTA]

True. But still, it's much better than it sounds. Also, isn't the Core limit 4 GHz?

[Mike1984]

Well, there's no defined absolute limit, but it's becoming harder and harder to increase CPU speeds further, hence parallelisation.

[In-N-Out Double-Double & Animal Fries]

Of course you can do what this one guy did and get a shitty pentium 2 and a vat of liquid nitrogen and then overclock it all the way up to 8 ghz

[Mike1984]

You have to get pretty lucky for that to work, though.

[Neir]

K, I WAS going to buy a battalion (ibuypower) but I talked to my brother who also had a desktop from them. He had a horrible experience with them and their tech support, and his motherboard died in just over a year. I'm strongly considering an Asus, but I'd like to be able to customize.

[eddyak]

I'm going through pretty much the same problem as you and DEAR GOD HOW COULD YOU STAND THE DELL?! I've had my Dell for less than two years and I hated it from the moment I got it. Dell is disgusting. Good prices, but that's all. Customer service is terrible, they don't work with anything other than exclusively Dell, and just general haaaaaate.

[Neir]

Everyone says that, but my experiences with Dell support have always been fairly good.

Right now I'm looking at powernotebooks.com and customizing an Asus G53SW-A1.

[Mike1984]

Well, the problem with Dell (and I am typing this on a Dell laptop, so...) is that they make everything Dell-specific, and then charge you three times the market price. So, if your hard drive happens to break (like mine did...), you have to pay £150 for a new one instead of £50 like you would if you were able to buy a normal one. Similarly, finding a replacement charger was nigh-on impossible.

[eddyak]

Well, the problem with Dell (and I am typing this on a Dell laptop, so...) is that they make everything Dell-specific

THIS

SO MUCH THIS

But then, that isn't limited to only Dell- Apple and Sony do it as well.

[Mike1984]

Well, I know Apple do, yes, and I hate them even more than I do Dell. I don't really own anything Sony that would be succeptible to that, though (my phone is Sony Ericsson, but I've yet to find a phone company that doesn't use its own charger etc.), and I've never seen anyone who does, so I can't be sure about them.

[In-N-Out Double-Double & Animal Fries]

most korean phones use microusb chargers

HTC, LG, Samsung etc, most of their phones, I think all of their smartphones, use microusb

though HTC is taiwanese...

[eddyak]

By Sony, I meant more the Playstation series- you can't do jack with a PSP without risking bricking it, the PS2 was extremely limited in the discs it would take (my one stopped taking some of my CDs once they had a bit of dust or minor scratches), and by their recent "LOL NO YOU CAN'T HAVE LINUX ANY MORE" I'm guessing the PS3 is just as limited.

For Apple, their iShit and Macs.

[Kotonoha]

Buying a laptop to play games on?

OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO

[Neir]

Buying a laptop which can also play some games.

[Blue]

I know you're not even looking in that direction right now, but I just wanted to say anyway that some HP laptops have heat issues. *cough cough*

Yes... heat 'issues'. Other than that though, they're apparently awesome.

[Neir]

I was actually going to investigate HP today. You have an HP, I take it?

[Blue]

I personally use a Dell, but have had 4 close friends use HP laptops that end up being a very fancy stove that does sums. Though I have heard of decent models. So just be careful when doing your research.

[In-N-Out Double-Double & Animal Fries]

I have an HP, yeah, it has some heat issues but as long as you don't decide to run heavy programs ie games on it for more than 3 hours, it should be fine

[Mcjon01]

As long as we're recommending resellers, xoticpc is pretty good. Don't know if they're better or worse than any other reseller out there, but I bought my Sager from them and the customer service was pretty great. Plus, there's an automatic 3% discount on any cash purchase, which includes paypal echecks.

Also, Sager/Clevo makes some pretty nice high-end laptops. Though, like anything else, do the research first.

[MZeroX]

I know you're not even looking in that direction right now, but I just wanted to say anyway that some HP laptops have heat issues. *cough cough*

Yes... heat 'issues'. Other than that though, they're apparently awesome.

lol yeah, "issues". roommate had an HP 4 years ago, tried to run some 3D imaging program for his engineering class. in about 20 minutes, the hard drive physically melted beyond repair. This HP was new at the time, too.