Deciding between two laptops

[tangomango]

http://www.buy.com/prod/asus-g71gx-rx05-laptop-intel-core-2-duo-p8700-2-53ghz-17-1-wxga-6gb/q/loc/101/212446724.html

vs

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157003

The warranty from SquareTrade is cheaper on retail products as opposed to Refurbs

Thoughts?

 

[lostandwandering]

If your main purpose is gaming and you are fine with buying a refurbished product, the the G71 from buy.com is the much better choice. It has a stronger CPU, a much better GPU and comes with more RAM.

The only two cons for the Asus G71 is that it has a low screen resolution for a 17'' unit and it's a refurb, meaning that it was return for any number of reasons, fixed if needed and put back out for sale: http://www.buy.com/retail/reconditioned.htm

 

[tangomango]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157042

The last one is a little more expensive but it has a better processor. Perhaps the price will go down for Thanksgiving/Xmas?

I've read that the G71GX can get quite hot and the battery life is poor...which makes me lean towards the HP a little bit more. Plus, like I looked up, the HP would have a longer and cheaper warranty through SquareTrade.

Now, if I did knock-off the G71GX and was deciding between the 2170us and the 2270us, basically the 2270us is $150 more. (http://www.costcentral.com/proddetai...62122/froogle/). So is it worth it to spend the extra $150 for the quad-core processor?

Thoughts?

 

[lostandwandering]

Now, if I did knock-off the G71GX and was deciding between the 2170us and the 2270us, basically the 2270us is $150 more. (http://www.costcentral.com/proddetai...62122/froogle/). So is it worth it to spend the extra $150 for the quad-core processor?

Thoughts?

The Quad is only worth it if your programs can take advantage of more than 2 cores. Since the quad has a lower clock speed, it will actually perform worse in single and dual threaded applications (applications that only use 1 or 2 CPU cores). So I guess my vote is no, it's not worth the extra $150.

If you are looking at 17'' laptops, the Dell Studio 17 would also be a good choice: http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/studio-1747/pd.aspx?refid=studio-1747&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~studio-1747-anav1~~

$1100 would get you:
Core2 P8700 (2.53ghgz)
4gb DDR3 RAM
1600x900 17.3'' screen
320gb HDD
ATI HD4650 1gb

 

[tangomango]

Thanks for your input!