Hi everyone, Im getting my girlfriend a laptop for christmas (She needs one for school). I dont know much about them, I want to get a good one that I can also use . I dont want to spend more than 2 grand. It needs to have enough balls to play the Sims 2 (her favorite game) but enough battery life to last threw the school day would be nice to. Also to have the ability to network with the schools network and ones at home.

Do they have laptops with 1024 3200 DDR 400mhz and 9800 pros yet??


Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

Most all have 3200DDR, some have 9800s. Ones w/ 9800s are garbage as far as portability and battery life goes. There is nothing mobile about them, they are just a desktop machine in a little case. Unless you don't care about that.
The Dell XPS series has a 9800 in it, it is somethin like 3 inches thick and has "maybe" 20-30min battery life.
If you want something with a little more battery life/portability with out sacraficing much power go for a Dell Inspiron 9200. It has a true mobile proc so you will have better battery life.
If you want even more portability/battery life go for an IBM thinkpad R or T series. My thinkpad T42 is about 1 inch thick and gets around 6hrs of battery life. I can run all the latest games on it (doomIII, farcry, etc).

One tip I have for you if you feel comfortable doing it is I highly recommend buying ram for the laptop separatly. Just buy the laptop with as little ram as possible and buy 1gb of it later from a computer shop like newegg.com, it is WAY cheaper and usually better. I ordered my IBM w/ 256mb of ram and I'm glad I did, it was the most generic ram I have ever seen. IBM wanted somethin like $800 for 1gb of generic ram, I bought 1gb of corair xms sodimms off newegg for about $200.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Yeah im definetly comfortable with putting in ram afterwards, the price does tend be to ridiculously expensive, espically for dell, and the generic ram they use. Could you tell me more about your thinkpad with the 6 hours of battery life and the ability to play doom 3 etc, im extremley interested, this sounds like just the ticket to get my girl threw school and to satisfy me on road trips.

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

The only problem you will face w/ the thinkpad is the price. When I bought mine it cost me about $2700 direct from ibm but that was customized and a preorder so it was a lot more than it is now. I'll bet you could get the same thing I got for about $2400 from ibm direct and less if you get it prebuilt from a retailer. The prebuilt ones might not give you exactly what you want but they will be cheaper.
My specs uppon purchase were:
IBM ThinkPad T42
1.8ghz P4 M dothan core 2mb L2
256mb pc2700 ddr
40gb 5400 rpm hd
64MB Radeon 9600 Mobility
15" SXGA display
Thinkpad DVD/CDRW drive
Intel Pro1000 Gigabit ethernet
IBM 802.11 a/b/g wireless
Thinkpad High Capacity battery (sticks out the back a little)
WinXP pro
No extra software packages
3yr warranty

I added ram later. I'll probably put in a bigger hd too. I start to feel sick when I think about how much I've put into this thing but it is such a nice laptop I try not to think about it
I have used many laptops from many manufacturers and this has been the best in every respect. But that comes at a price as you can see.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

And that exact setup lasts 6 hours?

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT

Yup, I average about 6hrs under general use (office stuff, websurfing, etc). I usually have it plugged in if I do any gaming bec of the speedstep changing the cpu speed all the time when on battery. I haven't actually played a game till the battery goes out yet but I think I can safely say I could get at least 4hrs or more out of it playing a system intensive game. The only time I play a game on battery is when I'm bored in class or something, lol. That is about 1.5hrs of solid gaming and it might use a quarter of the battery.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Im actually liking the Dell Inspiron 9200 (Im digging the 500 dollars cheaper). It weighs a little more and probably wont last as long though, but my question is, the videocard on it, Standard: 128MB DDR ATI® MobilityTM RADEONTM 9700. Is this agp, or pci? I dont understand how laptops and the videocards work. Is the eqvuilent of a agp card on a normal computer or pci???



Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by Rx7000 on 11/04/04 10:31 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

That is an agp video card. I don't believe a 9700 pci version exists for desktop or laptop. Just like new desktops all video cards in new laptops are agp.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

Cool, thats pretty decent performance for a laptop.

Asus p4c800 Deluxe,1 Gig Mushkin PC3200 Dual Channel Level II V2,Pentium 4 3.0 512k 800fsb HT, Thermaltake Xaser III, Thermaltake Spark 7+, Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS Platinum Pro, eVGA GeForce 6800 GT