Hey people, just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a good laptop that would be usefull to a student games developer

Moving to Hardware Discussion.

I couldn't be happier with my Macbook Pro.

I absolutely love my Asus W2JB (incidentally, Asus also manufactures the MacBook Pro). It's on the high-end of laptops (i.e. not cheap) but it'll run just about anything you throw at it. I've found it suitable for next-gen level development, which is pretty good for a notebook.

Asus also offers a pretty good lineup of cheaper but still high-quality machines; if you're on a budget I'd recommend looking over their offerings.

I'm happy with my Dell E1505

I'm very satisfied with my HP nx9420 T7200 version, cheap and powerful.

I have the same OP's problem.
I am on a budget $(900-1000).
I found the IBM Lenovo N100 to fit my needs... Should I get it or am I being ripped off?

Quote: Original post by arithma
I have the same OP's problem.
I am on a budget $(900-1000).
I found the IBM Lenovo N100 to fit my needs... Should I get it or am I being ripped off?

They come with different specs, which one exactly is it? Which processor, which GFX card, how much RAM? What type of monitor, resolution?

I recently got me an HP Pavilion Entertainment PC 9000 with development in mind. Retail was arount $1600 US, but I paid $1250 due to a special going at my local CompUSA. It has a Intel Core2Duo at 1.6Ghz, 2.0 Gig RAM, NVidia 7600, 160 Hard Drive space, 17 inch wide screen, 10 key onboard, and Vista Home Premium. I looked at Alienware's models, but they cost a lot due to flashy looks. The specs are good too though. For me, this Pc came out fine for development. One of my requirements was the onboard 10-key, which wasn't as easy to find as you would think.

We've had bad experiences with Toshiba and HP at work. We've had good experience with Dell and Sony. Especially the Dell XPS 1210 (for a light) and 1710 (for a desktop replacement) are good right now.

Quote: Original post by Ravuya
I couldn't be happier with my Macbook Pro.

I actually have a question about that. I'm considering a Macbook [Pro], but I need access to Windows from time to time, and might be doing some exploratory work in vanilla Linux. I'm sold on virtualization, because rebooting is inelegant. What solution do you recommend? I've read up on Parallels, but am considering waiting on VMWare Fusion - I wouldn't be buying the Macbook [Pro] until mid-April at the earliest.

Also, if anyone knows of a virtualization solution for desktop environments that is roughly equivalent to ESX Server, please let me know. It'd be ideal to be able to have all my OSes set up as guests, so I can back them up and restore fairly trivially in case of catastrophic failure.