Hello everyone. I am writing in this area cause I need a bit of advice/help. Currently, I am looking for a laptop that is good for general programming as well as being able to utilize graphics. I'm not sure which one is the best but I have heard that Alienware PC's are ideal. My price range is between 800 and 1200 dollars. If anyone has any advice, then it would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

You could put together a fairly decent Dell notebook for $1200. Any notebook which will run Vista Aero well which also has a good video card will probably do you fine. Just make sure you get at least 2gB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo with that.

This is all a matter of specs and after a point the exact numbers are irrelevant. If you want a notebook, I recommend you don't buy an Alienware simply because they are pretty much "desktop replacements". That means two things: they are big/heavy, and they have top notch performance. Since you didn't say why you wanted a notebook, I'm going to assume it is because you wanted a portable computer to use when you are traveling/away from your desktop. If this is the case, find something small and light which will accomplish your needs, as in the first paragraph.

If you were willing to pay more I'd just say get a MacBook Pro and install Vista/XP on it: duel environments for cross platform development on one of the fastest notebooks on the market in a sleek package.

Quote: Original post by MercenaryBK
I have heard that Alienware PC's are ideal. My price range is between 800 and 1200 dollars

1) Alienware computers blown chunks of ass. Yes they have elite specs. But (a) they overheat (b) they fall apart in year 2 (c) they're heavy as hell

2) with that pricerange you can't afford anything otherh than the lowest model alienware anyway


For that price you're not going to be able to get anything topline. In general, a laptop will cost about 1.5x - 2x as much as a desktop with the same specs.

Personally, I'd suggest a Thinkpad or a Dell laptop. Both are typically very reliable, have decent specs, and will get the job done.

For about $1500.00 - $1700.00 you can get a really nice widescreen, light, cool programming laptop. It won't rock the box for graphics, but in my experience getting a pimp graphics card in a laptop generally halves it's lifetime because of heat issues.

-me

I'm currently looking for a laptop for game deving too. Personally I would stay away from the dells; looking at photos of their keyboards they are missing the right hand mouse button click key (the one that brings up the right hand mouse menu where the cursor is at the moment, between alt, and control, but not the windows key :P).

Most widescreen 15.something inch screens have pretty good keyboards on them (always test before you buy but), and most 17 inch laptops have a number pad, which may or may not be of particular importance to you.


IMHO if its a laptop for programming, the most important thing is a keyboard, so try to play with them in store before you buy !