[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]So, I just rebooted my Dell Studio 17 laptop and never got to the BIOS post screen; I get a beep code that my manual says means "processor failure." Based on how scary hot my laptop had been getting for the entire two years since I bought it, I'm actually kind of surprised that it took this long to happen.

I like 17" laptops with 1920x1080 or higher resolution. Other priorities in descending order include not overheating, a decent processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM, a decent touchpad, dual hard drive bays, backlit keyboard, and good battery life. Weight is not an issue at all; I will always opt for a bigger battery. I want something that comes with a Windows license, which I will install Ubuntu alongside.[/font]

Budget is about $2,000. Any recommendations? If you've bought a laptop recently that didn't meet these criteria, but you loved it, who made it?

[font="arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif"]So, I just rebooted my Dell Studio 17 laptop and never got to the BIOS post screen; I get a beep code that my manual says means "processor failure." Based on how scary hot my laptop had been getting for the entire two years since I bought it, I'm actually kind of surprised that it took this long to happen.

I like 17" laptops with 1920x1080 or higher resolution. Other priorities in descending order include not overheating, a decent processor, support for up to 8GB of RAM, a decent touchpad, dual hard drive bays, backlit keyboard, and good battery life. Weight is not an issue at all; I will always opt for a bigger battery. I want something that comes with a Windows license, which I will install Ubuntu alongside.[/font]

Budget is about $2,000. Any recommendations? If you've bought a laptop recently that didn't meet these criteria, but you loved it, who made it?

I'm about to drop over $2k for a Sager notebook. The one I'm getting is a 15.6", but they have an excellent 17" model as well. You can upgrade the screen to an excellent display, and they support the GTX 485m GPU which is the best thing out there by far, but both would push you a little over $2k. The design of these laptops is excellent. They have separate compartments for the CPU & GPU and each has their own exhaust fan to keep things cooler. The 15.6" doesn't have dual hard drive bays, but I'm getting around that by using a hard drive caddy in the optical drive bay. Another nice feature is the laptops are designed to be upgradable. Sticking with the 460m GPU and later upgrading to the 485m gpu is definitely feasible and wouldn't void your warranty. Sadly no backlit keyboard

Other good large laptops include the workstation lineup from Dell and HP. You pay a premium over the consumer models, but they have much better build quality. The HP workstations have a DreamColor display which is probably the best display you can get on a laptop these days. I have the 15.6" Dell M4500 Workstation as my primary work computer and it has been great. Very solid construction and the backlit keyboard is definitely a bonus. They have a 17" as well which the owner of my company has and it has the same excellent build quality and both stay cool. Unfortunately you'll be stuck with workstation graphics cards which are quite expensive for the performance they offer.

Here is a user review of the 17" Sager: http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo-reviews-owners-lounges/553932-sager-np8170-clevo-p170hm-review-htwingnut-resident-goldfish-blub.html
Dell Workstation 17" http://www.anandtech.com/show/2957

Not to drive traffic away from GDNet, but you'll probably get much more reliable recommendations from Notebook Review. They have a forum dedicated to matching requests to laptops. http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/

Remember Clevo is the brand and there are tons of resellers other than Sager out there. I bought my Clevo from Malibal and received it last week. It's a 17" laptop and the specs and price are here. Basically the resellers build the parts together from the stock version. It runs very cold currently. I will list my heat measurements here where others have been listing their temperatures. The i7-2920XM and 485m are overkill though so you should be able to reach your budget pretty easily and still get some good power. You do need the 485m though. There's no other video card really that's worth getting in a laptop.

It doesn't have a backlit keyboard, but I don't know why you would need one. Can someone explain that? Is it just for aesthetics?

I love my new computer. I have Crysis 2 on my old laptop and will be dragging it over since I'll be transferring all my dev files. Also have you used a SSD? No turning back. Not much to hate with my new laptop. I think it's lighter than my old Dell 17" Inspiron.

It doesn't have a backlit keyboard, but I don't know why you would need one. Can someone explain that? Is it just for aesthetics?

It's useful in the dark. I know that I find it difficult to get my fingers in the right place when it's dark initially. If I'm watching videos or going on forums where I take my fingers off the
keyboard every couple minutes I could see it being useful. I prefer it to the overhead lights that I've seen in some hp laptops that light up the whole room.

Then you get stuff like the alienware backlights, which pretty much are just for aesthetics.

Remember Clevo is the brand and there are tons of resellers other than Sager out there. I bought my Clevo from Malibal and received it last week. It's a 17" laptop and the specs and price are here. Basically the resellers build the parts together from the stock version. It runs very cold currently. I will list my heat measurements here where others have been listing their temperatures. The i7-2920XM and 485m are overkill though so you should be able to reach your budget pretty easily and still get some good power. You do need the 485m though. There's no other video card really that's worth getting in a laptop.

It doesn't have a backlit keyboard, but I don't know why you would need one. Can someone explain that? Is it just for aesthetics?

I'd recommend XoticPC over Malibal, they off the updated screen which has 30% better color gamut, and is matte instead of glossy I would also argue that the 485 is the only thing worth getting. The 460m is very good for current games, and depending on your gaming habits, could be perfectly fine. There is also an ATI card coming out shortly which is comparable to a 480m but at a fraction of the cost. That being said... I'm definitely getting the 485m

I love my backlit keyboard! It's very handy for initially positioning your fingers, but it is less valuable the longer you have your laptop. It's much more handy when you're still getting used to the keys.

I'd recommend XoticPC over Malibal, they off the updated screen which has 30% better color gamut, and is matte instead of glossy

My old laptop is a matte screen which somehow made me prefer matte over glossy. It wasn't until I started looking at the differences for real that I noticed a huge visual difference. Matte screens tend to dull the colors and don't look as vibrant. This is even on modern laptops that my friends have (thought maybe that had changed). If you sit and look directly at a glossy monitor I've noticed you can't see the glare. It's especially nice if you turn off the lights when gaming. It's a personal preference, but I went glossy this time. I saw the 60% and 90% gamut and didn't see the point. I can tell you just comparing a 5 year old matte dell monitor to my new glossy it's like night and day. I've only been playing Supreme Commander 2, but it looks amazing. Actually comparing my new glossy monitor to my brother's 4 year old Dell XPS glossy laptop is a huge difference. He's still jealous.

It is hard to judge though what 30% extra color gamut is though. Pictures online don't show any visual difference. Especially since all the ones I've seen don't use a fixed camera. I did some subtractive differences of the images I saw between the 60% and 90% and they didn't show me anything other than what might be explained by jpg compression artifacts. Probably makes a difference for people that need perfect colors like graphic design people.

My old laptop is a matte screen which somehow made me prefer matte over glossy. It wasn't until I started looking at the differences for real that I noticed a huge visual difference. Matte screens tend to dull the colors and don't look as vibrant. This is even on modern laptops that my friends have (thought maybe that had changed). If you sit and look directly at a glossy monitor I've noticed you can't see the glare. It's especially nice if you turn off the lights when gaming. It's a personal preference, but I went glossy this time. I saw the 60% and 90% gamut and didn't see the point. I can tell you just comparing a 5 year old matte dell monitor to my new glossy it's like night and day. I've only been playing Supreme Commander 2, but it looks amazing. Actually comparing my new glossy monitor to my brother's 4 year old Dell XPS glossy laptop is a huge difference. He's still jealous.

It is hard to judge though what 30% extra color gamut is though. Pictures online don't show any visual difference. Especially since all the ones I've seen don't use a fixed camera. I did some subtractive differences of the images I saw between the 60% and 90% and they didn't show me anything other than what might be explained by jpg compression artifacts. Probably makes a difference for people that need perfect colors like graphic design people.

Cheap glossy screens do look better than cheep matte screens. That dull look you're referring to is often a result of crappy matte screens. My wife's lenovo has a crappy matte screen, and it looks terrible. When I got my glossy asus g51 I was blown away by how bright and crisp things looked relative to the crappy matte screen I had. Once I got my dell workstation however, there is no comparison. It's not just the glare on the glossy screen (didn't really bother me), it's the color accuracy, color range and viewing angles. If you take a look at all of the very high end laptop and desktop displays you'll see they are all matte. If glossy was truly better, why wouldn't the be used on the $3000 monitors where cost is not an issue? Glossy screens are just a way to make low quality screens pop and look decent.

Here is a comparison of the default clevo vs the 95% gamut matte screen. In the first batch of images, the 95% display is not calibrated. The last image shows it after calibration which reduces the vibrancy a bit and make the color images look more natural. http://forum.noteboo...ons-photos.html

Whether you prefer glossy or matte is definitely subjective. I don't think anyone would argue that color accuracy isn't better on matte, or that the glossy screens have higher contrast, so it really depends on what you're looking for.

Sirisian. Have you ever used your laptop actually on your lap? I'm interested in the heat on the bottom of the laptop with the hot CPU and GPU. I'm using my dell m4500 on my lap right now, and even when gaming (if you can call counter strike source gaming) it never gets more than a little warm. However when I had my Asus G51, it would burn my legs even when just editing office documents.

If glossy was truly better, why wouldn't the be used on the $3000 monitors where cost is not an issue? Glossy screens are just a way to make low quality screens pop and look decent.

The really high dollar screens are glossy. It's only been recently that people have been preferring matte screens for the anti-glare effect. That anti-glare comes at a cost though which is often a color shift.

Here is a comparison of the default clevo vs the 95% gamut matte screen. In the first batch of images, the 95% display is not calibrated. The last image shows it after calibration which reduces the vibrancy a bit and make the color images look more natural. http://forum.noteboo...ons-photos.html

Those are the poor images I was referring to. He doesn't lock his camera in place and since all monitors except like IPS screens color shift based on angle it's impossible to do a proper color difference check. (Using your own monitor to view the images of a picture taken of another monitor is a poor way to judge quality. Reminds me of my brother who said a TV that was advertised on TV looked like it had a better picture than our current TV ).

Whether you prefer glossy or matte is definitely subjective. I don't think anyone would argue that color accuracy isn't better on matte, or that the glossy screens have higher contrast, so it really depends on what you're looking for.

You mean "I don't think anyone would argue that color accuracy is better on matte" right? An identical glossy screen without counting glare will always look better than a matte. I've never seen a matte screen that doesn't ever so slightly blur or color shift in order to achieve the anti-glare properties.

Be careful with laptops! According to The Register, you can get your penis burnt by having the laptop on your lap:

The next day he noticed irritation and oedema of his penile prepuce. Furthermore, the ventral part of his scrotal skin had turned red, and there was a blister with a diameter of about 2 cm. These findings were verified when I saw the patient 1 day later. There were no signs of phimosis or balanitis. The patient recalled that, while sitting 2 days earlier with his computer on his lap, he occasionally had felt heat and a burning feeling on his lap and proximal thigh, a sensation that was relieved at least temporarily when the computer was moved slightly.

After the first 2 days, the penile and scrotal blisters broke and developed into infected wounds that caused extensive suppuration. More than a week later, the wounds were covered by dry crusts and thereafter were healing quite rapidly. No antibiotic treatment was needed.

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