Thoughts on the best gaming laptop?

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/gateway-p-7811fx/4505–3121_7–33201021.htm

$1500, and totally awesome

Edit: Fluther keeps making the dash a long dash for some reason, breaking the URL. It’s called the Gateway P-7811FX.

I’ve heard alienware is the laptop for gaming.

(KitchenSink, I got a “page not found” when I clicked on your link)

@La_chica: It used to be, but now it’s super expensive for no good reason. Other laptops (see above) are just as good if not better, and for a much lower price. Since Dell took over, Alienware has been failing pretty hard.

Sink… WOW that is sweet, but no SLI I guess…

i know this may seem stupid. but since you have such a high limit ($3k), why not get an apple and install windows. i remember seeing an article in wired magazine or something like that, where they said that the macbook 15 inch (at that time) was the best gaming laptop they tested, in terms of performance

@waterskier: That’s exactly the setup I have now, and I wholeheartedly advise against it. The only perk is the outstanding AppleCare/Genius Bar thing (of course, that’s only for hardware issues and OS X issues, they’ll have nothing to do with Windows). The Apple Tax is ludicrous, you can get much better performance for several hundred dollars less. Not to mention if you want a gaming laptop, then you do NOT want the MacBook’s trackpad; it’s abysmal for that purpose. Not to mention it’s hell to update the drivers; the only drivers come from Apple themselves, and you have to buy a new operating system to update the drivers, and even then they’re updates only when a new OS comes out. It’s horrible.

anyone who is looking for a gaming laptop, will not want any trackpad. no offense, but if you really call yourself a gamer, then why are you even considering the quality of any computer based on a trackpad

Trackpads really aren’t bad once you get used to them.

Hard-core gaming is the one task for which I would not look to an Apple computer first. But then, if I was hard-core gaming, not sure I’d be looking at a laptop in any case.

That said, the current morass of problems in the Windows ecosystem, XP vs. Vista, 32-bit memory limitations, limited support for PAE, and all the other cruft one has to deal with and I’d probably swear off PC-based gaming altogether.

No machine is perfect. Alienware (owned by Dell, last I checked) is optimized for games. But then you knew that. They have their problems, too. The XPS you’ve already ruled out. The Gateway mentioned above might be worthwhile, as long as Gateway stays in business long enough to support you during the life of the warranty.

BTW, re: that Apple Tax statement…

Flip side of that argument is what you have to pay to license the Windows operating system. It’s being reported that for a Dell customer to downgrade to Windows XP—an OS that was released in 2001 for cryin’ out loud—it will cost an additional $21 more than buying Apple’s Leopard Mac OS X 10.5.

And instead of “service packs” released on whim like Microsoft does, Apple provides regular “dot-release” updates and they’re free (currently 10.5.5). That’s on top of all the ad-hoc security updates released as needed.

Not to mention the fact that the Mac OS X only comes in “Ultimate” flavor and is only $129… vs. $319.95 for Microsoft’s Vista Ultimate mal-ware. Don’t forget, Vista makes your PC run slower than XP… so whichever route you go, you’re screwed.

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Re: that updated drivers for Mac OS X are “only available for major releases”...

That’s completely incorrect. Apple maintains a support site with regular driver updates. Or maybe you want some firmware updates?

yeah to go along with robmandu, i recently read that microsoft is upping the price to downgrade to xp up to $150