[Antony6555]

I'm not a huge fan of dell, but my dad has get a special deal on them through his work, so it's my only option. Any recommendations on good dells for gaming? Should I go with the portable or "desktop" processor? I want it to be light enough, battery life isn't as important.
I'm considering the precision mobile workstations because I like better screens and generally higher quality of business laptops, but what do you think? I'm thinking cost should be about $1500. I'm not looking to play the most uber graphics intensive games in general, but I would like to play Starcraft 2 and WOW perhaps.
 
I could also get a mac (I could put Windows 7 on it for free because of a deal with my school), but does not seem cost-effective for gaming power.

 

[LordofDoom]

Get an Alienware M14x.  Sell the current 500GB internal hard drive and get an SSD and another 4GB RAM stick on Newegg.  That should fit within $100 of your budget.
 
If you have a deal with your school for Windows 7 it shouldn't matter whether it's Mac or PC.  Your PC should come with a recovery disk anyways and a serial number on the bottom of the laptop.  You can get an ISO to burn Windows 7 if necessary in many places.

 

[Antony6555]

Yeah I was looking at the m14x, actually seems like the best option now. Whats the advantage of SSD, better battery life? Sounds like a good plan otherwise.
Quote:

Get an Alienware M14x.  Sell the current 500GB internal hard drive and get an SSD and another 4GB RAM stick on Newegg.  That should fit within $100 of your budget.
 
If you have a deal with your school for Windows 7 it shouldn't matter whether it's Mac or PC.  Your PC should come with a recovery disk anyways and a serial number on the bottom of the laptop.  You can get an ISO to burn Windows 7 if necessary in many places.

 

 

[LordofDoom]

Quote:

Yeah I was looking at the m14x, actually seems like the best option now. Whats the advantage of SSD, better battery life? Sounds like a good plan otherwise.


 

Probably slightly.  It's more important for the lightning fast read/write speeds.  Booting for me is 22 seconds... including typing my password.
 

 

[Antony6555]

Ok that makes sense. Is it worth upgrading the processor from i7 2.0 to 2.2?
Quote:

Probably slightly.  It's more important for the lightning fast read/write speeds.  Booting for me is 22 seconds... including typing my password.
 

 

 

[LordofDoom]

No.  The only time it's worth upgrading your i7 is if you're getting a 2-series over a 1-series or upgrading to more cores (i.e. you should prefer any processor with Q at the end, it indicates quad-core; you should prefer any processor i7-2XXX, not i7-XXX).

 

[Antony6555]

Ok my final question is, is it possible to upgrade your screen with anti-glare after you buy it, or must you buy it with it? Seems to be something missing from the m14x

 

[LordofDoom]

You probably could but I doubt it'd be easy.  It's not a critical issue (i.e. not worth it in my mind) if it's going to cost you >$100.

 

[DougofTheAbaci]

Actually, there are anti-glare sheets you can buy. They became popular after MacBook Pros went glossy-only. They're usually rather cheap, easy to apply and don't degrade the image too much. At least, when compared to factory matte coatings. Glossy versus matte is going to give you less color-range and the colors are going to be muted. I'd say give yourself a full month of using the laptop glossy and see if it it still bothers you. The only time it ever really bothered me was if I was in direct, bright sunlight and most computers have much brighter screens than mine.
 
Otherwise I'd like to back up everything else LordofDoom said. Don't bother with a better processor, more RAM will always get you more performance for your money. An SSD is going to give you faster read/writes but it also uses less energy so you are going to see longer battery life. Now, that may be an extra 30 minutes of normal use but that's still pretty nice to have.
 
Damn... Too bad it has to be Dell. I would have said grab an ASUS.

 

[Scott_Tarlow]

or Clevo.... check out malibai. To be honest if u dont get a 460m GTX or higher u wont be able to play games in high resolution. 

 

[LordofDoom]

Quote:

or Clevo.... check out malibai. To be honest if u dont get a 460m GTX or higher u wont be able to play games in high resolution. 

That's not true.  I'm sitting on a 540GT and I'm doing fine playing Black Ops, which in and of its self is probably not the best coded engine.  Sure he won't be able to max most new games out, but I bet everything will play fine.