When my 7.5 pound laptop finally croaked, the laptop repair guy gave me some great advice-- he said to either take the new laptop in to a tech or do it yourself and have it opened up and get all of the dust blown off of the interior parts every now and then, because most laptops just don't do a good job of moving air and getting dust off of the parts. That dust becomes and insulator and eventually cooks the parts.

Which reminds me: I should probably do that. I haven't done it in almost 2 years. Yikes.

rich_f Wrote:When my 7.5 pound laptop finally croaked, the laptop repair guy gave me some great advice-- he said to either take the new laptop in to a tech or do it yourself and have it opened up and get all of the dust blown off of the interior parts every now and then, because most laptops just don't do a good job of moving air and getting dust off of the parts. That dust becomes and insulator and eventually cooks the parts.

Which reminds me: I should probably do that. I haven't done it in almost 2 years. Yikes.

Laptops are fairly customizable/expandable now, another thing that's changing. But then, PCs were never Macs. How many people over the years have treated Macs like Legos the way we have with PCs... Anyway, Notebookreview.com is the place to go for such topics.

By the way, the reason the G73JH is so quiet and cool is because the design/airflow is unique and awesome.

PS - It also has a tiny subwoofer built into it, but it's more 'cute' than useful. I guess it adds something, can't really tell. The speakers are great anyway, though I'm sticking with my preexisting surround sound for the EAS/HD stuff...

Also... death to desktops!!23~

What exactly are we classing as a "gaming laptop" - one of those horrible Alienware monstrosities or just a laptop with decent specs that can run games and other demanding applications (e.g. DAWs)?

Thurd and rich_f have a point. For the cost of the laptop you can get a comparable system with peripheral and still have cash to purchase a laptop (if you know where to shop). Or, you could get one that was better.

I've never really understood why people use laptops for gaming. What game could be so interesting that you carry around $1000+ thief bate? If it's for work, I can understand.

My bro plays TF2 on his dual core just fine. It cost him 300 or 500 on ebay. I don't remember which one.

harhol Wrote:What exactly are we classing as a "gaming laptop" - one of those horrible Alienware monstrosities or just a laptop with decent specs that can run games and other demanding applications (e.g. DAWs)?

I'm specifically referring to the Asus G73Jx models as a complete computer from scratch, with all the trimmings, at $1500-1700. Between the form factor and its quality/specs, I say that to get something comparable for a couple hundred less (tops) is a waste. I shouldn't bother preaching the notebook revolution that the G73Jxs are ushering in yet though, nor refute the lists of stripped down core PC parts folks are tossing about for ~$1000... as long as they keep producing laptops the way they did this year it'll happen without me.

Death to Desktops!!1~™

nest0r Wrote:It's not just Macbooks though, every Apple product I've used has had hard drive issues from day 1. I haven't tried the touchscreens devices yet, hoping those are better, though a Google search doesn't inspire confidence in me. At least I'm 80% sure when I get an iPod Touch it won't catch fire and halt a train: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/17/...ps_trains/

That's interesting. The thing that inspired me to get a mac after 2008 when I tossed my asus was the fact that the same day I bought it in 2005 my wife had picked up an ibook. Three years later I had gone through two hard drives, two data losses, and multiple crashes per month and hers had not crashed or lost something (or even shut down out of turn) once in three years. It seems like there's lots or random luck at play in computer buying...

welldone101 Wrote:

nest0r Wrote:It's not just Macbooks though, every Apple product I've used has had hard drive issues from day 1. I haven't tried the touchscreens devices yet, hoping those are better, though a Google search doesn't inspire confidence in me. At least I'm 80% sure when I get an iPod Touch it won't catch fire and halt a train: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/17/...ps_trains/

That's interesting. The thing that inspired me to get a mac after 2008 when I tossed my asus was the fact that the same day I bought it in 2005 my wife had picked up an ibook. Three years later I had gone through two hard drives, two data losses, and multiple crashes per month and hers had not crashed or lost something (or even shut down out of turn) once in three years. It seems like there's lots or random luck at play in computer buying...

My friend has had a macbook for around a year, and he has relatively common overheating problems. And sometimes the computer works fine, and other times it will start crashing randomly and become unusable for a couple weeks and then start working again. I've had a mid-range Asus laptop for about the same amount of time, and I've never had anything that resembles an issue. My laptop still looks and runs like it was new.

Also here's something that might be interesting on laptop reliability. Although I'm not sure how reliable the information is.

http://smidgenpc.com/2010/05/07/laptop-r...-reliable/

I dunno. I bought a laptop a few years back (premade) for about $1300 bucks. It wasn't a gaming laptop, but it was above average compared to what your normal user needs in a laptop. Worked great, but the thing was hot as hell all the time. Had to have a technician come in and take the entire thing apart to replace the heatsink after a year. Even today, it runs way hotter than it should even just idling. I'm sure the heatsink is already crap again. Fortunately I only use it in emergencies nowadays. I'm not a power mobile user, but if it came down to it. For my situation, I'd rather just carry an iPad around than a laptop anyway.

I built my first desktop about 3 months ago. Much more enjoyable experience and for what I got in the PC, it saved me so much money over current "gaming" laptops that couldn't even touch my desktop. My computer isn't a "monster' so to speak, but I probably spent about $2000 on it in the end. I still think that most people can buy a very powerful desktop and build it for $1000-1200 depending on peripherals. I spent close to 2k, but you can subtract about $750 off my total price because I bought a good big monitor, a sound card, new speakers, keyboard and a Radeon 5870 (which is overkill for most games for most average gamers atm anyway).

I might not have an i7 (have an i5 quad core), but I've read in many a place that if you're willing to spend a little extra on 3rd party cooling, the 2.7ghz can be OCed to 4.2 and still be perfectly stable. The only reason I've not bothered is cuz I'm to lazy to buy more cooling, lol.

I don't know what my point was, but I just never understood why you'd wanna do serious gaming on a laptop when you can usually get far more power and a better price on desktops. Unless you're going out all the time to LAN parties etc. you may want a laptop but *shrug*

if any form is gonna die it's gonna be laptops. desktop + tablet makes a lot of sense now.