Good Laptop Under $1,000.

[Leviathan]

What would be a good laptop under $1,000 &has a lot of space?

[Firocket1690]

Try this (http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np2092-custom-laptop-built-compal-jfl92-p-2347.html?wconfigure=yes)

Your description's a bit vague, but that's a good bucnh of everything in there. customize to your will.

[Blitzkommando]

Depends on how you want to use it. If you want to play 3D accelerated games, you'll need to skimp on some storage to gain a better GPU. Otherwise you could go with a model with a more powerful CPU and more drive space if you are more interested in say multimedia content management and creation. Is screen size important? Some people like smaller screens, like the 13.3" models, while others require larger such as the 15.4". Storage shouldn't be an issue as you should be able to get 160-250GB easily with $1,000. What will be more difficult is determining what the rest of the hardware should be.

[astuarlen]

Alright, here's a project: laptop for fairly intensive graphics/art work--2d, not 3d, so basically Creative Suite stuff. Will never be used for gaming. Storage is not very important, as files would be transfered to desktop box and/or external drive for longterm retention. Sound quality... well, it would be nice to plug in some headphones and listen to tunes, but I don't have keener than average hearing (just so long as it doesn't sound like the squawking I hear coming out of friends' built-in speakers--ouch). Monitor size is less important than monitor quality. I'm honestly not up on the state-of-the-teeny-LCD, but it would be important to have as little of that pesky top-to-bottom variation as possible. Very important for judging an image. I'd say 15 inches, probably, but a little smaller would be ok; don't want things to get hueg and cumbersome, though, because my arms are bitty and itty. Would prefer XP, but I bet it's all Vista all the time these days, huh? Input would be a cause for gratitude, sirs and madams.

[Blitzkommando]

I've heard great things about Asus G2S laptops. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220334 Unfortunately, that one, while cheap is rather big. I personally don't like 15.4" laptops with 1680x1050 panels because they are more difficult to read. I find the 1440x900 of my 15.4" as a good compromise as 1280x800 seems too small to me, especially for graphics work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220285 <- 1680x1050
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220279 <- 1440x900

I've also heard Sony laptops are nice, but for what you are getting they are too expensive compared to other brands. HP also tends to be written up well. But the reason I suggest Asus is because they make a lot of the other brand's laptops and they're cheaper without a compromise in capability or quality.

Just keep in mind that color accuracy is one of the areas that all laptops lack strength. If that is important you might want to get something to calibrate the colors if you don't have it already. Many laptops come out with very poor color accuracy from the factory, some exceedingly so. From what I've read the better Asus laptops don't suffer from it as much, but they still see great benefit to calibration. A calibrator could easily be a worthwhile investment if you need it for multiple monitors and are considering going into professional media work. This isn't necessarily directed at anyone in particular as it is useful for anyone who is doing such work.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Blitzkommando on 2008-05-19 12:31 ]</font>

[astuarlen]

Oooh. Thanks, those look pretty delicious--and half the cost of a comparable MacBook (which is, ridiculously, pretty much the only sort of laptop I see my supercool fellow artists toting around).
Yeah, color. I am going to have to bite the bullet and get a real calibrator pretty soon. And a fancyshmancy printer and--oy, let's not think about this.

But, yes, thank you for the recs, Blitz. Now I just need to figure out how wealthy I'm feeling. http://www.pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/icon_clown.gif

[Leviathan]

On 2008-05-19 12:31, Blitzkommando wrote:
I've heard great things about Asus G2S laptops. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220334 Unfortunately, that one, while cheap is rather big. I personally don't like 15.4" laptops with 1680x1050 panels because they are more difficult to read. I find the 1440x900 of my 15.4" as a good compromise as 1280x800 seems too small to me, especially for graphics work.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220285 <- 1680x1050
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220279 <- 1440x900

I've also heard Sony laptops are nice, but for what you are getting they are too expensive compared to other brands. HP also tends to be written up well. But the reason I suggest Asus is because they make a lot of the other brand's laptops and they're cheaper without a compromise in capability or quality.

Just keep in mind that color accuracy is one of the areas that all laptops lack strength. If that is important you might want to get something to calibrate the colors if you don't have it already. Many laptops come out with very poor color accuracy from the factory, some exceedingly so. From what I've read the better Asus laptops don't suffer from it as much, but they still see great benefit to calibration. A calibrator could easily be a worthwhile investment if you need it for multiple monitors and are considering going into professional media work. This isn't necessarily directed at anyone in particular as it is useful for anyone who is doing such work.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Blitzkommando on 2008-05-19 12:31 ]</font>


What brands do they make?

I do like HPs, they're affordable, but I'm not to sure about a Sony.

My dad had one &it caused a lot of problems.

[Blitzkommando]

Asus makes the boards for Apple (laptops), Dell, HP, and their subsidaries (Alienware, Falcon Northwest). Their boards are used by countless other custom builders. Their drivers and BIOS updates have been pretty decent and painless in my experience and their products are pretty good in quality for mainstream and top notch for their enthusiast hardware. My main gripe is their servers are located somewhere on the moon (see: Taiwan) so, while they do work, they are incredibly slow. But, that's how the vast majority of the Taiwanese manufacturers are (Abit, MSI, and DFI all suffer from lagtastic sites as well).

If you are using it for art, I strongly suggest you not pick an IBM Thinkpad. Even though they are some of the best laptops on the market, their screens are not made for precision or color accuracy as they are designed more for business oriented tasks where a good screen is superflurous. If however you just need one that will last seemingly forever with top notch build quality the only other that comes to mind is Panasonic with their Toughbooks.

My father has an ancient Sony with an Athlon XP M in it. While it still works fine, they were a bunch of morons when it came to a hard drive corruption. They simply said the drive was bad so my father, rather than pay the rather heafty fee for the new drive and all the work, just asked for it back with the drive. A reformat and we were back in business.

As for Apple's laptops, yes, I see a lot of them at college. I'd say it's a good mix 50-50 between Apples and Vista-based machines. Oddly enough I've seen maybe a total of three XP machines out of the hundreds of laptops I've seen on campus. The idea that a MacBook or MacBook Pro is any better at multimedia is purely personal taste. It will, in fact, be the opposite come CS4 which will be 64-bit on Windows only and it won't be until CS5 where Apple will get 64-bit support. As for my rather humble usage of digital imaging, I use Paint Shop Pro XII on Windows machines and just got Photoshop Elements 6 for Mac. (Because I'm a cheapskate and have a hard time justifying spending more than twice as much for Photoshop CS3 even with student discount, especially with CS4 coming) What I do need though is a better tablet for my computer. At the moment I have a choice between an ancient Wacom Graphite (Yes, before it became Graphire) from 1998 (and yes, it has full Vista 32/64 support and OSX support oddly enough) or an Aiptek that is almost as old and is even more difficult to use. I just hate how expensive those stupid Wacom tablets are, even though they are so good.

[Solstis]

Get a used Mac.

Don't be surprised if it breaks, overheats, or spontaneously dies. The only thing matching the incompetence is the great return/exchange policy.

Apple, when customer service is the best part of your experience.

[Raine_Loire]

Laguna custom made ours from http://www.ibuypower.com he said they're pretty good priced, but they're gamer focused.

Now does anyone know a good place to get an imac? The old ones, I mean, like a g3 or g4 w/e it was- the ones that came out in all those colors? I'm trying to find one for my son, but they're all really expensive or they don't ship to APOs.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Raine_Loire on 2008-05-20 01:06 ]</font>