Help me pick a new laptop

[nico]

My four year old Vaio is on its last legs, so I've all of a sudden found myself in the market for a new laptop. 

I don't need to carry my laptop around as much as I used to, so I'm looking at computers a little bigger, say <16". I don't have a lot of absolute needs other than an HDMI out, but I'd like a firewire port, bluetooth, and to be able to play most games. I also want something that won't be outdated in a year, so I figure wireless N and spending a little more on a better CPU and GPU would be worthwhile. So far, I'm leaning toward the Dell Studio XPS 16 and am kinda torn between the two configurations on the right side of this page: http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/laptop-studio-xps-16/pd.aspx?refid=laptop-studio-xps-16&s=dhs&cs=19

The main differences are the Core 2 Duo P8700 (2.53Ghz), Radeon 3670, and 1600x900 screen vs. i7 720QM (1.6Ghz, 2.8Ghz "turbo mode," 4 cores), Radeon 4670, and a 1920x1080 screen. Both are available with a 1920x1080 RGB LED for a few hundred more, but that seems like overkill for a laptop.

I'd like to keep it under $1500, and fwiw one of the selling points of the Dells is the 12 month, no interest financing they have going on (I'll be graduating from dental school this coming may, so $50/month until then is a lot easier than spending $1500 right now).

I know either of the configurations I mentioned would be fine for now, but if I can spend a few hundred now to give the computer more longevity later, that's fine. I bought my last laptop right when dual core processors were coming out and seemed completely ridiculous for a laptop, so I understand that what seems like overkill will probably be run of the mill before too long. I'm looking for some perspective from people who pay more attention to this stuff than I do. Mainly, I'm wondering if the better GPU and i7 processor are worth the ~$250 extra, or should I put the money into other parts of the computer (SSDs seem to be popular now, but the cost/benefit ratio doesn't seem all that great). Any other recommendations are welcome of course.

[Jamisjockey]

Let me just say I've got 4 dell machines right now.
Biggest plus to Dells is that they are  highly customizable from the factory, don't come with alot of crappy software you end up never using or just deleting (have you ever seen the number of junk games that come on an HP or Compaq??), and you can order it with XP!!!!!!!!!!!!
Check out the Dell outlet deals, too. 

[nico]

XP seems like a nice perk, but is it worth $150 extra when you can get the free Windows 7 upgrade?  It actually looks like the ship date wouldn't be until after Windows 7 is out, so I might try to get it installed from the beginning.

[Jamisjockey]

I don't remember paying that much, but 3 of the 4 machines I have were from the Outlet and already had XP.  Only one, my wife's laptop, was ordered 'custom' with it.

[nico]

I guess my question should have been is it worth it to get XP when Windows 7 is right around the corner.  Dealing with Vista for a week or two seems like it wouldn't be that big of a deal. 

[Jamisjockey]

I've avoided vista like the disease it is.  And I wouldn't trust a brand new MS OS until it's been out for at least a few months...but that's just me....
 

[nico]

I am still up in the air on the OS, but any thoughts on the hardware?  Like I said, the i7 seems like overkill for a laptop, but if the 32nm CPU is as big of a change as single core to dual core is, it seems like the money would be well spent, since I can't really wait for a 32nm CPU.

[Marnoot]

I've been using 7 for several months. It's really what Vista should have been. The UAC is no longer annoying, performance is a lot better, and stability is good.

[Ben]

I'd save the $150 and live with Vista for a couple of weeks (or waiting a couple of weeks). I hate Vista and only use XP, but win7 has been getting pretty darn good reviews in the beta. I actually need to replace my desktop, and am going straight to 7.

[Sindawe]

My advice.  Pick another chassis design.  I've had four of these units come through my workplace.  One shipped from the factory with a dead optical drive and all have had heat issues, two are really unstable boxes better suited for use as paperweights since they are too light to use as boat anchors.  You are going to be stuck with Vista, since XP is not offered unless you pay Dell $$$ to put the drivers for "most" of the parts on it.  Dell does not (or did not three months ago) make XP drivers available to the general public.  The machine that was down graded to XP still experienced its stability issues to the point that the end user finally said "Forget it, replace the machine with a Thinkpad".

How long do you intend for this machine to be your primary PC?  If more than 18 months, go for the i7 CPU.  The Alienware M15x may be a better option for you. The base model is right at your price point, and it still a Dell.

http://www.dell.com/us/en/home/notebooks/alienware-m15x/pd.aspx?refid=alienware-m15x&s=dhs&cs=19&~oid=us~en~29~alienware-m15x-anav1~~

[roo_ster]

I have had poor luck with consumer lappies (of which the XPS is one) and much better luck with business lappies.

Actually, it isn;t luck, it is build quality. 

[nico]

I've pretty much decided to go with the i7 cpu, since I would like comp to last a while.  The heat of the XPS systems is one of the biggest drawbacks, but I've read that undervolting and using Artic Silver can make a big difference.  I figured the chassis wouldn't be too bad otherwise based on the reviews I've read.  It's supposed to be more robust than the regular Studio line.

The Alienware sounds nice except for the weight at 9lbs.  I won't be carrying it around daily, but I will be carrying it.  My mom has a 9lb laptop and it's just more weight than I want to lug around.  The 6.5lbs of the Studio XPS 16 seemed reasonable.  

When you say business laptops, that's the Latitude and Vostro lines right?   

[roo_ster]

Pretty much any of the laptops you get when you go through the small/med/large business portal of the vendor's website.

I am not a Dell partisan.  I used to be, but Dell's lappies are not quite what they used to be and the others have gotten better.  Specifically HP's business-class lappies are much improved.  IBM/Lenovo is still tops, though, IMO.

They are just plain more robust and usually cheaper to work on, due to parts commonality.

Good luck.

[nico]

Pretty much any of the laptops you get when you go through the small/med/large business portal of the vendor's website.

the reason I asked is Dell sells the Mini, Inspiron, Studio, and Studio XPS through the consumer and business sites.  The Latitude and Vostro are only listed on the business side, but don't have the customization and seem to have lower specs than the comparably priced XPS.

[nico]

I'm really leaning toward buying the XPS 16 with the i7 chip tonight.  I know it's not perfect, but between the discount Dell has going on now and the 12 months no interest financing, it seems like it would suit my needs and wants pretty well. 

What do you guys think about the accidental damage warranty?  I had one through CompUSA on my current laptop, but they went out of business before I got anything out of it.  That said, the "I forgot my laptop on my car roof for 25 miles and they replaced it no problem" anecdotes make me wonder. 

[roo_ster]

Buddy of mine is an IS/IT manager.  He's a Dell man who buys business-class laptops and always gets 3 year "talk with an American" support and 3 year "I dropped it from a ladder into the toilet" accidental damage coverage.

Neither is cheap, but his users' down-time is too costly to fiddle around.

[nico]

well i didn't end up buying after all.  I did talk to a guy in India about the options and why the specs of the i7 changed (now you can only get it with a Blu Ray drive) as I was shopping.  He didn't have an answer for that, but agreed that the i7 is overkill.  I also looked around on the forums at notebookreview.com and found a thread where a guy had a seemingly well reasoned argument in favor of the Core 2 Duo. 

His point was that the i7 chip will likely run hotter and have poorer battery life compared to the Core 2 Duo (higher wattage), and that the number of programs out there that can take advantage of the i7's hyperthreading is pretty low.  By the time such software becomes common enough to justify the i7 (he figured no less than a year), the i7's price will be significantly lower and its replacement will probably be on the market. 

All of this had me relatively convinced until I compared the prices of the Core 2 Duo and i7 builds that I was looking at.  An 8700 (2.53Ghz) with an 8x CD/DVDrw drive, and 4gigs of 1033mhz ram would only be $125 cheaper than an i7 7200 (1.6Ghz with 2.8Ghz turbo mode) with a Blu Ray Drive and 4 gigs of 1300mhz ram, so I'm back to being on the fence.

Somebody push me one way or the other (or show me a company that has good computers with a financing deal like the Dell)

[Gewehr98]

poorer battery life compared to the Core 2 Duo (higher wattage), and that the number of programs out there that can take advantage of the i7's hyperthreading is pretty low.

Say what?

Core 2 Duo is a dual-CPU chip.   Hyperthreaded chips also appear to the operating system as two separate processors.  While certain software packages may not run multiple threads, most X86 operating systems to include Windoze and Linux will still see both, and load balance accordingly.  I run two Xeon chips that are each hyperthreaded, and it's seen as 4 processors, not unlike a pair of Core 2 Duos or a single Quad Core as far as the OS is concerned. 

IOW, your forum "tech" at notebookreview.com didn't do his homework. Apps that are multi-threaded will take advantage of multiple CPUs, Core2Duos, Hyperthreaded CPUs, Quad-Cores, etc.  The i7 is no different than the Core 2 Duo in that respect, and is totally transparent to either the OS or applications. 

[nico]

Say what?

Core 2 Duo is a dual-CPU chip.   Hyperthreaded chips also appear to the operating system as two separate processors.  While certain software packages may not run multiple threads, most X86 operating systems to include Windoze and Linux will still see both, and load balance accordingly.  I run two Xeon chips that are each hyperthreaded, and it's seen as 4 processors, not unlike a pair of Core 2 Duos or a single Quad Core as far as the OS is concerned. 

IOW, your forum "tech" at notebookreview.com didn't do his homework. Apps that are multi-threaded will take advantage of multiple CPUs, Core2Duos, Hyperthreaded CPUs, Quad-Cores, etc.  The i7 is no different than the Core 2 Duo in that respect, and is totally transparent to either the OS or applications. 

definitely not a "tech," just some guy who seemed knowledgeable in other threads.  Noone questioned his point and I haven't done enough research about this stuff to call bs.  He was saying that aside from 3d imaging/video software, most of what's out there wouldn't take advantage of the extra processing power of the i7.  I'll try to find the thread.

So, for $125, is the BD drive and i7 a no brainer?

ETA: here is the thread.  Here are the full quotes:

The truth about the i7 CPU's might actually be better for battery life. Total power draw for them is higher, but that is assuming they are being stressed to 100%. For the average user, this is rarely the case. Whenever the CPU is not stressed to 100%, the i7 has speedstep technology which allows the CPU to idle non-used cores and save battery life. Furthermore, it also has turbo boost, which allows the cores to speed up their clockspeed when the CPU isn't stressed to 100% (up to 2.8 GHz for the 720qm).

Everyone who says the i7's are much faster than the Core 2 Duos aren't correct. In normal uses like multitasking and normal applications, the i7's wont be any faster than dual cores. Thats because the quad cores can only be taken advantage of in situations where quad-threading is supported, and the amount of programs that supports quad-threading is very small. Truth be told, there are still alot of programs that haven't even taken advantage of dual cores yet, let alone four of them. The only time you'll see a major speed increase is in high definition video transcoding (reformatting or editing an HD movie file for instance) or CPU intensive tasks. Generally, gaming is not CPU intensive, and most people get bottlenecked by a GPU far before their CPU matters. GTA IV does have a little support for multi-threading, but unless you're using a top of the line graphics setup then it won't impact your performance (because your graphics have already bottlenecked you).

So, for the normal user and average gamer, the i7 is not a major improvement. If you are a high-end user (which I doubt you are if you are asking questions here), then you will see a benefit.

Whether or not its worth it depends on which category you fall in, and how much it costs. The Core 2 Duos are plenty fast right now, and will continue to be fast for at least a few years. By that time, the i7's will be long forgotten.

For the average user while multi-tasking, that 'clock for clock increase' counts for fractions of a second. Its not a noticeable increase. Put it on the scale of an hour long task, and you can see some recognizable results (on the scale of minutes). However, like I said, the average user won't benefit from this speed increase.

Yeah, the support for quad cores will only grow... but its not going to be here in the next year. By 2011, I expect a good deal of programs to utilize multi-threading, but by next year the i7's will be seeing their replacements already. The result? By the time the i7 can be taken full advantage of, we will be talking about it in past tense, the same way we are talking about dual cores and dual-threading right now.

Also, a lot of people at notebookreview seem to be in love with the 16" 1080p RGBLED screen (which is a $250 option).  Would I really notice a difference over the base 15.4" 1600x900 LED that it comes with standard?  I haven't seen anything that really convinces me it's worthwhile.

[Gewehr98]

Whomever that was quoted from totally ignored the fact that while a given application may not be multi-threaded, having multiple cores (virtual or real) still provides a goodly amount of performance boost.

Why?

Because the OS can load balance across 2 or more cores, even when it's just one application hogging the resources.  I call it "headroom" for lack of a better term.

Case in point - say you have a First Person Shooter like BioShock running on your single-core system.  There's no doubt it needs a bit of horsepower to run, so it'll suck up as much of that CPU as it can, but it still needs some overhead for the OS, anti-virus, and whatever other background tasks you have running normally on a given system before you start the video game.

Now run that same CPU-intensive video game on a multi-CPU system.  An OS like WinXP or Linux will allocate almost the entire CPU to the application, and run the OS administrive/background tasks on the other CPU(s).  Now that game will acquire more horsepower to run vs. sharing a CPU with everything else.  That's why you'll see a performance boost across the board between a single-CPU system and multi-CPU system even if the processors are the same clock speed - the load is distributed across the extra CPU(s), allowing more CPU cycle time to be allocated to a given thread. 

So, no, you don't have to be running multi-threaded apps like Adobe Creative Suite 4, AutoCAD, or Quake 3 to take advantage of multi-CPU machines.  Even if you multitask your system with DVD-burning while watching YouTube and composing an email on Outlook, you'll cause the OS to load balance everything.  That's nice, in and of itself, and also why I've run nothing but multi-CPU systems since 1997, starting with Windows NT4 on a Tyan Tiger dual Pentium I system.   

[nico]

So, what you're saying is $125 for the i7 and BD drive (the base display is also 1680x945 vs. 1600x900 on the Core 2 Duo model fwiw) is a no brainer .  The more I think about it, the more I think I'll be more likely to wonder whether the i7 would have been worthwhile than to spend the extra money and just get it.

That actually makes a lot more sense, and is how I thought multi core processors worked before reading that other thread. 

ETA: I pulled the trigger:

Studio XPS 16
Intel CoreTM i7-720QM (1.6 - 2.8 GHz 6M/8 threads)
4GB, DDR3, 1333MHz 2 Dimm
15.6 inch Wide Screen 16:9 900p HD+ WLED LCD, W/2.0 MP, XPS 1645x980
ATI Mobility RADEON HD 4670 1GB
500GB 7200RPM Free Fall SensorSeagate Hard Drive
BluRay Combo Drive
Gigabit wifi card
9 cell LiIon battery
Bluetooth
and I got the 2 year accidental coverage. 

Total was $1481 after a $300 discount and 7% student discount, and I got the 12 month, no interest financing.
The only really bad thing is the estimated delivery isn't until November 11 :(