What laptop?

Alright, I need a laptop.

The problem is I only want to spend around $1000. Preferably $1100 or less. I have been looking at a HP Pavilion zv6000, but I'm not sure if it is what I need. I am going to need this laptop for college; next year I will be a senior in high school. So it has gotta last atleast 5 years. I am a big gamer, so I want a laptop that is fairly decent on games. It doesn't have to be able to run games like HL2 REALLY well, but I want to be able to play most games without any software lag at a native resolution. I want a 1.6ghz processor or better. Preferably a 2ghz. I want atleast 512mb of ram. Any suggestions on the best laptop for me? I know that my pricerange makes it really hard, trust me I've done my fair share of research. 4 laptops I have been eyeballing are the HP Pavilion zv6000, Dell Inspiron 700m, Toshiba Tecra A4-S211, and the Averatec AV6130H1. Thanks in advance.

I just realized this might be a little bit off topic, but it does relate to gaming in a way as gaming is my main focus for getting a notebook.

 

I also just spotted this: http://www.jncs.com/php/notebook/index.php?id=nb-as-z71v

Anybody have any suggestions?

 

The machine you found looks pretty good for a gaming machine since it has dedicated graphics in the form of the nVidia 6600. Dell machines are pretty cheap, but I haven't seen any that have a good dedicated graphics card except for the 9300 and the XPS2 (or is it the XSP2). 5 years is a lot to ask from a budget laptop, but with luck and care you should be able to pull it off. My Inspiron is still around and I got it over 5 years ago, though it runs software like crap and can barely look at screenshots for new games.

 

Okay, here's what I've narrowed it down to:

HP Pavilion zv6000 - $999
AMD Athlon(TM) 64 3200+ (2.0GHz/512KB L2 Cache)
128MB ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M
512MB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB)
60 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive

Asus Z71V - $1165
1.6Ghz Pentium M Model 730J 533FSB 2mb Cache
128Mb nVidia Geforce Go 6600 (MEP43) PCI-Express Video
512mb (2x 256mb DDR2-533 Module)
40GB 5400rpm IDE

Pretty sure I like the Pavilion more. The graphics card is worse, but everything else has an edge on the Asus (Even the price.) What do you think?

 

well, first, just for the hell of it, and being a happy dell customer, i would like to recomend the dell 6000D. You can get a 1899 dollar system for 1149 via a 750 dollar off coupon. Now that i got that out of the way, if your set on those two models, you should check out the foum of the particular manufacturer, and look into the specific models you interested in, and read what current owners have to say about thier systems. As a side note, the video cards are not designed for gaming, but are more for other video oriented tasks, not sure on the technical details of how this is so, but the dell ati radeon x300 is a more capable gaming card. The Asus geforce 6600 is the best of em all. Pesonally i would fork over the extra 165 bucks, HPs are big and heavy, and run hotter, the pentium M is genarally the best for gaming and is equivalent to a pentim 4 2.8-3.0, and is more battery efficent a plus for laptops that are being used as laptops. Im sure the HP is still decent so if you cant scrape up the extra dough, you still get a good system.

 

I think that ASUS is the better way to go if you want to do any gaming. The x200M is pretty pathetic, especially compared to a fairly powerful GPU like the Go6600 (which will easily be 3-4 times as fast). The ASUS will be a lot more mobile as well. The 40GB hard drive might be an issue, but only if you tend to install a lot of games at once.

 

Thanks for the input. To be honest, I am suprised at what you guys have to say. But I'll think I'll take your advice and go with the Asus. I'm thinking I may buy a bigger (probably 100gb 7200rpm) external HD to use with the Asus. Thank you very much for the information. Without it I'd have probably gone with the HP.

 

BTW is it safe to overclock a Pentium M?

 

its possible
its somewhat easy
its fairly safe
its rather ridiculous, man some of you out there really underestimate the pent m's capabilities. Maybe in two years from it would be a novel idea, but it isnt neccesary at this point, for you wont notice a significant performance benefit, for there isnt any hardware that needs that much processing power. The 1.6 is fine for now, and will be for a year or so, but for the future, usally when you warrantly runs out, then you should overclock.

 

That's what I was thinking of. I'm gonna need this laptop for 5 years, so I just want to be able to expand my capabilities. Thanks for the info.

 

I think you should go wit the ZV6000, I play HL2 and CSS all the time with no problems. However it is by no means a graphic powerhouse!