Laptop Questions

So I am looking to buy a Laptop that I can play WOW on. That will be the only gaming I do on it. I have been looking on Newegg.com and found these 2 that I am liking so far. Any opinions or other tips from people who use laptops to game on would be appreciated. The price factor isn't that big of a deal (with in reason) so if you have other suggestions, feel free.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productco ... 2D230%2DTS

Thanks for any help in advance.

Personally speaking, neither is a brand name that I trust...both have a reputation to me of cheap components that don't stand up over time. My last direct experience with either company was like 10 years ago though, so maybe they're gotten their act together in the interim.

Well after comparing them, the only real difference is the processor. The Gateway has an Mobil Intel i5-450M (2.4 GHz) compared to the Acer that has a Mobile AMD Phenom II N830, Triple Core (2.1 GHz).

As stated by Dorvan, Gateway seems to be the brand name I have heard the most bad about. Acer seems like its a hit or miss.

Decisions decisions.

Laptop gaming. Really? ewww.

Obviously if you want the laptop for other purposes then fair enough but a desktop is so much better for games.

Spec wise either will run WoW pefectly fine. Would go for Acer myself over Gateway.

I agree with you on the laptop gaming, but basically I am going to be taking it to work and playing on a Clear connection (WIMAX). http://www.clear.com/
I will be getting a gaming mouse and probably a keyboard as well. I am kinda leaning towards the ACER myself. I think the Gateway name is really the thing thats scaring me the most lol.

Alright, choice made and ordered. Acer it is.

Punkss2 wrote:Alright, choice made and ordered. Acer it is.

Just saw this thread.

A buddy of mine was a assistant manager at a CompUSA from about 1998 - 2005.

Of all their laptops sold, the Acer laptops had the lowest rate of return for repair of any brand name.

I don't know if their quality is still that good; but it has a history of being excellent.

Good luck on your choice.

Cheers,

Thanks Sherck, that does give me peace of mind. Let's hope it's all good!!

I game on a Sony Vaio laptop. I love it more than a desktop.

I've had more issues with my acer than with any other computer I've had. Luckily I got the warranty, because I've had to send it back to acer at least once or twice per year over the length of the warranty due to random issues that have cropped up. And once it was returned to me without the issue in question being resolved. Which is still occuring.

Arnock wrote:I've had more issues with my acer than with any other computer I've had. Luckily I got the warranty, because I've had to send it back to acer at least once or twice per year over the length of the warranty due to random issues that have cropped up. And once it was returned to me without the issue in question being resolved. Which is still occuring.

Would you mind specifying what kind of problems? I work in the IT field, so I feel pretty confident that I can work on the laptop if really needed, but if it's covered by warranty I will for sure use it.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro.

Once you go Mac, you never go back.

For christ's sake, they carve the shell out of a single ingot of aluminium....

I played for about 2 years on a high-end Mac laptop. Worked very well.

knaughty wrote:MacBook Pro.

Kind of sucks that cheapest model costs almost twice of what the OP got and the highest end at more than 3x the price still has far worse GPU and has lower CPU performance in stuff that can use more than two cores. Also, the cheaper macbooks also have smaller HDDs

For the price of a high-end macbook you could get a very good portable laptop and high-end desktop PC. Yea, not much mobile gaming but at least you get longer battery life and less weight from laptop while also getting far superior gaming performance

My wife and I have been playing on ASUS laptops (me for ~7 months now, her for fewer) and have had no issues with them so far. G72 model I believe it is. I love the thing, I just wish I could have a big monitor for more screen real estate sometimes.

hoho wrote:

knaughty wrote:MacBook Pro.

Kind of sucks that cheapest model costs almost twice of what the OP got and the highest end at more than 3x the price still has far worse GPU and has lower CPU performance in stuff that can use more than two cores. Also, the cheaper macbooks also have smaller HDDs :P

For the price of a high-end macbook you could get a very good portable laptop and high-end desktop PC. Yea, not much mobile gaming but at least you get longer battery life and less weight from laptop while also getting far superior gaming performance :)

Yeah but you'll have a shitty laptop. <_<

Sabindeus wrote:

hoho wrote:

knaughty wrote:MacBook Pro.

Kind of sucks that cheapest model costs almost twice of what the OP got and the highest end at more than 3x the price still has far worse GPU and has lower CPU performance in stuff that can use more than two cores. Also, the cheaper macbooks also have smaller HDDs

For the price of a high-end macbook you could get a very good portable laptop and high-end desktop PC. Yea, not much mobile gaming but at least you get longer battery life and less weight from laptop while also getting far superior gaming performance

Yeah but you'll have a shitty laptop. <_<

At the moment it's not worth it, apple needs to update their specs on their laptops and then it probably will be again. I love my MacBook Pro and often recommend them (though they do have heat problems with gaming), but right now the specs are too far off to justify the cost.

For desktops I build my own, and having control of all the parts means I can build a high quality product for a pretty low cost. With laptops you are stuck with vendor chosen parts, and in that regard Apple is about the only vendor I trust to use quality parts across the board.

Punkss2 wrote:

Arnock wrote:I've had more issues with my acer than with any other computer I've had. Luckily I got the warranty, because I've had to send it back to acer at least once or twice per year over the length of the warranty due to random issues that have cropped up. And once it was returned to me without the issue in question being resolved. Which is still occuring.

Would you mind specifying what kind of problems? I work in the IT field, so I feel pretty confident that I can work on the laptop if really needed, but if it's covered by warranty I will for sure use it.

Thanks!

It's been awhile, but IIRC, hard drive failure, monitor failure, and I think the motherboard and CPU went bad too.

The current issue is kinda hard to describe. With no obvious trigger, the computer seems to randomly switch to what appears to be a 256 color pallet and everything winds up looking as if someone slipped some shrooms into my CD drive.

Fridmarr wrote:At the moment it's not worth it, apple needs to update their specs on their laptops and then it probably will be again. I love my MacBook Pro and often recommend them (though they do have heat problems with gaming), but right now the specs are too far off to justify the cost.

For desktops I build my own, and having control of all the parts means I can build a high quality product for a pretty low cost. With laptops you are stuck with vendor chosen parts, and in that regard Apple is about the only vendor I trust to use quality parts across the board.

Well that's definitely true, Apple spec updates are very cyclical. You have periods where everything is top of the line or close to it, and then periods when everything is out of date until they update again.

Sabindeus wrote:

Fridmarr wrote:At the moment it's not worth it, apple needs to update their specs on their laptops and then it probably will be again. I love my MacBook Pro and often recommend them (though they do have heat problems with gaming), but right now the specs are too far off to justify the cost.

For desktops I build my own, and having control of all the parts means I can build a high quality product for a pretty low cost. With laptops you are stuck with vendor chosen parts, and in that regard Apple is about the only vendor I trust to use quality parts across the board.

Well that's definitely true, Apple spec updates are very cyclical. You have periods where everything is top of the line or close to it, and then periods when everything is out of date until they update again.

I really wish they'd create a line that backs off a bit on the display and for the cost tops out the processor and goes to SSD or something. Don't get me wrong, their displays are great, but I think it is actually pretty rare to get the ROI on the difference because that's such an expensive upgrade built in. I'm sitting here with a browser up and Eclipse plus a VM or two running. I don't take advantage of that display at all, but man some SSD/Ram/CPU would be a big help.

Now I can appreciate the display when I fire up WoW or something, but it wouldn't be my particular priority.

Fridmarr wrote:

Sabindeus wrote:

Fridmarr wrote:At the moment it's not worth it, apple needs to update their specs on their laptops and then it probably will be again. I love my MacBook Pro and often recommend them (though they do have heat problems with gaming), but right now the specs are too far off to justify the cost.

For desktops I build my own, and having control of all the parts means I can build a high quality product for a pretty low cost. With laptops you are stuck with vendor chosen parts, and in that regard Apple is about the only vendor I trust to use quality parts across the board.

Well that's definitely true, Apple spec updates are very cyclical. You have periods where everything is top of the line or close to it, and then periods when everything is out of date until they update again.

I really wish they'd create a line that backs off a bit on the display and for the cost tops out the processor and goes to SSD or something. Don't get me wrong, their displays are great, but I think it is actually pretty rare to get the ROI on the difference because that's such an expensive upgrade built in. I'm sitting here with a browser up and Eclipse plus a VM or two running. I don't take advantage of that display at all, but man some SSD/Ram/CPU would be a big help.

Now I can appreciate the display when I fire up WoW or something, but it wouldn't be my particular priority.

well you can always shove an SSD and more RAM in yourself. My boss has a unibody from 2009 with an SSD in it and it is blazing ridiculous. Like I watched him restore a mysql db from a dump once and I was like "jesus christ you didn't even have to WAIT". Sort of sad that there's only the 2 SO-DIMM slots though. I would definitely go for a 3rd. Though I am spoiled by my 12 GBs in my Mac Pro.

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