Razer's announced their new gaming laptop, the Razer Blade (see here: gdgt.com/razer/blade/) today. They claim it's the first "true" gaming laptop -- though marketing speak aside, we know there's been numerous others in this market: Alienware, Falcon Northwest, etc.
Have you ever purchased a gaming laptop? If so, what were your reasons for purchasing this over a similarly spec'd (but cheaper) desktop? Were you happy with your purchase?
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Do you own a gaming laptop?
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dave's pick
I used to own a gaming laptop, but got tired of its weight and lack of portability. It was great for a while for gaming on the go, but I quickly realized that I was gaming at home 90% of the time and that other 10% wasn't worth sacrificing portability. So last January I sold my gaming laptop, got a gaming desktop, and finally replaced my sold laptop this summer with a new Macbook Air which does do too shabbily on the gaming front, even though it lacks a dedicated graphics card.
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dave's pick
I own a gaming laptop which serves me very well. I mostly use it for RTS game so the fact its a couple years old now seems not to matter. What does matter it that it plays Age of Empires Online with settings all on high.
My gamer tag is MajGenTreadhead if you want to add me on that game.
My gamer tag is MajGenTreadhead if you want to add me on that game.
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dave's pick
I've never purchased one and I probably never will. I don't think I need that much power on the go. I only game when I'm home, so I can use my powerful gaming rig.
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I currently have a Precision M4500 i5, 4GB ram, 1GB dedicated video. I was getting a new laptop at work and requested something with some beefiness with gaming in mind. I can run Starcraft 2 on it at medium settings and it's pretty solid. The only issue has been heat with it reaching 150F the first time I used it for gaming. Since then I bought a cooling mat that has two fans. I positioned them over the vents for the memory & video card and it now will operate at 125-130 during heavy gaming; which is still not great but way better than 150.
Edit: forgot to add why. We use laptops at work since we have multiple sites and it just kind of made sense. If someone is providing the device and I have some freedom in specs, why not?
Edit: forgot to add why. We use laptops at work since we have multiple sites and it just kind of made sense. If someone is providing the device and I have some freedom in specs, why not?
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I have a 2011 MacBook Pro, which I installed Windows 7 on with Bootcamp. It turns out to be a pretty good gaming laptop.
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No, I can't really justify buying one. I'm not a big gamer myself anyways, if I was, I would buy a gaming desktop, not a laptop.
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I don't but with Star Wars: The Old Republic coming out, I've been thinking about getting into gaming. This Razer looks sweet, but I wonder what experienced gamers think of such a system?
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I still own a Dell M1730 gaming notebook. I bought it so I could game on weekends when away from home and on vacations. Gaming was primarily WoW, Civ4, etc. The problems have been:
* No drivers from Dell for Windows 7 - even though it was less than a year old when Win7 was released
* Only was able to purchase a single GPU upgrade
* Hideously expensive
Dell are not particularly evil; but, presumably due to low overall sales (which will be true of any gaming notebook), they dropped software support as soon as they thought they could get away with it. In my case, too many drivers broke when I upgraded the machine to Windows 7, and I reverted to a backup image when replacements proved too hard to find.
I would talk a friend out of buying a gaming notebook unless they are cool dropping $3500 (extras and tax) and knowing that the notebook will start with poorer performance than desktop gaming rigs costing half as much AND the GPU is probably going to not be upgradeable (or only minimally so).
The exception? Someone who just has no way to fit a desktop system into their home or is on the road most of each week. Even then, I would recommend caution on the GPU front. Better to just go with the stock graphics card, and plan on replacing the notebook every year to 18 months. These guys will kill you with the cost of graphics card upgrades; and, to a lesser degree, with the CPU and RAM upgrade options. You probably don't want to end up with a notebook costing $4000 or more.
* No drivers from Dell for Windows 7 - even though it was less than a year old when Win7 was released
* Only was able to purchase a single GPU upgrade
* Hideously expensive
Dell are not particularly evil; but, presumably due to low overall sales (which will be true of any gaming notebook), they dropped software support as soon as they thought they could get away with it. In my case, too many drivers broke when I upgraded the machine to Windows 7, and I reverted to a backup image when replacements proved too hard to find.
I would talk a friend out of buying a gaming notebook unless they are cool dropping $3500 (extras and tax) and knowing that the notebook will start with poorer performance than desktop gaming rigs costing half as much AND the GPU is probably going to not be upgradeable (or only minimally so).
The exception? Someone who just has no way to fit a desktop system into their home or is on the road most of each week. Even then, I would recommend caution on the GPU front. Better to just go with the stock graphics card, and plan on replacing the notebook every year to 18 months. These guys will kill you with the cost of graphics card upgrades; and, to a lesser degree, with the CPU and RAM upgrade options. You probably don't want to end up with a notebook costing $4000 or more.
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I have an Allienware 11mx is a nice idea, poorly executed, mine never had sound on one speaker and now the hinges have given out and the other speaker too. I still use it with some tape over the hinges so that the screen can have a semi normal angle. I am going back to a Macbook Air next week.
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I had an Alienware m7700a desktop replacement gaming laptop at one time. It was great when it worked but after only two years of use the video card (Nvidia 7900 GTX Go) fried even with cleaning the dust out monthly. I replaced the video card with a Nvidia 7800 GTX Go video card hoping that it would generate less heat. It worked for about one year and again died. Over all I think a gaming laptop is nice to have but it has to be designed really well to allow the heat to be pulled from the internal components.
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I have an Alienware m17x. Great portable desktop. I won't call it a laptop because at over 13lbs, it is not something I want on my lap. What it is, is a portable computer. It has the full size AMD Radeon 5870 in it as well as 8 gigs of ram and Core i7 CPU. Yes, I could have built a better computer for the money, but my work bought this for me. The sound is amazing on this computer compared to other laptops I have had. The only thing I would change, would have been to upgrade to an SSD drive.
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I have the Hasee K580P Assassin.
It was under 900,000KRW so it should be just under $800
it has i7-2670qm and GT555M. It is a beast.
I put up a review because no one ever reviewed this thing.
here it is: productreview92.blogspot.com/
It was under 900,000KRW so it should be just under $800
it has i7-2670qm and GT555M. It is a beast.
I put up a review because no one ever reviewed this thing.
here it is: productreview92.blogspot.com/
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