Gaming Laptop - Advice Needed

[Airwalker]

Hi guys,

This September I'm off to uni and will be buying a laptop to take with me.

Obviously it'll be used for work mostly, but I also want it to be able to run some fairly demanding games (ie, Half-Life 2, Doom 3, Far Cry etc), including up and coming games like Flight Simulator X.

I won't be buying another system for about four years at least, so it has to last me.

The best I've seen so far is one from Dell's XPS range, specs below:

Intel ® Core™ Duo Processor T2600 (2.16 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
1024MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2x512)
100GB (5,400 rpm) Hard Drive
17 inch UltraSharp™ WUXGA display with TrueLife™ Display resolution: 1920 x 1200
XPS 512MB NIVIDIA7® GeForce™ Go 7900 GTX
8X DVD+/-RW with Software (with Media)

...which would be £1,774 including VAT and P&P (I can't justify spending more than this really).

The only drawback of course is its size, but for this spec I guess that's what I should expect.

Can anyone suggest a few alternatives?

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[Airwalker]

I'll look into those, thanks

It wont run FSX at all because you will need DX10 compliantant video card for Vista (and the game too).

Other than that the spec is great

Are you sure about this?

Found this elsewhere...

"Hardware requirements for a Vista Capable PC are a modern processor with a speed of at least 800MHz, 512MB of system memory and a graphics processor that is DirectX 9 capable."

...from Microsoft themselves apparently?

 

[Airwalker]

Thanks for the suggestions.

Dell now offer their "Extreme Gaming Notebook" with the following spec for £1,599 inc VAT and P&P...

Intel ® Core™ Duo Processor T2600 (2.16 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
2048MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024) (Special Offer)
100GB (5,400 rpm) Hard Drive
17 inch UltraSharp™ WUXGA display with TrueLife™ Display resolution: 1920 x 1200
XPS 512MB NIVIDIA7® GeForce™ Go 7900 GTX
8X DVD+/-RW with Software (with Media)

...which seems like a seriously good deal to me (used to be over £2,000).

I am curious, however, to what difference a 7200rpm drive would make (would cost an additional £129 - expensive!) - as madman045 is not the first to mention this would be a wise move.

I hope to be ordering this at some point this week.

Any info would be greatly appreciated!