Gaming Notebooks?

What the subject says.

Basically, trying to see what way to best spend my cash towards a laptop (why do people call them notebooks these days anyway?), and I really don't know many companies with reasonable prices that actually make gaming-enabled laptops aside from Dell, and Apple's MacBook Pro line-up.

Budget is $2'800 (Canadian) here, mainly eye'ing the 2nd-tier MacBook Pro which costs me $2600 after student discount (knew I went to college for a reason...), albeit it isn't as powerful as Dell's little XPS notebook I've been eyeing from the looks of things.

With what I've seen, hard for me to decide between a nice lookin' stable Mac platform that I can bootcamp up and do some gaming on (which is still more powerful than my current dedicated gaming PC platform), or spend $600 less for a Vista Dell book that's got more oomfph than this piece of crap of mine that can barely run Crysis.....with a BluRay drive for some odd reason (I want HD-DVD to win the format war damnit)......and a screen capable of a full 1080p resolution, which is much higher than what my 17" LCD monitor hits....
(albeit I'd be worried about the native-resolution issue since most games I own aren't wide-screen friendly)

Any other reasonable brands you guys know about, or have experiences with and what not? Been wracking my brain for the last couple months figuring out which way to go, since I was primarily waiting on OSX Leopard to come out before making a decision.
(was expecting Apple to upgrade the MacBook Pro lineup when it came out, apparently they didn't)

If you want a laptop for gaming why are you considering a Mac? Surely Windows would afford you more choice of games?

That's what Boot Camp is for.

Sure, but your going to have to first spend £200 more on a mactop over a windows based one, then buy bootcamp, then buy windows. You looking at around £400/$800 for the same laptop hardware just so you can have macosx, which isn't good for games anyway.

Boot Camp comes included with Leopard, which is already included in any newly purchased Mac, and I already have a usable WinXP SP2 disc laying around for it, so the expenses are minimal for me, only difference is the price of the actual laptop for it being a mac (which I have an appeal for) vs. a dedicated PC notebook.

Well I guess then if you want MacOSx you really only have 1 choice of vender :)

All depends on the other options I see, if there's something out there that can woo me away from a MacBook Pro, something a little more appealing than that Dell XPS I linked back a bit for the right price, I may give-up and get a XP/Vista notebook instead.

Tried http://www.alienware.com/ Althought I think they were bought by dell a while a go.

Bloomin' expensive lappys at AlienWare there to get them comparable to the MacBook Pro & Dell XPS........Voodoo also has some stupidly expensive laptops, makes me worried if their battery even lasts over an hour.

I have an Alienware 7700m its a year and a half old. Its a great laptop if you are going somewhere for a while and staying there. Gaming laptops are more of Mobile Desktops, than laptops. Mine weighs around 15-20lbs with the power pack. The battery will last 45mins - an hour depending on what you are doing. The heat is ridiculous you HAVE to get a cooler, or it has to be elevated somehow. Its not uncommon for my GPU to hit 76-80C.

PROS:
Great performance in games, should have a removable video card for later upgrades.
Larger chasis than regular Laptops, allowing for 2 harddrives, and 2 dvd/vd drives.
Standard keyboard with number pad.
Wow factor, hey look that guy has an Alienware! Cool head with glowing eyes on the back

CONS:
Before Dell bought them horrible customer service HORRIBLE took 3 months initially to receive my laptop :(
Weighs 15-20 pounds
battery lasts 45-60 mins tops.
heats up quickly, and will make your wrists sweat. Need to have a cooler
Cannot use on your lap.

And an extra tip, if you do buy any gaming laptop check out RAM prices before hand. I got mine 512 ram because it was cheaper to buy more from newegg than getting it initially with the laptop.

I bought an ASUS C90S, which is a great machine. Can be upgraded pretty easily, provided you can find components for it. The downside, and you have to be really careful with this one, is that a lot of memory configurations that will work in every other laptop will not work in the C90S if you're running in power-saving mode (whenever the battery is the power source -- you cannot disable power-saving mode, either). This will result in WinXP crashing every time you boot while using a battery.

This is why I sent mine back to the folks who sold it to me, since they apparently were too stupid to use the memory ASUS specified.

They call them Notebooks rather than Laptops as they get so hot, they don't recommend using the on your lap.

I know how hot the bottom of a Macbook Pro can get playing World of Warcraft and I know I wouldn't want that resting on my thighs.

I was looking up laptops for my girlfriend, wanting her to get a macbook to pal up with my macbook pro but thinking she'd get a lot more for her money going for a pc laptop. What I found was that mainstream pc laptops were actually as expensive or even more than the macbook (when you matched up the spec).

If your GF is student, then a MacBook would be the best price / performance ratio in that size she could get at all.

If she isn't, then ASUS or if you are from USA, LG , might have something nice to offer as well.

Sony would be nice as well but it is the "Windows based" Apple when it comes to overpriced mid quality hardware like the use it in MBP as well.

Alienware is expensive trash, if you want a really good gaming laptop go here:

www.rockdirect.com

I'm speaking from experience here.

Darkheart

Oh I thought you were talking about this Boot Camp. And yeah I agree, alienware is too frickin expensive. Check here : www.newegg.com

Is it hot hot, or just uncomfortably warm? Never used a laptop in ages so I've no idea what their temperature levels are like nowadays...

On another note, is it safe to assume all laptops are energy efficient when in a normal Windows environment? I mean, I'd rather not pickup a laptop where the battery dies in the same amount of time using Excel or Unreal Tournament3.

They are HOT. As in your legs will sweat and you will have to move the laptop after a few minutes. Plus the size/weight of most of them makes it almost impossible to rest them on your thighs.

............how the heck do these higher-end laptops not have major overheating problems then?
(or have permanent hardware damage due to it)

The C90S, as an example, has a heatsink sticking out of its back that contains four fans, two for the processor and two for the video card. It runs fairly cool, oddly enough.

This article about notebook computers could be useful to you.

Quote:


Personally, I’ve been using my MacBook Pro (using BootCamp 1.3 and 1.4) for games, and experiencing good performance. BioShock, Gothic 3, Call of Jaurez and Civilization 4 have all performed well at medium to high settings (under Windows XP).

Slight derail: how is Call of Juarez?

@ Noel, re Call of Jaurez.

I enjoyed the game. It’s nothing brilliant or ground-breaking, but an interesting setting none-the-less. 7/10.

I have it resting on something rather than have it directly on my lap, a large book or a laptop cooler for preference.
It does get too hot to touch, I took it in to apple because I was concerned that it was getting too warm and the replaced the fans and logic board.
It seemed a little cooler since that, but 2 days later it was fucked and I had to get it repaired again (all free), this time they had to swap the motherboard.
Seems ok, haven't installed anything on it yet since Leopard, so I can't say if it's any better.

Anyone know of a good gaming laptop that is silent (or really quiet)
I am using a sony vaio FE21M which is silent when playing eve Bioshock, but it's getting a bit old for the newer games.

I have a MacBook, all boot-camped up with Vista. Runs Half-Life 2 very nicely. It does get ridiculously hot but that's the only thing I can fault it for. Oh, that and the fact that it doesn't have a hash key.

Don't buy Alienware - or any other type of "gaming laptop".

Me too! Mine needs to be cleaned with compressed air roughly once every month, or the 7 fans (which make more noise than you'd think - sounds like a bloody aircraft when you power it up) won't be able to cool the system down fast enough. Also the power brick is heavy enough to be used as a murder weapon.

Today I'm using a POS Dell laptop. It has a better processor, better graphics adapter and faster RAM than my Alienware. And it cost less than 1/3 of the price of my gaming laptop.

One good thing about the Alienware is it's regenerative abilities. You can spill half a liter of Sprite Zero down it, without any permanent damage...

The MacBook Pros don't come cheap, but we're talking about a professional system here and the Apple notebooks -are- the best in their league with top-of-the-line service. Make sure that you also buy it with the Protection Plan.

They also run Windows very well, and Linux.

Probably the only real alternative are Thinkpads (at least when they still came from IBM), but then you already have a plastic notebook instead of someting that even -feels- great.

Only consider Alienware-notebooks when battery life does not matter for you and you just need a mobile desktop.

If it wasn't an extra $400 I would....

Anyways, looks like I'm going with the MacBook Pro I've been eye'ing. As much as that Dell XPS has in bells and whistles, the battery life on it has to be completely useless with the specs it has (a bright 17" LCD screen with a 1920x1080 rez can't be easy on a battery...), and I at least need a good hour or two without an AC hooked up in a laptop.

On a quick note, gloss or no gloss for the MacBook screen? No bloody clue how much a difference either make.
(is the glare easily noticable on glossy for instance?)

[EDIT] Wow, there's something I completely missed out on, BlueTooth support. Out of curiosity, think it's possible to get a Wii remote working on a MacBook?
(Guitar Hero3 coming out for PC/Mac soon, now, Guitar Hero on the go would be completely awesome, use my Wii-edition guitar with it...)