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First time poster here. I'm just looking for some insight on which laptop I'd be better off getting. I'm either going with this Acer
or this Dell
(one to the far right). I want quite a bit of space and may load the odd game on so I want a pretty decent video card. Both of these fall right around the price range i'm looking for as well. I'm just getting into the tech side of pc's so if some of you vets can give me some imput it would be greatly appreciated! :D
If you are even thinking about gaming on the Laptop then neither model is good enough for that. Neither has a graphics card that can really play games.
This model would be more what you are looking for with the Graphics card upgrade to the 7800 Go. (The standard X1400 is NOT a gaming card at all)
Inspiron 9400
If you really want to play games or are even thinking about gaming at all then maybe a Desktop machine would be a better choice if your budget is limiting you.
Sorry but there is no cheap way out when you put gaming into the picture.
I notice that the Acer has a 90 day warranty to it, while the Dell has a year. Warranties count, especially on laptops, because it can be so hard to work on them (proprietary parts, hard to get into the case, etc.).
Yeah, both of those notebooks need help in the graphics department. Go with dedicated VRAM graphics from either ATI or nVidia. The Core Duo is a nice CPU though--best notebook CPU around right now.
Funny, I was just about to post regarding my laptop, but this will possibly help your decision. I have an Acer 5672 laptop. It has the T2300 Dual Core processor, the X1400 128MB video card (uses hyper memory to look like it has 512), 100gb hard drive and 1gb ram. I am totally impressed with it. Now I do use a Vantec Lapcool2 to keep it cool and that works very well. I can play all the newer games at medium settings. Matter of fact, FEAR plays at medium settings and gets over 45fps. I am VERY impressed with that. Granted, my gaming system (in signature) plays FEAR at MAX settings with average of 58fps, however for a laptop, it is great. I bought mine from NEWEGG for $1199.00 but it is currently $1085.99 at NEWEGG. Great performance for the price. As others have stated, it is not a gaming laptop, but it can handle its own for the price. I have not found a game yet that it can not play at medium or higher settings. Most the older games can go at high settings (Battlefront, Battlefront 2, Empire at War, Doom 3)
As a little tidbit of side information, I had bought an Alienware Area-51m 7700, very much a gaming laptop, for $3500.00. It gamed great for the 28 days that it worked, but then blew up in smoke, litterally. SO after an uphill battle with Alienware, I got a full refund. With that money, I built my gaming system (in signature) and bought this laptop for less that what I paid for the Alienware. Funny, now I have a kick A$$ gaming system for home, and this awesome laptop that games well enough for when I go away from home for less than the Alienware. I love it.
Again, the Acer Aspire 5672 is not a gaming laptop, but does hold its own. One side note, it does come with alot of Acer programs and stuff that starts that you dont need. I did some cleaning on the system, cleaned out the startup using msconfig and converted the file system to NTFS and it runs much better. A little maintenance goes a long way. The only drawback is that it doesnt come with the windows disk. The hard drive has a hidden partition with the windows restore on it. Minor drawback. Again once you clean the system out, it is no big deal. I have not tried the restore, but I did burn the back up DVD's after I got done with my cleaning. Eventually I will put another copy of Windows XP Pro on it. It comes with Windows XP home. The wireless LAN works great. I disabled the bluetooth because I am not currently using it, however my bluetooth mouse did work fine.
I hope this helps some.
SJRACER
Considering that it is a laptop,
I would consider 90 days warranty as seriously lacking...
And no,
I am not a fan of Dell.
They recently required three attempts to ship out the correct laptop to a friend/client of mine.
First: Would not boot/work properly via battery. Video chip/screen questionable.
On phone for about an hour, have them agree to send replacement, wait for second phone call from them for shipping instructions... Wait about one and a half week.
Second: Wrong monitor and processor.
On phone for about 10 minutes, repeat above procedure... Wait about one week.
Third: Appears to be working so far, then again, it has only been about two weeks...
On the bright side,
My friend now has three Dell laptop bags, free of charge.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shinma
That's not the norm thankfully for most Dell customers they don't have problems like those.
I think they are now cutting back on using offshore tech support.
On second and third calls, I ended up with people in the states, not India.
Either that, or I ended up with an Indian with a southern states (Texas?) accent. :)
