Advice please? Laptop/Vid cards

[zsche]

i've been feeling out the market for a nice laptop, with a very nice video card.

i've been under the impression most of my life that laptops are very difficult to exchange parts on so why not get the best and ride it out for a while.

anyway, i've checked out the Dell customs, and the alienware customs

each offer the geforce 6800 ultra, which is nice, however with dell and alienware, the price lands right around $2600

i'm very curious to know if anybody else knows of any other laptop companies, deals, or places where i might look to check it out.

[ThreeOnTheTree]

I'll move you here for hopefully better response.

I've heard some bad stories about alienware laptops, and I think one member here actually bought one and returned it. Also keep in mind that Dell just bought Alienware, so there's no telling what will happen to your tech support. Dell supposedly makes a good notebook, so you might give them a try. If not them, you might consider a MacBookPro and dual boot it with Windows XP.

[zsche]

well, after that thought, i realize i've left some vital points out..

why do i want a laptop, what am i going to use it for, where with and what

windows/apple

i love apple's, but loathe the lack of game playability
i've built PC's all my life, and have never built a laptop, or a mac

i'm mainly interested in the advice on a 'great' graphics laptop for media, and games

i am also very interested in the dual boot apple, i heard some bad rumors, but i unintelligently have no researched it at all, i will do so now.

[ThreeOnTheTree]

Yeah, I don't know much more about it, except that it can be done. I think the problem at this point is the lack of working windows drivers for all of the hardware in the MBP, but that is slowly getting resolved. That I think is mainly because MBPs use a new BIOS chip, which winXP is not designed to use. Windows Vista should be able to handle it with no problems.