Poll: Alienware laptop or PS3?

[Horticulture]

I advise against gaming laptops in general (unless you specifically want to game on the go) and Alienware specifically. In your budget, you could get a laptop [http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114797] and still save your PS3, or a faster desktop and a netbook/CULV laptop.

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Your avatar is the best. I loved EV as a kid.

 

[veloper]

1 get a cheap laptop for school work, not the alienware

2 keep the PS3

3 maybe build yourself a fast desktop from the money you saved

 

[sms_117b]

I say PS3, only because I could never, EVER, give a gaming laptop a thumbs up.

 

[Delusibeta]

I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy these days, but I would advise getting yourself the Macbook instead of the Alienware laptop and using your PS3 to play most of your games on, just because the Macbook does have some fairly useful features that Windows currently lacks (although most/all of them can be added using freeware). On top of that games are beginning to be released for Apple computers, mostly via direct download and Steam will be coming to Mac very soon. Not saying Apple computers are necessarily better though, just that they've been more useful to me over the last few years than a windows computer would be, as my consoles provide my game playing machines while my mac is very good as a work/photos and stuff machine.

I'll have to admit, the current crop of Mac laptops are really rather underpowered compared to Windows laptops for similar (or less) money in this day and age. If I wanted a Mac, I would wait until the next batch to be released.

 

[DancePuppets]

]I'll have to admit, the current crop of Mac laptops are really rather underpowered compared to Windows laptops for similar (or less) money in this day and age. If I wanted a Mac, I would wait until the next batch to be released.

Yeah, you do have a point, the last couple of Macbook pro's have been more focused on updating things like battery life rather than power, I bought mine a year ago and its still on the same motherboard as the latest ones. The rumour is that new ones should be out in a few months, but of course its anybody's guess really.

 

[acosn]

Technically the ideal solution is buying a cheap end laptop (I'm assuming here that you don't want a desktop on account of it having poor portability) for maybe 400 bucks as a word processor, and web browser, ect, and having a PS3 for gaming.

With that said, there is such thing as a gaming laptop. As I said earlier it's probably not what you're expecting, and at best you're going to see them playing games at medium settings or less. What I will comment on though, is that you want to stay away from the large brands in this case. Don't buy alienware, don't buy dell, don't buy HP and so on.

Do not buy an Apple laptop for gaming. Aside from simply having a smaller selection to buy from Apple laptops are built with non-gamers in mind. They'll turn it on, browse, and use a word processor. At best they might make the laptop advance outside of low heat load settings once in a blue moon.

 

[Plurralbles]

This question is easily answered. PS3 is at the beck and call of firmware updates, PSN network, and only company-authorized dev's. Doesn't seem like the best way to try to enjoy a hobby.

Get teh gaming PC. I've played around with a few peoples' lap's and they're pretty nice.


And when PS3 says, "it only does everything" realize they're lying, it's hte laptop that can do anything.

EDIT: Seriously though, unless you just HAVE to play the PS3 exclusives, then get the computer.
Keep the box it comes in and have a digital television at home with an HDMI cable and there you go, a portable desktop just transfering the tower, keyboard, and mouse. Not hard.

Open source software up the wazoo.

You can make your OWN programs.

You can customize everything about it with the help of public code, forums, and youtube.

You can play every nintendo console before the Cube.

You can play open source everything.

YOu hav ea mouse and keyboard for control.

YOu have mods.

You can have viruses if you're stupid.

you can window your game and check stocks, comment on here, or play another game.

You have access to skype.

The best deal is for a desktop and a cheap end laptop. I had to get a desktop replacement, which plays Oblivion... with minor lag(intel GMA card so it's shit), but with your budget of 1600 you can easily get a 1000 desktop(which will rape anything you want), and a 400 netbook. It's the best of both worlds.

 

[Volafortis]

To anyone claiming that PC GPU's go out of date faster than consoles, this is completely false. If you have a good graphics card that is more powerful than the PS3's, even in five years, IT WILL STILL BE MORE POWERFUL THAN THE PS3 (or any console). The thing is, graphics technology moves on the PC, but as graphics increase, what may be "Low" settings in 5 years will still be better than the console.

 

[SNIPERFOX ft. Harry P.Ness]

aleinware. its so powerfull you can run crysis on it. a pc like aleinware has more games and easier controls on games

 

[Skops]

This is actually kind of a tough decision. In one hand you have the PS3, a very capable video game console that does a wide variety of things. In the other lies a gaming laptop that will undoubtably give you the portable awesomeness for gaming on the go, but will have heating issues for sure. I also have heard some unflattering things about Alienware's products longivity, from chip melting, to screen fading, just after about 6 months of use.

Personally, I'd LOVE a gaming laptop. And I'd probably pick one up over a console any day, but if you're going to go with the laptop way... I suggest finding a better manufacturer.

 

[twasdfzxcv]

Get a sager laptop. Not directly from their site I think there're are a few online sager laptop vendors that sell at a slight discount.

http://www.sagernotebook.com/default.php

if you're gonna buy a gaming laptop go for at least 17 inch. It might not be as portable but it'll have less heating issue with bigger space. 15 inch laptop just don't have enough room to house all the component while giving adequate ventilation.

Also if your looking for gaming laptop go for at least a 280M. A 260M is only slightly more powerful than 9800M and that's from 2 gen ago. Nvidia naming system is that X8XX are the more powerful ones while X6XX are for moderate users. X4XX are usually minimal power.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units#GeForce_9M_.289xxxM.29_series

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

I might have to buy a new laptop, so either way I end up spending around $1600 on some new tech. Either I get rid of my PS3 and the 10 or so games I have for it and buy an Alienware laptop, or I buy a 15" Macbook for schoolwork and stick with my PS3.

I strongly recommend against getting a gaming laptop in most cases. For the same amount of money, you could get a "normal" laptop that'll weigh half as much, cost half as much, have twice the battery life, and not set your pants on fire if you try to use it on your lap, along with a desktop that's faster than the gaming laptop would've been for games. Laptops work fine for light gaming, but they're kind of iffy for much beyond that, in my experience, unless you give up too much of what makes a laptop nice to have in exchange (e.g. weight, battery life, heat (which tends to make them fail sooner), etc.).

That said, if you are considering a MacBook Pro (I assume, since you're looking at the 15" one), wait for the next revision of them to come out, which is already overdue. The current ones are kind of meh at the moment since they haven't been updated in several months, and they're about to be replaced any day now (which I'm sick of waiting for, since I've been waiting since January for the new ones).

 

[twasdfzxcv]

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A gaming laptop is fine as long as you know what you're getting into in the first place. Technically gaming laptops are just desktop replacement with better graphic. It's not designed for every day carry around. In portability wise it's more or less like a console: you don't take them everywhere you go but if you want to bring it to your friends' place you can do that easily.
Also I strongly against buying a MacBook or any apple product for that matter unless you really like them or for some reason you have to use them. Apple products are funny things. Even if you pay for them you don't exactly own them, you merely rent them from Mr. Steve Job.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

A gaming laptop is fine as long as you know what you're getting into in the first place. Technically gaming laptops are just desktop replacement with better graphic. It's not designed for every day carry around. In portability wise it's more or less like a console: you don't take them everywhere you go but if you want to bring it to your friends' place you can do that easily.

I know there are people who seem to like them, because there's a (relatively small) market for them, but unless you plan on lugging the thing around all over the place to play games wherever you go, it just doesn't seem cost-effective to me, as much as I like both having a laptop and PC gaming available to me. I'm really not exaggerating when I say that for the same price as a gaming laptop you can get a "non-gaming" laptop plus a desktop that would completely blow away the performance of the gaming laptop and can be upgraded much cheaper and easier a couple/few years from now. $1600 (the OP's budget) goes a long way these days. I'm not even really much of a fan of the "desktop replacement" class, either, but at least without trying to shove a high end video card in there (or two in SLI, which kind of terrifies me in a laptop...they're hard enough to cool already) they seem a little more reasonable. If you're into that sort of thing, though, go nuts.

Also I strongly against buying a MacBook or any apple product for that matter unless you really like them or for some reason you have to use them. Apple products are funny things. Even if you pay for them you don't exactly own them, you merely rent them from Mr. Steve Job.

That is somewhat true when it comes to stuff like the iPhone or iPad and is partly why I don't have either or any plans to get them (I also don't really have much interest in them). The computers are just fine though. You can do whatever the hell you want with them, which I've been doing for years. Their portable devices have a pretty crappy approval process for apps and being able to run stuff on them (and I'd rather not have to hack the stupid thing just to get it to stuff it should've done in the first place), but the laptops/desktops are just plain old computers with an OS that that irritates me less than Windows and is a bit more polished than Linux for daily use. The vast majority of non-bundled non-Apple stuff (i.e. that didn't come with the computer) I use on OS X is free, open source stuff, some of which I've edited and/or compiled myself, which is pretty much the opposite of locked down.

I'd argue that it's no more locked down than Windows is in general, and less in some ways. It really comes down to which you prefer, and I like the different options (OS X, Windows, Linux, BSD, whatever) for doing different things. If you just don't like it, that's fine and I totally understand that, but the argument you're using against it only really applies to things that run on the iPhone branch of the OS (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad) with the app store crap, and not to the main desktop/laptop branch (which lets you install/run whatever you feel like) or the hardware itself (which you can run any OS you want on).

 

[Danny Ocean]

I might have to buy a new laptop, so either way I end up spending around $1600 on some new tech. Either I get rid of my PS3 and the 10 or so games I have for it and buy an Alienware laptop, or I buy a 15" Macbook for schoolwork and stick with my PS3. (NOTE: I already have a couple computer games I'll be playing, and will only buy one or two new ones to replace the old games I lost.)

I'm one of the most hardcore PC nuts on this site, but even I'd go for the PS3 in this case. Gaming laptops never live up to expectations, run hot, are overpriced, and obsolete faster than Betamax.

However I would reccommend expanding your options and getting a desktop. If you're looking for portability (LAN parties and that), you could create a small-form-factor desktop.

All of the above assumes that you'll have a computer anyway for browsing and steam and the escapist and such. If not, go for the lappie. Really it depends what you want it for.

 

[twasdfzxcv]

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While it's true that gaming laptop is a very small market, it doesn't mean there's no market for it at all. I have a gaming laptop personally and heating is not an issue if you bought the right one. My laptop runs cooler than my friend's monster gaming PC. I'm in college right now and gaming laptop really isn't that bad since I can bring it home or my friends places anytime I want over weekends and vacation. There're ways to upgrade your laptop too since for a few years now GPU and CPU have industry standard specification and there're websites where you can find more information. http://www.mxm-sig.org/

About MacBook I assume OP would want at least some light gaming capability in whatever his laptop choice, therefore recommend against it only on gaming ability bases.

 

[Kimby]

Well, the PS3 will last you much longer.
PC hardware updates a lot faster than consoles, just a heads up.

 

[Delusibeta]

Well, the PS3 will last you much longer.
PC hardware updates a lot faster than consoles, just a heads up.

The problem with that arguement is that while it may be true that it won't play a game released in 18 months' time, it'll still look prettier on the laptop than the PS3 version most of the time (assuming there is a PS3 version and both games are not crappy ports).

 

[Cowabungaa]

You don't have to choose. Just buy a PS3 for 300 bucks and spend 1300 on assembling your own computer, which is MORE than enough to make a pretty damn good computer.

Don't go for Alienware. It's not they're bad, it's just that they're horribly overpriced.

 

[Kimby]

You don't have to choose. Just buy a PS3 for 300 bucks and spend 1300 on assembling your own computer, which is MORE than enough to make a pretty damn good computer.

Don't go for Alienware. It's not they're bad, it's just that they're horribly overpriced.

Alienware isn't horribly overpriced, but they are overpriced.
They also force you to get vista :/