Razer's 14" Blade Gaming Notebook Won't Break the Bank

[RhombusHatesYou]

I ain't even gonna bother clicking that. I know that Medion is Aldi's own-brand for electronics.

Medion AG is a seperate company, which is now owned by... *drumroll* Lenovo. That should pretty much say all anyone needs to know - a discount consumer electronics manufacturer owned by one of the crappiest computer manufacturers ever. It's like someone took a shit in the middle of a puddle of vomit.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Too bad whitebox laptop are almost impossible to get these day.

Whitebox/whitebook laptops fell out of favour because sourcing the parts was a pain in the arse and it wasn't cost effective for a lot of people. If you had only generic needs for your laptop off-the-shelf was cheaper. Whitebooking was only really useful for people who had specific needs in certain areas and didn't want to pay a fuckload for the one or two laptops on the market that met those needs and added a bunch of expensive, unnecessary shit in as well... the problem there, as the manufacturers saw it, was that most people would buy the cheapest whitebox they that still had the features they wanted and then cram in the biggest CPU and as much RAM as they could. From their POV that was bad because it was these people they wanted to buy their fuck-off-top-of-the-line laptops.

(for them not following the terminology, whitebook is the selling of bare-bones laptops for the purpose of customising and/or the customising of a barebones laptop. whiteboxes are the actual barebones units)

Of course, if you have the cash to piss away and are fluent in written mandarin, you can get the parts to build yourself a laptop from scratch. It's expensive and most of the parts suppliers who'll sell single units are DODGY AS FUCK, so I wouldn't recommend it, but it is doable... at around 50% more than you'd pay for the same unit off the shelf. It'd actually be cheaper to build a custom portable Desktop Replacement (building a desktop formfactor PC into a case along with the monitor and everything. Upside is they use proper desktop components. Downside is they weigh a fuckton - you're basically lugging around a desktop, monitor and your input devices).

 

[Saulkar]

I think I will stay with my Sager NP150, thank-you-very-much. 3DS Max Interface is no match for it!

 

[Athinira]

That really isn't cheap. It's a fine high end machine, I suppose. But it's a bank breaker. You can get something almost as good and just slightly heavier for less than half the price.

No you can't. Granted it isn't cheap, but if what you say is true, I'm sure you are capable of providing a link to the machine you're talking about, right? )

 

[Athinira]

I have an excellent history with Toshiba. These machines are made of granite. I have an old satellite still running Windows 95!

Anyway... check out their site. I've also been hearing good things about Acer and Lenovo. You might want to take a look there, too. You can save a lot of money by looking at off-brands and the quality is typically better than similarly priced machines from major manufacturers like Dell and Gateway. Heck... I reckon the machine in the OP would be two bills cheaper if it didn't have the brand "Razer" on it.

The thing is that i find this funny considering that Acer and Toshiba are amongst the worst ranking in 'Favorite laptop brand' polls. For Lenovo, however, you're right on track since they keep coming in 1st or 2nd place in those polls alongside Apple. They are a tad expensive though. Congratulations on making your Satellite run for that long though, most laptops would have burned out by now.

You are also right that machines like Razer are slightly more expensive just because of their brand.

My experience with laptop brands - which is rather extensive, considering I've done laptop repairs for an IT-company - is that Lenovo, Asus and Dell (god bless thy expensive price though) are amongst the top laptop brands when it comes to durability. HP machines unfortunately often suffers a terrible case of bad cooling systems (meaning battery burnouts, crotch burnout and palm burnout and sometimes laptop burnouts), while Asus are very adept at making cooling systems for their laptops.

Asus and Lenovo also make some pretty damned impressive Ultrabooks, although those are mostly useless for gaming.

For gaming laptops, i once again prefer Asus most of the time (Although their G75VX series is demanding a new generation a a cheaper price point), although there are some good gaming laptops around from both MSi and Medion at really good price points. You can also boot Windows on a Mac (if you cannot be bothered to find a mountain to throw your money off a cliff) since Macbooks are amongst the most stable machines when running Windows! )

Edit:

I mean hey, if you want "the worlds thinnest gaming laptop" then by all means... Fork over the dough. But I have a kid to feed and tuition to pay. And I'm pretty strong. I can handle an extra pound or two in my laptop bag if it means an extra grand in the bank.

Just wanted to add that i don't disagree at all. My next gaming laptop is gonna be a monster and weigh a lot - but it's gonna be a lot of bang for the buck and have excellent cooling, build quality and keyboard. Those are the 4 aspects i weigh highest when shopping for machinery

 

[Foolery]

Man. Wouldn't break my bank, but I'm definitely not comfortable paying that much for a laptop. I'd just get a friend to help build me a rig or two at that price. But hey, whatever floats your boat or lifts your luggage. If that's what someone wants to get, go for it. Ain't my money.