1000th New Laptop Thread!

JamesMay · November 25, 2013

Alright I'm sorry I'm sure there's about 1000 of these but I'm looking for a new laptop and seeking a little bit of advice.

So here's what I've already got: MacBook Pro 17-inch Early 2011. It runs at 1920x1200 resolution (in case not everyone knows ). I threw a nice SSD in it.

I don't want another mac because I run windows in bootcamp 95% of the time. There are a lot of issues for me with running bootcamp so I don't want to do it anymore. The other thing that I hate about using the Mac is whenever I compile a lot of Java/Groovy classes the CPU runs at like 90% for a minuet or so and the fan just decides it needs to run at full speed and make the most annoying loud noise ever. I absolutely hate it I feel so embarrassed sitting in a room with other people whenever that happens.

What I'm looking for:

NEEDED:

At least 1080p resolution

16GB of ram

4th Gen i7

SSD

Be able to power two external displays

PROS:

Thin

Ice Cold(or at least no high pitched fan)

Great color replication/display (I don't know anything about displays but "good" would be how I describe what I want)

So far I've found two dell laptops that look really good for me.

The Precision M3800 (brand new) and the XPS 15. I would have already bought the XPS 15 since I don't really need a quarto but the 3200x1800 resolution scares me a bit. Is just sitting on the desktop without doing anything going to cause the discrete graphics to turn on? Will scrolling on web pages in chrome cause serious GPU strain?

Just FYI I guess ... the Precision comes with a Nvidia® Quadro® K1100M, w/ 2GB GDDR5 and the XPS comes with a NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M 2GB GDDR5. So same amount of video ram.

If anyone has any other suggestions I'm totally open to something else. I kind of want a mac that's not a mac. I looked at some of the Lenovo laptops but nothing looked as good as the XPS to me.

So some use case stuff for me I guess? I do a lot of programming everything for C++ and Java to web design. So a fast hard drive is important (although any SSD seems fast enough) and tons of ram for running way too many tomcat instances. I do a tiny bit of photo/video editing with the Adobe line. A little bit of gaming just like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, and Hearthstone mostly bored in the airport gaming.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. If someone has one of the Dells how is the resolution? Was it just a terrible idea?

CoolBeans · November 25, 2013

Budget? Most likely a MSI GE60

ShadyHost · November 25, 2013

I can't imagine having a ridiculous resolution is a bad thing. If price is no object I would go for that one.

However is seems you do more cpu/ram intensive things so spending an arm and a leg for a good all around laptop might not be the best choice.

I suggest looking at (dare I say it) Alienware, get the one with the highest CPU spec and max out the ram, then pick the lowest end GPU and call it a day. Those usually have the option for RAID 0 so I would put one of those in.

I know it's lame to just suggest Alienware but thats really what I think would be best.

Akolyte · November 25, 2013

If you want all those, its gonna cost you, one of these would work best http://promos.asus.com/US/G750/

JamesMay · November 25, 2013

Price doesn't really matter. I mean 3k (USD) is probably the most I'd want to spend but I don't think there are a whole lot of laptops that are more than that. Even then I was considering getting a last gen macbook pro which was around 3600 I think so I don't care too much.

I feel like the biggest different between the XPS 15 and the sort of "gaming" laptops some people suggested is the size. The XPS is nice and slim as well as "professional" looking which are two bonuses for me. The only possible downside to that is heat. The thicker "gaming" laptops might have better cooling than the XPS.

My only two concerns for the XPS are possible heat issues and the screen resolution. It's going to suck finding cool wallpapers for that! Without those I would buy it immediately.

I don't think that the i7-4702HQ would be too much worse than the i7-4900MQ. So I don't feel like there's a whole lot better on the CPU front than the XPS.

I doubt there's a whole lot of different in memory speeds or that they matter too much. Same with one SSD or another.