Laptop or Desktop

[Publius Clodius Pulcher]

All right, here's my problem.

I'm graduating from High School (this Sunday, today was last day!) and I'm going off to college in Sept.

I'm debating whether to get a laptop or desktop. I'm holding off on any purchase until late June, because Santa Rosa will hit the market in June. I have 1500$ USD maybe a bit more, still waiting for graduation money to come in.

As for my personal habits etc, I game a good bit, and I'm anticipating Quake:ET and UT08 or whatever number they'll be using for the new one. I have a current desktop, but I haven't upgraded in over a year and it's worthless essentially. 2800 64 bit Athlon, 6600 Gt, 512 RAM (one of my sticks blew :/ ) etc. The mobos not even PCI-E. I also have a Pocket PC, a Dell X50v.

Originally my thought process was, College=Laptop. But a Laptop is not an ideal gaming machine, even though I won't be gaming too hard on it. Now I'm considering taking a desktop, and just using my PPC for notes, or doin it the old fashioned way, especially because I'm a slow typist.

Is a Laptop that much more useful for College? Or should I just get a pretty maxed out desktop. With the money I could get a Core 2 Duo, 8800 GTS 640mb, 150gig Raptor, and 2 new gigs of RAM. Compared to a Core 2 duo laptop with an 8600M and a gig or RAM.

Y'alls opionions?

[spartan_phalanx]

Both, no?

You can get a bargain laptop for $500 or less (dell's cheapest is like $560), which should be good enough for notes and basic college tasks. With the remaining $1000 you can get a really nice core 2 desktop.

[Lavastein]

yeah id do the same. in fact thats exactly what im going to do. Laptop is for writing papers and internet access, not really for gaming. Buy a cheap laptop for what you need and then save the rest of the cash for the greatness that is custom pcs

[Mathius]

Hell, I'd even look at buying a reconditioned laptop and just use it purely for work and get the best desktop I could with the rest. A friend bought an uber-laptop last year and the thing gets so hot it literally melts its way through the table when he uses it for gaming and its already getting unreliable. Actually I'd blow the money on women and fine whisky to be honest.

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

Get the laptop, that's what I did. Save your money for drinks and women (er, dates I mean...). Really you shouldn't have that much time to game at college anyway...if you're not studying you should be drinking.

[drak10687]

well, there are several laptops on the market now, for reasonable prices, which can run the latest games at at LEAST medium settings (mostly the high end DELLs if you want the best price). However, you have to remember that with all these high power laptops... well, they need A LOT of power. Which means that automatically, they will under-clock the CPU and VGA as soon as you unplug them, but even then, you'd be hard pressed to get more than a couple of hours of battery life out of them unless you are doing noting more than browsing the internet. Also, none of them will be less than 17", hence freaking big and heavy. You might not think thats too big, but if you end up carrying the think around a lot, you'll get tired of it really fast.

Basically, unless you HAVE to have all that power on the go, then go with a small (no more than 14.1" wide screen) laptop, with good battery life, and it will be a lot more comfortable and useful. If you want to game, it will be a lot more efficient to get a desktop. The only reasons to get a powerful lappy are: to show off, play games anywhere you go (where there is a plug), do 3D/movie/other gfx work on the go.

[Elrond]

I agree with the cheap laptop + good desktop suggustion - in the UK its a bit unfeasible atm because dell laptops etc start at the equivilant of $700 (£350), but if u can get a decent laptop with vista home basic for $550-600 in the US then go for it.

You can get a decent gamming rig with the rest of you money - although I would strongly recommend waiting as late as possible so that you can get some of the cheap direct 10 cards which are going to be relased over the summer. A 8800 is a joke for $1000 or even $1500 - if you get one then you will have to cut back on the rest of the parts which isnt a good idea.

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

I agree with the dual solution - the Laptop I've had prior to my current one was okay for the games at that time (RTW ran smooth), but I hardly ever played on it as I had a desktop for that. The Laptop itself was rather bulky (15.4" Fujitsu Siemens Amilo M)

So this time, I went for a 13.3" convertible with good CPU and enough ram, but only the most basic GPU - it only costs battery life and weight.