Clever people of the commUnity... which laptop should I buy?

I want one that I can develop interesting things on for 12 hours a day without keys falling off, constant slowdowns and having to endure the sound of a jet plane taking off 24/7.

More than 3 hours of battery life would be nice.

What do you guys use? What is your use, business or personal?

 

An older Panasonic Toughbook. They're very expensive brand new though so I wouldn't go down that line unless you can find a good deal like I did. I paid all of $70 on eBay for Core Duo, 1.5GB memory, GMA 950, and a 160GB HDD.

If I were to buy a brand new laptop, I'd probably check out the MSI GT70 Dominator series.

http://www.amazon.com/MSI-GT70-Dominator-2293-17-3-Inch-Laptop/dp/B00O4ORQ3C/

 

Hello - It really matters which OS you prefer. If you don't care, then onto hardware. My advice would be to seriously evaluate how you are going to use this machine (what you will use it for). Work? Home? Both? That way you can plan upgrade, etc. After all that, if price is no object, then get yourself on eBay and get 'er done!

And, remember if you buy a laptop and want to run it on for say 24 hours a day every day (with occasional restarts) - Remember to unplug and let your battery run down occasionally. My experience with laptops is the battery seems to last longer when you "exercise" it every now and then.

I hope this post helps you buy a good laptop/workstation!

 

I use an old M17 Alienware laptop for deving - it's on 18 hours a day, solid as a rock. Best workhorse I've ever had. And it's portable too (for a given value of 'portable').

 

I spent a good amount of time last month researching for my next laptop purchase.

Overall, I came to the conclusion the MSI GT70 Dominator was the best price-to-performance laptop.

It is currently around $1,400 so I am playing the waiting game. My current laptop I bought back in 2008 and it was $1,650 when I first chose it... so I waited nearly 8 months and finally caught it on a weekend sale at Staples for $1,250.

As soon as this Dominator is on sale for $1,200 or less I will grab it. I never actually spend full price for something like this when all I need to do is wait several months and I'll save a few hundred dollars.

Anyway, it is a very powerful machine for the money. You can check out the company page here.

 

How much productivity were you sacrificing to save $12.50 a week?

There's always something cheaper/better coming. Personally, I pick a budget, set priorities, wait until I actually need the thing, then buy whatever best meets my priorities without busting the budget. I don't worry about going below the budget because in 3+ years I'll still be appreciating a piece of quality hardware long after I've forgotten about the extra dollars.

 

I'm happy with my gigabyte p34gv2 so far, and it was pretty cheap from iBuyPower as long as you don't mind that 100% of them will have a slightly dented / slanted mouse on the touch pad. The fans are super loud though and turn on for any little bit of work. I've heard nicer things about the sager than my laptop. I wish I went with the sager instead.

GTX980 for the Sager.
GTX860 for the gigabyte.

 

When only the best will do, why not pick from 10 of the world's most expensive laptops?

Prices ranging from a few thousand to $1 000 000!

 

It's just how I do things for big purchases. Vehicles, tvs, computers whatever. There is a certain amount I am willing to spend at the max for each thing. I have certain minimum requirements for each thing. Usually the price is beyond my max so I just wait. It works out well because I end up getting a better quality item for less and it lasts for years. Unity, Blender, Bryce, Poser all run fine on my 2008 laptop but I know it is time to get another because with nearly 7 years of daily service it has already gone above and beyond. By October I should be able to find the new one on sale and that should carry me through 2022. I'd spend $1,250 on it.

 

As always, depends on what you're doing:

2D game, anything will do pretty much..

Small 3D games / 3D mobile etc. and not trying to play the latest games @ Max settings (like Benjamin said, MSI GT70 Dominator should do it).

For UE4 dev, big games and playing games @ the latest and greatest, you'll want something like an ASUS ROG G751JY.

 

Looking at the performance ASUS ROG G751JY/GTX 980M vs an 800$ cheaper ASUS ROG G751JT-CH71/GTX 970M, I can't see any justification for the performance increase at that price point. I'd rather just save the 800$ and use it towards another upgrade 2 years later.

 

http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

Look at the 970M vs. 980M above there is quite a vast difference, this laptop comes with a faster CPU and also comes with an M.2 HDD drive which maxes out at 1.2GB/S transfer speed. Not sure why but the specs aren't exactly "apparent" in most places I've seen them..

Also with UE4 for light mapping purposes, that extra RAM comes in real handy. Finally, when I bought it there was only $350.00 between the two.

So for me it was a no brainer..

 

Pretty funny, if you get a $1500.00 laptop and use it ten years, it's $0.41 per day. I've had my desktop since 2006. It is an iMac. I won't need cutting edge graphics capabilities. That MSI GT70 Dominator seems like the best in class for what I would ever do, coding, light graphics and of course, have 20 different windows open at all times.

 

That definitely makes it look better admittedly, I ignored the HDD/SSDs on the G751JY and that is a big deal for dev. The CPUs were the same for both models though: i7 4710HQ (2.5/3.5). I am biased I guess as my desktop GPU is a GTX 770 currently and the 970M is only a few marks below that. Its been plenty good for Unity Dev. I haven't done much UE4 dev (I tried it once for about a week), you are right about it being a memory hog so you're right that the extra 8gig would probably help. I still can't resonably justify the price diff 2299 vs 1499 (newegg pricing). A 350$ diff would probably make me go for extra ram, SSD and 33% more GPU though.

 

msi GS60 is a nice machine, battery life isn't great, but I'm always plugged in anyway.

 

I like @JColling's advice to go with your preferred OS. If you're developing iOS games, for example, I've found that it's much easier to use OSX than Windows.

 

I'm sure most gaming laptops are treated like desktops in this way They're just easier to move around.