CompaqCompact

[JavaGuy]

I've finally got my eyes on a decent looking laptop that might run Doom3. P4 2 GHz processor, 256 RAM Radeon 7500, and a few other neat little things, It'll probably be about three weeks before I can afford it if I work double shifts every weekend. It seems like a great deal, but there's one catch. It's made by Compaq, and I haven't been hearing a whole lot of good things about them lately. It's the Evo N1000v NoteBook. Does anyone know about the quality of this product. Is it worth the fifteen-hundred?

Thanks for your time.

[DooMer 4ever]

Well, I wouldn't buy Compaq. When I bought my 500 Mhz Combaq a few years ago i tought it was good. After all, most of my classmates had 300 Mhz pentium 2 or something like that.

When I was going to buy a 3D card it turned out that the computer had an integrated AGP card, and I had to buy PCI Voodoo4. Plus, it was AMD 6-2 and when i borrowed games from my classmates, I found out that those 300 Mhz pentiums with voodoo 2 could run them much better.

That was when i decided never to buy Compaq, NEVER. I don't know about laptops or newer Compaqs though. Well my cousin told me that his friend has 1Ghz Compaq with Geforce2 (pentium3 if i remember correctly, and it was worse than his 500Mhz pentium 2!)

[GS-1719]

ALWAYS read the small print.

[Sephiroth]

compaqu=no good for games

if u want something for doom3 wait a year, or get one from a true gaming company like alien ware. toshiba's are nice too. also try to get one with an AMD processor. as of now they still kick P4 ass and they are like a third of the price. also compaqu uses the restore disk. instead of just a plain version of winXP they give u a hacked up version, with alot of shit that fucks every thing up, disk. WinXP totaly crashed after just 2 weeks on mine. with only installing doom and quake.

also my screen broke, they use a very terrible screen and lid for their laptops. the screen has no strength at all, i have laptops that have been droped, slamed, and sat under heavy books. those never broke and still run great. but my laptop fell 3 feet, on carpet, and not even on the lid and it still broke.

go with alien ware for doom3 and wait a while, if not them toshiba or dell( if AMD cant be found) also get a REAL version of winXP, never use restore disks. finaly aviod gateway and compaqu for gameing rigs. if u use it for school compaqu is ok, if u disregaurd the wimpyness factor of the case.

[Russell_P]

Do you need to buy your laptop now? If not, my advice is to wait until the time when Doom3 is about to be released. If you buy one now, six months down the line you'll be looking at what is then available and thinking 'shit, if only i still had that $1500'. Specs are always increasing and as a result the prices of 'less powerful' machines are always falling. Hang on to your money and wait until Doom3 is about to be released.....and if you still want to go for the P4 2Ghz at that point it'll probably be significantly less than it is now.

[JavaGuy]

Actually, once I saw the Alien Ware Area 51m I almost crapped my pants. I mean, that thing has more power than a guy could wish for. Only thing is that it costs $3000. Are there any laptops by Alienware even half as good for half the price (though I can wait 'till Christmas, at least. I might have $3000 by then)? I can't seem to navigate the site well enough to find their laptops.

[Sephiroth]

you can get alien ware for around $1,500. also like i said before the best CPU i say, for note books is the athloneXP or athlone 4(AMD) p4M's are a joke. alien ware has many systems to choose from, and like i and the others said wait a bit longer. chances are doom3 will not run on many laptops under 2000 right now. and it will really suck on compaqu's, for sure, even if u bought one at the release date

[Katarhyne]

Listen to me, and listen well because I'm only going to say this once.

DO NOT BUY A COMPUTER FROM ALIENWARE.

You will spend a ridiculous amount of money for something you could build for literally less than half, and get more performance out of it, to boot.

You would be much better off with that Compaq. Compaq has cleaned up their act a lot in the last year or two. My personal laptop is a Compaq - and I normally don't accept anything but the highest performance from a computer system.

Doomer 4Ever, do you still have that PCI Voodoo4? I'd love to buy it off of you if you do. And as for your cousin's friend with the 1Ghz Compaq with a Geforce 2 (MX, almost certainly), the only way a 500Mhz P3 (there's no such thing as a 500Mhz PII) could outperform it is in an application which depended almost solely on the video card (say, 3Dmark2001) and it had a much more powerful video card. Which, assuming your cousin's friend's computer has a Geforce 2 MX, isn't that hard.

Not to advertise myself shamelessly, but I could build you a decent system off of pricewatch a lot cheaper than anything you're going to buy from anywhere else. My brother builds Intel machines, I build AMD, and if you want something else, kill yourself, because you'd be better off doing that than spending a minute trying to use anything besides an Athlon or P4.

[gatewatcher]

Katarhyne, what would you suggest for a mobo using an AMD XP 2200+?