Buying new laptop

Ruz

I was just wondering if anyone had any good recommendations for a laptop that would support all the latest games and be powerful enough to use 3dsmax or any other major 3d app.

Are graphics cards for laptops less powerful in general?
Would it be easy to upgrade in the long run?

I intend to use this as a my main machine , since I will have to work away with it sometimes and I don't fancy buying a new desktop 'and' laptop. too damn pricey

Also since I figured my Pentium 4 machine still has a bit of life left in it, what vid card would you recommend again?
motherboard is Asus P4G8X - pentium 4 3.01 ghz
and doesn't support pci express so I figured NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT AGP might be a good choice.

At least I can use zbrush/3dsmax on this machine and it will come in handy as a back up.
Does the brand you buy matter? Lots of cards say they are Nvidia based, but are there any good brand names to watch out for

cheers for any helpz offered.

thnom

I recently bought an XPS M1330 (DELL). I wanted a lightweight smaller end top-end machine.

2.2ghz dual core, Nvidia 8400GM GS, 13" screen, 2kg, 4gig of ram, White-LED Screen. I paid £1,300 off ebay with delivery from the US.

Powerful machine that is portable

pliang

Make sure the components are not integrated...

low odor

One problem I had with my Dell e1505 Inspiron was that the ATI driver(x1300 mobility) updates could not be loaded onto the machine...apparently all Dells are like this. You can only get the Driver updates directly fron Dell..And after about a year they stop updating the drivers ( at least with my machine they did). I ended up having to use a thrid party modding tool to get the latest drivers on my machine...Other than that Snafu, it's runs perfectly

Gmanx

I would echo Low Odor's comments - my DELL XPS M1710 is perfect in every respect, except when I wanted to play Gears of War, and it required the latest drivers from nVidea. Hopefully I'll find a workaround.

Jesse Moody

Hey Gmanx go to http://www.notebookforums.com and go to the dell section. I have the M1710 and I don't use the dell drivers ever. I'm running vista 64bit too so finding drivers can sometimes be rough but there are a bunch of threads on http://www.notebookforums.com that will help with just about anything.

Also for buying a new laptop they have awesome reviews and you can research just about any issue known and read great stories and horror stories about each product.

I love my Dell XPS M1710. I can play just about anything I have tossed into it. No issues so far.