Mobile Buyer's Guide

High-End Laptops

High-end computer components are typically a case of diminishing returns, and laptops are not different. You can get pretty much everything you need in a laptop for under $2000 with no difficulty; getting that last 20% performance boost - whether it be in CPU power, graphics power, battery life, or just plain style - can be expensive. Here is where you'll find such upgrades as the Core 2 Extreme X9000, 8800M GTX (perhaps two!), Blu-ray, and solid state hard drives.

For maximum battery life and improved performance, you'll want a smaller laptop with an SSD. A 32GB SSD on its own will set you back around $400, or $800 for the 64GB drives. You can purchase the SSD separately for a potential savings, though some vendors have close ties with memory companies that allow them to pre-install the drive at a discount. A quick survey of the online resellers leads us to the Samsung SSDs as some of the best price/performance/reliability options. The 32GB MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00 and 64GB MCCOE64G5MPP-0VA00 both boast 100MB/s sequential read and 80MB/s sequential write speeds, with random read/write speeds of 80/30MBps. Take any of the 12.1" midrange notebooks, add a 64GB SSD, and you have a high-end laptop. Or you can grab something like the ASUS U2E-A2B for $2700 and get an even smaller laptop. Just be forewarned that many of these ultraportables sacrifice a lot of performance to extend battery life.

Gaming options for high-end notebooks come in a variety of flavors. Besides upgraded versions of midrange offerings, there are numerous companies selling systems based on the Clevo M570RU that comes with an 8800M GTX. We first saw this particular notebook early this year with the WidowPC Sting 517D2, and then we looked at a modified configuration a bit later with the AVADirect M570RU. Given they both use the same design, we're inclined to go with whoever offers the better price, and of all the Clevo M570RU options we've seen the least expensive happens to be AVADirect. The fact that they offer a ton of component choices doesn't hurt either.

One gaming option that we'd steer clear of in this price range is the 8700M GT SLI laptops. SLI might sound like a nice feature, but a single 8800M GTS will generally outperform 8700M SLI, and with the Gateway FX laptops costing far less there's no point in SLI unless you're going with dual 8800M. With prices starting at upwards of $3000, we'll save them for the Dream category.

If gaming isn't your major concern but you want a lot of number crunching power, you can go one of two ways. Option one is to get a notebook with an X9000 processor. The CPU alone will set you back over $1000 on its own, so take the midrange options from the last page and if they can support the X9000 you've got a powerful number cruncher. The other alternative that can get you even more processing power is to purchase a notebook that supports desktop processors and drop in a higher end dual-core or even a quad-core CPU. We're not aware of any laptops that will officially support anything above a Q9550, but at 2.83GHz that will already easily surpass the X9000. Desktop CPUs pretty much guarantee that you'll be lugging around a 17" or larger notebook, but the X9000 is still quite demanding and is not likely to be found in anything smaller than a 15.4" chassis. However, unless you demand every last ounce of performance, we'd recommend against either choice and instead stick with a T9500 (2.6GHz) or T9300 (2.5GHz) - which you can find in 14.1" laptops.

We've mentioned Apple several times already, but they always seem to cost a bit too much for the performance and features on tap. Sure, you get all the OSX goodness that so many seem to like, and you can run both OSX and Windows. Not that you can't do that with an appropriate hackintosh, but I digress…. The MacBook Pro has a lot of great features, like the LED backlighting on the LCD and keyboard. The base $2000 model also includes a T8300, 2GB RAM, 200GB HDD, and 8600M GT 256MB. An extra $500 will get you a T9300, 250GB HDD, and a 512MB 8600M GT, and there's also the 17" MacBook Pro, which gives you a larger 1680x1050 LCD for $300 more. Obviously, those are some very steep price hikes for a few minor upgrades, but there are lots of people that love the Apple "look". You could also opt for the MacBook Air, perhaps with an SSD; we have reservations about the Air, but the overall design makes for a great traveling companion.