Mobile Buyer's Guide

Dream Laptops

Now we leave the realm of mere mortals and journey into the truly epic mobile offerings. While we could easily recommend a laptop with dual 128GB SSDs and get the price into the stratosphere, we'll try to keep things a bit more reasonable. Not that spending $4000 or more on a laptop really qualifies as reasonable for any but the wealthiest, but there are worse ways to spend money I suppose.

You may have noticed a trend in a lot of our comments so far. In order to keep costs down, many companies have a few basic designs that they can adapt to fit every niche from entry-level all the way through high-end. That means a lot of laptops get lost in a crowd of similar looking designs. For many users, that's perfectly acceptable - it's the performance, reliability, features, etc. that matter. Others want something to set them apart, and one way to do that is to get a custom chassis design or at least a fancy paint job. Enter the boutique computer vendors like Falcon Northwest, where you can get a truly unique paintjob.

Take the basic features on the high-end laptops, add a custom paint job and a few other extras, and you are safely on your way to dreamland. We could have mentioned some of the basic offerings in the high-end category, or in some cases even in the midrange price bracket, but if you're looking at an Alienware m15x or Voodoo Envy, you probably aren't interested in getting just the basics.

The Voodoo Envy 133 takes the concept of the MacBook Air and brings it into the PC world, with a few changes. It's perfectly flat, making it technically "thinner" than the Air, but the contoured edges make this distinction debatable. One area where we definitely give it an advantage is in the user replaceable battery; however, the Air has better battery life on a single charge. If you want something to stand out from the crowd, though, the carbon fiber weave on the chassis might just do the trick. Pricing starts at $2100, but we figure a 64GB SSD and Microsoft Office are reasonable additions, bumping the price to $3100. Add a custom paint job and you're looking at $3600 or more. We're not even sure what sort of warranty that includes, since we have to call for a price quote to get that information.

Moving to some of the gaming options, the base model Alienware m15x falls in the midrange category, but the features are so stripped down that it really only become viable in the high-end or dream categories. With a T9300, 4GB RAM, 250GB 7200RPM HDD, 8800M GTX, Blu-ray, and WUXGA LCD, all backed by a 3-year warranty, you're looking at around $3800. That sounds like a lot of money, but the m15x does have a few noteworthy features that warrant a closer look. For one, the m15x comes with "BinaryGFX", which allows you to shut off the 8800M GTX and switch to the integrated X3100 in order to improve battery life. If that's not enough, you can also remove the optical drive and slot in an extra battery (or a second HDD if you prefer). This is one of the few laptops that comes anywhere close to providing the option for both high-end gaming as well as decent battery life, and it's right at the top of our list for dream laptops.

For more gaming performance without regards for battery life, there are a few other options. Dell's XPS M1730 was the first 8800M GTX SLI to land on our doorstep, and it remains one of the best. Alienware's m17x is the big brother to the m15x, with the option for dual GPUs; unfortunately, it doesn't have the BinaryGFX or smartbay battery, but it does provide 8800M GTX SLI and dual hard drives. For the truly power hungry, you can forget about "wimpy" mobile CPUs and get one of the Clevo D901C laptops. These also support 8800M GTX SLI, in addition to running desktop processors - including support for quad-core CPUs up to the Q9550. If that's not enough, they also have three 2.5" hard drive bays. Battery life, even with a 95 WHr battery, is about one hour without a fully loaded system. Again, for all the SLI notebooks, we caution against purchasing an 8700M SLI setup; a single 8800M GTS or GTX is a better performer for less money. Depending on vendor, features, and components, pricing for these SLI notebooks starts at around $3000 and can reach over $10,000 if you're thinking of running 3-way RAID 0 128GB SSDs. Yeah, we'll pass on that as well - at least until we win the lottery.