Where's the best internet site or retail store to buy a customized/high-end laptop?
bestbuy, compUSA, newegg, frys, micro center?

I'm looking for a good one that can last me through the majority of college. If anyone has any input into what I should pay special attention to for gaming or any special parts, feel free to let me know about it.

Thanks

www.cyberpowerpc.com has some decint stuff also www.ibuypower.com has some decent stuff.

Honestly, if you can afford it, I'd go with Alienware. I had a laptop of theirs for a couple of years before going back to desktops. It was amazing.

One time at a LAN party, I offered to host a file server so people could get game updates and things faster and offered to host one of the games since I was the only one with an actual copy of the game.

They laughed at me and said a laptop could never handle that.

I ended up hosting a file server and every server for every game we played.

Officemax.

Brilliantly put, sir.

But now shifting gears to something that will help the thread. What are you looking to do with the laptop? Gaming, regular everyday things, be a l33t battery power extending hax0r?

The more we know the better we can help you. And by we I mean the people who have some knowledge of what they're talking about even if it isn't that much.

yeah knowing what you want to use the laptop for really does figure into the purchase and in your case the place of purchase as well. if you're going for gaming and such, alienware is a good buy IF you can afford it. otherwise you can purchase slightly cheaper laptops that perform just as well [not really]. if you're looking to keeping strictly business, well any old laptop with decent specs can do that. get a system with a good processor and lots of hard drive space for all the porn you're going to accumulate during your college experience.

btw macs are spiffy.

My personal view on a AW is the it is over priced for what you get ibuypower or cyberpowerpc has laptop that will run all new games and is a couple hundered cheaper than a AW.

Alienware really is overpriced if you look at the components and then compare that to the prices of other models, but you will not find a PC on the market thats more finely tuned and has so much attention to detail paid to it on the market.

Hell, even Corpse has said that he got one and it literally took him 2.5 years to break it (which I'm assuming includes conscious attempts at busting it up).

The win factor for me, again, is the fact that that laptop that had parts (slightly) inferior to all the desktops at that LAN party, still managed to outperform all the desktops.

I'm mainly going to use it for communication purposes (aim, skype, vent, internet) and I want to be able to do multiple tasks at once.

Gaming is certainly something I want but I want it to perform flawlessly in other areas first.

And other minor things:
I definitely don't want a mac...
What's going to be the difference between 1.8GHz, 2.0GHz and 2.3GHz which I think are the basic speeds?
What's the largest screen I can get without having to go widescreen? (normal ratio)

And base specs I'm looking for, I just need the best place to buy it. Any place with prolonged customer service or warranties would be good too, lol.
120+ GB HD
2.0+ GHz CPU
2 GB RAM
capable of at least 1024x768 res
Windows XP
2+ USB ports
not sure about display size: big but not wide

It'll be fun paying for it, but hopefully the laptop can run everything I plan on giving it. Thanks again for the feedback. Oh, and my rents won't pay for anything associated with gaming, so Alienware is no go.

The biggest difference you'll notice is that you get your boner faster when watching porn. With the exception of Skype, nothing else in the communications area of consumer computing really taxes the CPU that much. With the dual cores you can multi-task better than a single core since at least two brains are working on different tasks at once.

From what I've seen CPU speeds really come in to play on CPU limited tasks like encoding or decoding video, audio, or porn files, creating l33t sk33t pictures in photoshoop da woop or in CPU limited features on games (AI, crappy extra graphics features the graphics card doesn't work with, internetz).

Also, I don't really keep up with notebook displays, but I believe the one on my Alienware was 19". Or 17" I don't really remember.

For general communication, you really can go with something from www.newegg.com or www.tigerdirect.com or any online retailer you like. Those two will give you some options for normal ratio. Widescreen is almost standard these days (because it's amazing to have).

On Newegg, a Lenovo that fit your specs was around $2029.

I customized one on www.ibuypower.com (Battalion 101) that was widescreen and it came out as $1450 with identical/better parts.

Honestly, I'd go with a widescreen from newegg or TigerDirect that isn't too pricey.

thanks much kitty Yellow_Flash_Colorz_PDT_19

Be careful about tigerdirect, they say you save so much money but they are not very good with the rebate thing because i still havent got my $50-100 dollars back from buying my desktop. But they give most of your rebates back.

Yeah. I've heard of them being shitty about rebates.

But, personally, I don't ever buy anything that I have to "mail-in" a rebate for. If the company is weaksauce to give the discount to every customer who buys it right then and there, F*CK that item.

"Hey, let's give a discount to everyone, but make them send in a card, proof of purchase, more proof of purchase, and a black guy!"

"You're a genius, sir! Many of them won't bother, saving us so much money in the long run! Amazing!"

Check out HP they have pretty decent deals I got mine a little over 8 months ago and havent had any problems with them.