Laptop suggestions.

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I'm considering getting a mid to high end laptop in the next couple of months, can anyone help me out?
In order of importance, more or less:

Essential:
Price < $3500 (could be a little flexible here)
XP/Vista compatible (x32 or x64 or x86, whichever laptop fits the other stats)
Not a dell or alienware, I'd like it to outlive 1 year of use.
Decent processor
Decent ram
enough storage (400GB+)
High end graphics card
wifi
dvd burner
fair battery life
Not going to toast my lap (good heat management)

Extra (not essential):
Durable chassis
bluetooth
infrared reciever
Microphone
Not as fat as Jack Black, portable.

Not essential at all
Camera
Splashproof (this is really irrelevent, but it'd be cool)
Loud enough speakers (although I'd rarely use them)


I've already decided I'm running windows or linux on a windows xp/vista compatible machine, no argument.

You want high specifications? You could just get a Windows Seven 64bit version. 4GB RAM would be ideal. Some laptops enable you to add extra hard drives so you can RAID them in RAID 0. Faster access times, but more power consumption. You'd have to probably invest in another battery as a high spec laptop will be in the region of GAMING. Will you have intentions of using this on the move? How long will the battery last in the real world? Will you use all the features of the laptop?

It's easy to argue to say "I want the best video card for my videos" where the graphics on this won't matter too much.

If you want high-end, you might want to see which mobile IGP will be better.. ATI or nVidia

Look at Lenovo Thinkpads if you want durability. Splash proof is only available on Panasonic Toughbooks if I remember correctly. I've seen alot of long lasting Toshiba's as well, so check them out as well. Defiantly stay away from Acer as far as possible no matter how good the deal looks. I think Dell's are pretty on par with Apple in terms of build quality, a few lemons, but if you really must need that perticular style then you best treat it with kid gloves.

If you want good specs, I think Sony Vaio's are pretty decent, almost all now have at last 3GB of ram standard and most have blu-ray either an option or standard. I've spilled soda on my keyboard a little on accident and the keys still work pretty good. Course I quickly flipped the computer over, I couldn't turn it off cause I was in the middle of running a small venue and was playing music for an upfront game.

But it works so I'm good with that.

HP is a good brand.

Toshiba Batteries don't have a long lifespan. I have a Toshiba laptop and I had to replace the OEM batteries with BTI batteries because the batter life of the Toshiba batteries is good at first but then drops down to almost nothing.

Here's the link.

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/t-series

I havent purchased, but the next round of laptops in my circle will likely come from system76.

http://www.system76.com/

It might save you a few hundred bucks if you already have a windows licence, and of course, you mentioned linux. These are matched for parts that will work in linux distros.

Thanks, this is making things a little clearer, I now know I'd benefit from li-on battery with 6 or more (9) cells.
But graphics remain confusing.

toshiba sattelite series
1028 MB dedicated VRAM? If I'm right, does that mean 1028MB of video ram, in the same way 256MB of ram on your card is needed to play, for example, fallout 3?
Toshiba fail to mention much about the battery life (or even the batteries at all) on their site, I'd probably be willing to buy better compatible batteries seperately, where could I find these?

Lenovo thinkpad
I like these. The thinkpads have always been good, I even see old models still in use here and there. But they only have having 256MB graphics cards, which from what I seem to be reading are average on the scale of pc gaming.

Can either of these or another run Crysis in it's sleep?
Are most laptop grapics cards interchangable? (both these laptop's cards aren't intergrated, which implies I could replace them with something new in time given the circumstances)

I have no clue if this helps, but don't buy mine. It says that it's "HP Pavilion dv4-1465dx Entertainment Notebook PC" on a little sticky label I forgot to take off. It's really not great, especially when using IE. Even my three year old mac is better (and this one is <3 months old!)
I'm not sure how to explain it, it just tends to be glitchy for me. Some days, I open it up, and all the stuff I was working on magically vanished overnight
And, if I touch the volume button, microsoft excel opens? Again, and again, and again. Once it opened 86 separate windows before I could get rid of them.