Need laptop purchasing help

I originally was thinking about getting a strictly gaming laptop like the area-51m by alienware, but I hear too many stories about how fast the battery gets eatten up which causes it to be more like a desktop than a laptop? Is this true? Anyone know what type of battery life u get out of the area 51 when playing games.

This laptop is really for school, but id like to have the convienence of playing games on it. I really wanted to get the radeon 9600 w/ it, but dell doesnt carry it for their laptops.

I was gonna spend about 2400$ on a laptop if I was gonna get strictly a gaming laptop, but if im not becuase of battery life, I would probably get somethin in the $1000-1500 price range. Can someone please tell me where I can get my best bang for the buck and also what specs i really should get for this

One last thing, I see alot of people on this forum have laptops w/ Widescreens? How does the vidoe card adapt to these weird resolutions for games and stuff. Please let me know.

Thanks, info would be greatly appreciated as i plan on buying some sort of laptop by next week

I think your best bet would be a Gateway M505X (also known as a Gigabyte N601).

This is what you get for $1599:

- 1.4GHz Pentium M CPU
- ATi 9600 graphics with 64MB
- 512MB RAM
- 40GB hard drive
- CD-RW/DVD combo drive
- 15.4" widescreen with 1280 x 800 resolution
- integrated 802.11b wireless, 10/100 Ethernet, and modem
- stereo speakers with subwoofer
- Windows XP
- 6.7 lbs with battery
- 1 year warranty
- 3 levels of tech support: local store, Gateway national, and Gigabyte

Based on the specifications, I believe a M505X would be good for both schoolwork and games.

Here's the link

widescreen sucks for games.. wxga wouldnt be good

I know the dell widescreen laptops give you the option to use black bars to maintain the proper screen resolution ratio's of all resolutions. You just press the Fn and F7 keys at the same time. Let's say I have a wsxga+ (1680x1050) resolution screen. I could fire up a game in 1024x768 and use that option so that it will only use that amount of pixels, with black borders surrounding, no distortion or pixelation (sp?). I don't know if the Gateways have that option, but the Dell's do.

Quote:

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Originally posted by bbock727
widescreen sucks for games

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See the information posted at the Widescreen Gaming Forum and you may change your mind.