iBuyPower notebooks?

[imported_Uber]

I've been poking around, planning my next laptop, despite the fact that I'm not planning on actually buying anything for another semester or so.

I currently own a rapidly deteriorating Dell B120, which I was well aware was nothing great when I bought it, but it has served well. The up arrow key has fallen off, and the optical drive is now completely non-fuctional.

...anyway... I've been mostly dwelling on the Thinkpad section of the Lenovo site, because I've always heard great reviews of them, and want a better machine the next time around, but I recently saw an ad for ibuypower.com in a magazine, and thought I might check out their stuff. It looks good. Hell, it looks awesome.

I'm specifically eyeballing this one here: http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/s...or.aspx?mid=273#header

Can I get some yeas or nays about this? One of my biggest questions involves the battery life. This particular model does not specify what capacity battery it comes with.

 

[Brainonska511]

I haven't really heard anythign good or bad for them.

I'd personally look for something else though (that's smaller). You can get the Asus F8 which uses the same GPU as the notebook you linked to and its cheaper and lighter.

 

[imported_Uber]

Well, its the power I'm after, so much more than smallness.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: Uber
Well, its the power I'm after, so much more than smallness.

I understand. The IBuyPower notebook could be a good option, but I was just pointing out that there are equally priced, equally powerful, and smaller notebooks available.

 

[Banzai042]

My suggestion would be to stay as far as possible from iBuyPower. My freshmen year of college I had a comp from them, and it was only working for 6 months of the school year. The rest of the year it was out due to problems with motherboards failing, power supplies burning out, and other problems. On top of that their service was very slow and they seemed to have no real desire to get my problems fixed. At one point they sent me a completely different mobo with far less features since the one I had kept burning out, that took a while to sort out. Their prices may be good, but there's a very good reason they're that low, cheap customer service.

 

[manimal]

I still have an Ibuypower notebook with a AMD 64 3000 chip. At the time the 9700 mobile card was the best available and ran a ton of games very ably in its day. I never had any hardware failures and it still runs 4 years later. I believe most IBP laptops are winbond clones.

 

[imported_Uber]

ok, lets mark down one negative review and one positive review.

anybody else?

 

[TheStu]

Negative for iBuyPower desktops. Friend had one, worst thing I have ever seen. 2 PSUs, 3 mobos (basically identical to Banzai's problems)

 

[imported_Uber]

Well, Its not the desktops I'm concerned with.

 

[Throckmorton]

This has a better processor (AMD sucks now) and the same GPU for less money, and it's 14" http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16834220240

If you buy that 17" you'll be suffering the hugeness for no benefit.

 

[imported_Uber]

Well, the same laptop I showed you here is available with Intel processors, but I really do want to hear your reasoning for why AMD sucks now. Also, the free games that come with the AMD one are better.

As for that link you posted, looks pretty nifty, but I kinda do want more memory than 1 gig. When I was configuring that one on ibuypower, I put 4 gigs on it.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Uber
Well, the same laptop I showed you here is available with Intel processors, but I really do want to hear your reasoning for why AMD sucks now. Also, the free games that come with the AMD one are better.

As for that link you posted, looks pretty nifty, but I kinda do want more memory than 1 gig. When I was configuring that one on ibuypower, I put 4 gigs on it.

INtel has better power management, clock for clock is faster, and run cooler.

So what if it has 1GB RAM? A 4GB is less than $100 from newegg, and is easy as pie to install. I generally consider the base RAM of a system last since usually I am willing to install my own.

 

[Throckmorton]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: Uber
Well, the same laptop I showed you here is available with Intel processors, but I really do want to hear your reasoning for why AMD sucks now. Also, the free games that come with the AMD one are better.

As for that link you posted, looks pretty nifty, but I kinda do want more memory than 1 gig. When I was configuring that one on ibuypower, I put 4 gigs on it.

INtel has better power management, clock for clock is faster, and run cooler.

So what if it has 1GB RAM? A 4GB is less than $100 from newegg, and is easy as pie to install. I generally consider the base RAM of a system last since usually I am willing to install my own.

That Asus has one slot free IIRC, so you just have to buy a 1gb or 2gb stick and pop it in.


You also can't beat the 1 year accidental and 2 year warranty. From Dell or whatever, that would cost a few hundred $ extra.