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Originally posted by ******** Hi, I'm looking for a laptop in the $1500-2000 price range. What is new in 2008, what is good from past years? Any suggestions?

Well I would wait then till next year, and they will release the first Quad Core Mobile CPUs, and I am sure they will also have better HDs (Soild State is the future) and better quality graphic cards..esp Integrated (which usually suck but they are working to make them better). But it all depends on what you are going to use your laptop for...if just email/internet browsing and listening to music, you don't need anything that much, but if you do graphic design/video editing/music production/video gaming, then you probably want something in that price range.

Core 2 Quad (for laptops) should be available by late spring, around April or May. You really don't need it now, but in a year or two Quad will replace Dual Core and more applications will be multi-threaded. So when 8 core comes out, Quad core will be the standard (software takes sometime to catch up with hardware, so right now, a lot of software is starting to make use of Dual core). If I were you though, just get Dual core, cause you really don't need Quad core unless your doing mostly video/graphics type things or gaming (newer multi-threaded games). You can get a 2.4 ghz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM and a 160 gb HD for around $1,500 from Toshiba. Toshiba is highly rated as far as laptops, but Dell, HP, Lenovo (IBM) and Sony almost make good ones. Then there's Apple, but the majority of schools use PCs. So I would say go with a Toshiba if you want a reliable and affordable laptop.

Last edited by Spirit5 on Dec-13-2007 at 05:33

My Quad Core works great with my Audio software....except Reason. When I need to re-wire reason in to Cubase I tell Reason to work on core-4 and tell Cubase to use the 1st three cores. Definitely recommend a quad core if it's available on Laptops at a decent price sometime soon.

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We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of dreams....

Since the laptop is for school, I assume you will be carrying it around with you. If that is the case, DO NOT go with a 17" imo - they are too big and too heavy.

I suggest you take a close look at the MacBook or MacBook Pro. Pretty nice. More and more people are going mac all the time.

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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

---JFK---

A fight is not won by one punch or kick. Either learn to endure or hire a bodyguard.

Forget about winning and losing; forget about pride and pain. Let your opponent graze your skin and you smash into his flesh; let him smash into your flesh and you fracture his bones; let him fracture your bones and you take his life. Do not be concerned with escaping safely - lay your life before him.

---Bruce Lee---