Asus G1 Laptop

Finally pulled the trigger on a new laptop for use on the road. Got an Asus G1 laptop from milestonepc.com. Pretty stock except I changed the hard drive to a 7200rpm model and extended the warranty for 3 yrs total.

Cost was about 2K. Should be a solid laptop and good for entertainment and gaming. Also dropped by newegg.com and picked up a 500GB firewire/USB external hard drive. I'll backup the laptop factory stock to it first thing on it's own partition, strip out everything and make a second backup via norton ghost on another partition once it's ready to go on the road. I'll use the rest of the space for games/movies/music/ebooks and whatnot.

So why this brand & model? I did a bunch of research, as is my wont, and here's what I found out.

1) If you're thinking about buying a laptop, go here first:

http://www.notebookreview.com/

The forums are hugely useful for research and reading what owners have to say.

2) The thing to be aware of is that there are actually only a few laptop makers: Quanta, Compal, Asus, MSI, Uniwill and Clevo, and that's basically it (there are others, but these brands have market dominance). Almost all of the others you hear of, like Dell, Alienware, Falcon Northwest, Voodoo etc are actually made by one of the above names.

By example:

Clevo makes the Sager NP9750 = Voodoo Envy u:709 = Alienware Aurora m7700 = Hypersonic Aviator FX7. They are basically all the same computer, which means if you buy a high end Sager you get the same innards as a Alienware at about 40% the price.

Compal makes Dell, HP, & Compaqs. The Compal HEL80 = Voodoo Envy I:534 = Hypersonic Aviator MV6. And again, same innards, different outside, and lower costs.

Quanta makes Dell's Latitudes, Sony's Vaio series and IBM's (Lenovo) laptops.

Now Asus, on the other hand, is slightly different.

Asus makes their own laptops under their logo. Consequently, support is better (one day turnaround on repairs is not unheard of, and build quality just seems to be higher). Their support is, by all accounts, simply top notch. Which makes sense. You are dealing direct with the OEM for support. No one is going to know the product better. Of course they're known for all their other parts as well. Mainboards, video, etc.

MSI, similar to Asus, makes their own laptops. There are a few others, such as FIC, Mitac, ECS, AOpen and Gigabyte, but some of them don't sell direct to you and others are lower end stuff.

The point here, is that if you want a very nice laptop, don't go the way of the Boutique makers or ginormous companies that just slap their label on and then outsource support to India.

Instead, go to the OEMs or one of the smaller online shops and you can get a MUCH better deal on the same equipment.

I currently have a gov't bought Dell XPS M1710. which is very speedy. The other side of the coin is, it's 17" laptop and weighs 10lbs or so. Consequently, if you are travelling a lot, or have limited space, you may want to consider other options.

If you are wanting to game, and want to travel a lot, your best bet right now is probably an Asus G1. Like mine, they can be had for about 2K. It has good resolution, can be used with a larger monitor, and weighs about 7lbs with power supply. 15.4" widescreen style display and an Nvidia GeForce7700.

If you are NOT as mobile, able to leave your laptop someplace for days or weeks, then consider one of the 17" Sagers. It is simply the best bang for your buck. A couple of US sites (useful for pricing and specing):

http://www.xoticpc.com/

http://www.milestonepc.com/

http://www.proportable.com/

http://www.killernotebooks.com/

http://www.flawlesscomputers.com/

http://www.eurocom.com/

So the smart thing to do is figure out how you're going to use it, and what your budget ceiling is. For me, even though I could afford some 5000.00 beast laptop, I've chosen the Asus G1 because it's smaller and lighter, has a better battery life, and has really good support.

The other advantage to dealing with a smaller laptop specific reseller is this. I ordered my laptop at 1PM. By 5:15 pm I not only had a tracking number, it was out the door in the hands of UPS and I'd gotten three emails on it's status. You simply do not get that kind of personal attention from a major reseller.

Regards,

-Bouncer-