So, if you read my blog post from the other day, you'd know that I'm about to embark on a new career as a consultant/freelancer. One of my first duties is to buy a laptop that I can haul around for work. But I also want a machine that will do justice to the latest games, so I can keep up on new technologies (e.g., Vista) and continue reviewing titles for this site (which, if traffic continues to grow, could eventually be a revenue stream for my business!). Heck, I may even indulge in that anathema to busy gamers everywhere: World of Warcraft. So I'm looking for a good laptop. Right now, I'm eyeing the Alienware Area-51 m5790 built out into the midrange. I don't need the overclocked CPU or high-end video card - it's already going to smoke my 2-year-old HP Pavilion desktop. I'm planning to max out the RAM and go for the 7200 rpm RAID 0 drives and DVD burner so I'll be good to go for video editing should I decide to put together any more fun YouTube clips. Does anyone have the m5790 yet? Is it as good as it looks? Are there better, more cost-effective alternatives? And how are you liking Vista so far?
For the record, I've already ruled out a MacBook - despite my deep Apple roots and the dual-boot possibility, I really just need a solid Windows machine right now. So, what are you using? What are some of the gotchas? This will be the first laptop I've bought since a 68K PowerBook in the mid-'90s, so any tips are welcome...
