BenQuilter

as you can see above, i'm thinking of getting a laptop, specifically a toshiba tecra s-1. as far as in terms of quality, is the toshiba a good choice, and is the 1.7ghz pentium m going to be comparable to a 2.5ghz pentium 4-M? also, the s1 only has 32MB of videocard memory. the plan is to play games on this as well. should i maybe get a different model that will let me have a more memory?

and not to start a flame war, should i get a powerbook? i'm tempted, but i'm unsure about not wanting to give up my comfort with windows/being able to play more games on the pc, as well as how a 1ghz g4 compares to its pentium challengers.

LeeJend

Laptops aren't my strong point but here are some of the issues I've heard to watch out for:

LCD will smear when playing first person shooters or action games. Ok on startegy games.

Some of the faster pentium chips have a built in slow down mode. They reduce clock speed when they feel it's needed (heat, battery, etc) this will murder your frames per second.

As for the relative performance (P$ vs Pm) I have never seen anyone benchmark laptops,other than for battery life. But expect the laptop to be slower than any desktop. The laptops can't afford the power pig graphic accelerator cards.

As for the powerbook.... Apple is still in business? Wow, I didn't think there were enough people around stupid enough to buy overpriced proprietary hardware that runs overpriced software to keep them in business.

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Taurus

make up your mind! haha...

anyway, if you want to play games on whatever laptop you get, make sure it has a dedicated graphics adapter, as opposed to an onboard one that shares system memory. those are useless for gaming. the phrase "Mobility Radeon" is a good one to look for when selecting a laptop. you should be able to find a good laptop with a mobility radeon 9000 for not too much. but if you were really thinking about buying a powerbook, you must be prepared to spend quite a bit!

UofEEE

Not to discredit you..but I'll add my two cents. The LCD MAY smear, that doesn't mean it will.

As for the clock slow down, that's not true unless you're unplugged...the P4M is a lower voltage, so it doesn't run as hot.

Yes, people benchmark notebooks, unless you just crawled out of a hole. I just read a few reviews in Laptop magazine and yes, they benchmarked it.

Okay...as for PM vs. P4M the PM (Centrino) will save you on battery life and is still fast. It also will reduce the packaging (aka lighter notebook). So you'd be good to go either way. If you want to play games, I would get a P4 desktop chip notebook with ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 or higher. That'd be the way to go. As for Apple...you can get an AWESOME WinTel based notebook for what you can get an Apple for.