Buying a new laptop

I need some help deciding which laptop to get, I currently own a Asus g73
SPECS:

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Core i7 Processor
6GB Ram
ATI Graphics card w/ 1GB DDR5 ram
500GB HD @ 7200rpm

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But the problem with this is that I can't do anything mobile as this is a more of a desktop replacement, that i can move around with me yet can't use when im out. I also gave my new MacBook to my wife, as she didn't have a laptop and I didn't really mind. I've been trying to find a decent laptop at no more then $1150 though would like to find something closer to the $700 range. Yet specs at that range aren't exactly that great. Somethings I'm looking for are; 3-6 hours battery life, compatible with BackTrack 5 (the wireless driver needs to support injection), and if the specs are closer to the higher end I'd like to see i5 with 4-6GB of ram. And rather not have an on board gfx card. I have found a good amount of laptops on amazon and if anyone has some ideas it would be a great help.

Ones that I like:

ASUS A53U-XE1 15.6-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Mocha)

ASUS A53U-XA1 15.6-Inch Versatile Entertainment Laptop (Mocha)

HP Envy 14-1260SE Beats Edition Notebook (Black)

HP ENVY 14-2050SE 14.5-Inch Beats Edition Notebook (Black)

HP ProBook 4530s XU015UT 15.6" LED Notebook (2.1 GHz Intel Core i3-2310M Dual-Core Processor, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Hard Drive, DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL LightScribe, Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)

So if anyone has any idea if these support BackTrack5 wireless injection drivers that would be great, and any links anyone has to laptops they know support BackTrack5 would be amazing.

Also some supported wireless drivers for anyone wondering what they are: Supported Drivers

As a caveat, HP has announced that they are exiting the PC business. I've had good luck with business class HP machines, but my daughter's consumer grade machines have all failed (disk controller) at the 15 month mark.

This link might be helpful?

http://www.stygianhackerz.com/index....rack&Itemid=58

:):)

feck it
you have a nice decent budget
you seem to know a little about lappies too :P
so get stuck into your local PC palace
and rip the pee out of the staff there
whilst fondling as many lappies as ya can :eek: :D
make a day of it
take a picnic :P

I'm thinking of buying a Samsung RF711 S02. I've been partial to Toshiba, but lately they seem like they're going the HP or Dell route.

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I've been partial to Toshiba, but lately they seem like they're going the HP or Dell route.

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Dunno about that mate, I haven't finished with my 486/75MHz one yet :D. It still kills aliens like a good'un ;)

My thinkpad PIII/533 cost GBP10.............that's the most (and total) I have ever paid for, or pretty much would be willing to, for a craptop. My bro-in-law in Alabama bought the new one for my 60th :lildevil:...........or for his sister on my 60th.??????????????

Hell, if it won't support 6x2TB drives SATA3 + 3x SATA3 expansion cards (x2 drives each), USB3 etc.............then why would you want it............???? I bought a good electronic bug swat for 4.99..............better wrist action than a craptop :p:cool:

I can give my opinion on this for whatever it's worth:

My Laptop is a Dell Inspiron I bought back when I was working and going to school. To keep the price down, I concentrated on making it decent, but, kept a few things in mind:

When I bought it, it was coming default with a shitty Battery. The problem there, is that a Laptop, no matter how good, isn't all that great if you need to plug it in to use it. so I spent the extra money to get Lithium Ion. Today I doubt this is even an issue, but, I did spend more cash for a better Battery.

The other "upgrade" I selected, was the video card; I spent extra and got an Nvidia Card for it, as the Intel card it was coming with, didn't really make me want it.

I got a normal DVD-ROM drive instead of a Burner, as that saved me some money, and, the HD is only 30 GBs, which, even though that isn't a lot, I have lots of disk space it can share, so it's not an issue for me. I have an FTP Server, a USB HD that's 80 GBs, a 1 GB Thumb Drive, an 8 GB thumb Drive, and, we recently got a 250 GB Passport Portable USB HD, for 29.99. So I wasn't worried about that.

It's got 512 MBs of RAM, and an Intel Pentium 4 - M @ 3.06 GHz. Works nice for me. My Wife's Laptop is way better, and with the prices of today, your budget price, should get you quite a decent Laptop.

Just remember that in a Laptop that you'd like to actually be mobile, you're prbably going to have to make sure that Battery, REAL Video Card, and RAM, should matter more than Processor Speed itself. The Processor, I'd personally take a slower one in a Laptop, as it usually means less heat, and, of course, getting something that doesn't run hot to begin with helps too.

A big trade off in cost versus battery life is a solid state disk.
I upgraded my Dell Latitude D620 to an SSD.
SSD's use very little power compared to rotating media.

That's actually a pretty good idea too. If I was personally buying a new Laptop, this is more or less what I'd do:

First, your budget is actually pretty high compared to what I'm used to helping people deal with (Like Students and so on who don't have a whole lot of money, but need a Laptop they can use for school) and so in that area, I think you've got more than enough for a VERY nice Laptop.

If I was picking out something for myself, I'd want either a Dell or an HP. I can't say one bad thing about HP Computers; The first Computer I EVER bought, was an HP Pavilion, whcih I know I've brought up somewhere before, but I haven't ever had issues.

In fact, I bought that Computer like right before 2000 hit, and, I didn't have ONE issue with it hardware wise until a few years ago the video card started going on me. And considering how heavy I used the thing, I was surprised nothing else happened.

The video card on it started getting bad on me, and recently, it started to REALLY go, but considering I've had that Computer for 11 years.... It's a LITTLE hard to complain about it. So I can say that much about HP.

My personal Laptop, is a Dell, and this machine is also a Dell, as is one of my Wife's Desktops. We haven't really had any issues there either which is why I said Dell or HP would be my choice.

As for hardware, I'd personally want something like this:

SSD for the HD, decent Intel based Processor that is made for Laptops so you have less power consumption and all that, and a REAL video card of course, since I can't stand on board anything.

I'd basically get the best Battery I could get, the better Video Card, and as much RAM as you can afford to put into it.

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But the problem with this is that I can't do anything mobile as this is a more of a desktop replacement, that i can move around with me yet can't use when im out.

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and:

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Somethings I'm looking for are; 3-6 hours battery life, compatible with BackTrack 5 (the wireless driver needs to support injection), and if the specs are closer to the higher end I'd like to see i5 with 4-6GB of ram.

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The requirement would seem to be for a road warrior's toolbox with penetration testing in mind?

The problem with laptops is that they are pretty much WYSIWYG, and not as flexible as desktops in the specs offered by OEMs.

You get the "portable desktop" throughout the price spectrum, with all low end machines being portable desktops, as are the very high end gaming offerings.

Battery life will be abysmal at the low end due to cost, and at the high (gaming) end, due to power consumption.

A good example would be my Compaq CQ61US (yeah! a grey import :D) I guess it had a battery life of around 90 minutes straight out of the box. Lenovo, Acer, Dell and Toshiba competitors seem pretty much the same, from the ones I have worked on.

Some random considerations on the matter: ;)

1. OEM kit is built to price rather than performance. Just talk to a salesperson in a retail store and you will see what I mean........they know Jack ****.

2. A lot of these battery life figures are based on the kit running at half ****, in battery saving mode, so an i5 or better is a waste of money, as anything from Intel frequently is. There is a distinct tradeoff between performance and stamina here. Like do you buy a Porsche and always drive it in first gear?:eek:

3. Laptop onboard graphics work just fine if you get the right ones....I personally like the ATI/AMD 4200 series. Mine gets a score of 4.6 out of 7.9 on the Windows 7 experience meter. Hell, you don't need fancy graphics for a road warrior's toolbox!.............you are not surfing pr0n or playing games are you?

4. You can buy a more powerful battery.........like one for my Compaq would cost GBP120............... that's around 50% of the entire cost of the machine!!!

5. You might be able to get an extension base that will take extra batteries/HDDs

6. You can get a battery charger and spare battery/ies

7. Go for a smaller screen, unless you are going to do your wardriving in a used Google spy car ;)

8. Look for a solid state HDD or at least a hybrid. You don't need a lot of disk space on a truly portable road warrior's toolbox. If you get an extension base you can swap the two drives over, if it comes with a standard HDD.

9. Don't get Windows 7 Ultimate, and turn off all the eye candy, as you don't need it on a professional machine. Assuming a dual boot scenario, of course. If you are intending to boot *nix distros only then you need to look at what will work with them...........most OEM kit is intended for Windows only :(

10. If Backtrack 5 is that important, that is probably what will limit your choice. You need to prioritise your requirements like this:

(a) Absolutely essential.
(b) Important.
(c) Nice to have.
(d) Don't give a rodent's rectum.

Happy hunting!

:)

Because Backtrack 5 is important, you should identify which wireless NIC's support it.
Then see if it is available in a mini-pci form factor. If so, you can easily replace the wi-fi
in most notebooks. I replaced the wi-fi on my old Dell notebook with an Intel card a few months ago. It was a no-brainer.

So I went wild and went outside of my budget, $1189. And got the MacBook Pro. Saying this, I know that BackTrack boots and works on my MacBook (less then a year old and gave it to my wife, aren't I so nice). Also the battery life which is 7 hours, though i think thats a reach, and you have to have everything off. So I think 4-5 hours wont be too far of a stretch. Also the backlit keyboard and touchpad are really nice. The only downside is the intel graphics card. I hate myself for getting the 13'' with the on board graphics. But in the end i don't need something im going to game on that much. (Though I can play CS & a few other Valve games.)

@nihil BT was (a) absolutely essential to me. Otherwise I would have kept the Asus and lived with the battery life, but not having an injection capable laptop on a $1200 computer is outrageous, i have no idea what Asus was thinking. Though I don't think most gamers spending $1200 on there laptop really care about it. But for me its something i really would like to have.

On the downside about the mac, #1 is price unless you make more then minimum wage and then a lot more. It's likely not really worth it. Unless you have other reasons to do it. (I also do web design and PHP, and i feel inspired when using my macbook and so it was something that was an added touch.)
#2 The price
#3 Right click ... jk just change the settings. And you gets lots of other clicks (gestures).
Though other then that I can't really think of many, but i really do like it, and think its worth the money. Though I think this thread is a really good resourse for others who have laptops and want to look at cheeper solutions. And we should keep this going with more options and cheeper ideas, though i know some will want a pricy solution. So if you have the money, dont mind being called a fan boy and want BT to work a MB or MBP isn't a bad idea.

Even though my personal dream machine that I'd skull **** a baby to own, is an SGI, I do LOVE the Macbook Pro. It's Beautiful, it's neat, and it's all around awesome. The only problem is that damned price.

I wish SGI made Laptops with IRIX..... That one you can see in.... Jurassic Park is it? Was actually made by SGI, but it's just a Prop, nothing more. If only they made real ones.... Damn.

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but not having an injection capable laptop on a $1200 computer is outrageous, i have no idea what Asus was thinking.

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Hah! that one is easy! :D

Like all OEMs they were thinking of making money. Over here at least, I would say that 99% of the population haven't even heard of packet injection, let alone know its requirements.

Furthermore, 99% of laptops ship with Windows because that is what customers want or are prepared to accept. It seems to be an assumption that if you want to run *nix distros it will be in a multi-boot environment, so you get Billy Windows whether you like it or not?

To an OEM, packet injection isn't even a "nice to have"..............it's bloody irrelevant!!! ;)

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I think this thread is a really good resourse for others who have laptops and want to look at cheeper solutions. And we should keep this going with more options and cheeper ideas

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Now, you really hit the nail on the head in your first post when you mentioned "drivers" (several times :))..................basically all WiFi cards are capable of packet injection, it is just that they don't have the drivers for it. :(

ua549 makes a very interesting contribution with this:

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Because Backtrack 5 is important, you should identify which wireless NIC's support it. Then see if it is available in a mini-pci form factor. If so, you can easily replace the wi-fi in most notebooks.

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That got me thinking about my home setup. Most of my machines are 10 years old or so, and don't have a WiFi card, so I use USB wireless adapters instead.

It occurs to me that if you can find an adapter that has drivers that support packet injection, you can run Backtrack on any machine, or any number of them, for the cost of only one adapter? (and you won't need a screwdriver :D). Realtek and Ralink might be good places to start?

That would leave you free to select your laptop on the other parameters, and greatly increase your choices. :cool:

I gave my daughter a Macbook Pro with a standard hard drive (not an SSD) 6 months ago. She reports battery life of about 3½ hours when she is actually doing stuff.

OTOH when I switched my old Dell D620 to an SSD I got a battery runtime bonus of ~30 minutes.

Will definitely have to look into adding an SSD along with 2GB more of ram. 4GB is nice but 6GB would be better along with the added bonus for when im working with VMs

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Originally Posted by m3rk3r

but 6GB would be better

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but only if you run a 64 bit OS :eek:

otherwise you're stuck with a usable size of 2 to the 32 power = about 3.6 GB

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Originally Posted by foxyloxley

but only if you run a 64 bit OS

otherwise you're stuck with a usable size of 2 to the 32 power = about 3.6 GB

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Not exactly. IIRC the Intel Pentium Pro introduced the 36 bit address bus back in the mid-1990's. There are several 32 bit operating systems that use 36 bit addressing including some versions of Windows and most versions of *nix. In addition almost all of the current operating systems have 64 bit versions available.

(I ran 32 bit Windows Server on my 8 core 16 GB memory server several years ago. I also tried 32 bit BSD on that system with full memory access.)

OSX is a 64bit operating system

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ioreg -l -p IODeviceTree | grep firmware-abi
| | "firmware-abi" = <"EFI64">

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So i do get the full effect with the 64bit operating system, and BackTrack i think also comes in a 64bit flavor though 32bit for that isn't a problem.

Hi m3rk3r,

Can you tell me why it would be 6GB? I am afraid I mostly deal with desktops, and obviously those are all I build. Since windows 7 came out, I haven't built anything with less than 8GB dual channel.

:confused:

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Originally Posted by nihil

Hi m3rk3r,

Can you tell me why it would be 6GB? I am afraid I mostly deal with desktops, and obviously those are all I build. Since windows 7 came out, I haven't built anything with less than 8GB dual channel.

:confused:

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DDR3 I would guess

DDR2 preferred twin matched sticks
as it worked on both +ve and -ve cycles hence the 2 pipes mentioned in specs

DDR3 = 3 pipes ?
and likewise would therefore prefer 3 matched stickes to utilise

and as for

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36 bit address bus back in the mid-1990's

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wasn't going to be in many private machines though :(

Every Intel 32 bit processor since the Pentium Pro has a 36 bit memory address bus.
Now days the memory address bus is 64 bits wide in current micro processors.
There are several other (older) processors that are 128 bit processors.
The Matrox G400 is called a 256 bit processor.

The real issue is what defines the generic name of X number of bits in a processor - memory bus, data bus, instruction size, numeric precision, ... They've all been used to define a processor. The earliest microprocessors had an 80 bit floating point processor.