Thinking of Purchasing a Gaming Laptop? -- Bad Idea

Laptops have never exactly been known for performance. Even though a laptop may nominally be a good computer, equipped with a reasonably fast processor, an ample helping of RAM, and a respectable hard disk, it always seems to run slower than a desktop that costs half as much. Most reasonable people, being reasonable people, have thus given up on the idea of a laptop as a high performance machine, instead using their laptops for moderate, humble, and portable duties, while saving the heavy lifting for their desktops, but apparently not everybody has. Proof of this would come in the form of HP's new "The Dragon" entertainment laptop.

Looking at its statistics, one has to wonder. The machine is equipped with a 2.4 GHz dual core Centrino Core 2 Duo processor, a 20 inch screen, a 256 MB graphics card, a whopping 4 GB of RAM, and two, (count 'em, two) 200 GB hard drives. The whole thing weighs more than 15 pounds, is almost 2.5 inches thick. It doesn't look too much like a laptop, all things considered. Obviously, it costs more than $2,000.

What could HP be thinking? One would be inclined to think that the computer manufacturer has completely lost its marbles, but it is not the only one to offer such computers. Dell, for example, offers a $3,500 XPS Mobile Desktop, which it calls "The Showstopper". It looks even less like a laptop, folding up from its base to reveal a three-part desktop computer.

Apparently, these computers are appealing to wealthy and mobile gamers. With a computer like one of these, a person could continue right on blowing up aliens while on vacation, all the while enjoying the performance that only a high end computer could offer.

This is, I suppose, another use of mobile technology. While generally the focus has been on improving mobility, creating computers and other gadgets that are smaller, lighter, better connected, more efficient, and have longer battery life, it appears that portable brawn is also a valid pursuit. Although at the moment it seems difficult to imagine a market for computers like these, beyond providing entertainment for a few seriously spoiled adolescent couch potatoes, the mobile desktop could, if perfected, become a major product. If technology progressed to the point at which computers like these were reasonably cheap, generally in the ballpark of the their desktop equivalents, portable desktops might take off. Traveling computers of all stripes might be able to take advantage of such products, editing video, sound, or complicated graphics on the road.

Until this happens, however, as Engadget pointed out on its blog, saving for college might be a better plan.

Sources:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/08/hp-pavilion-hdx-the-dragon-entertainment-laptop-announced/