im looking for a 2.1 or a nice 2.0 computer speakers <150 bucks. this is what i came up with so far. thoughts/recommendations? My main usage is for movies/games so i dont know if i really need a subwoofer

http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/5853/Pro_Audio_Recording/Studio_Monitors/M-Audio/AV-40_-_Studiophile_Desktop_Monitors.htm
http://canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=41_535&item_id=005685

Originally Posted by RyanC

That literally looks like the exact same laptop I'm using right now! Haha, except for the specs, of course.

http://www.canadacomputers.c om/pro...em_id =035000

Originally Posted by RankNullity

I'm also looking for a laptop that is decent for gaming for relatively under $1000. Any suggestions?

Expand on your usage, do you desire portability/battery life

Originally Posted by Commie8507

Expand on your usage, do you desire portability/battery life

Going for a gaming laptop usually implies you don't care about portability and batterylife...

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

Going for a gaming laptop usually implies you don't care about portability and batterylife...

not necessarily, optimus provides a substantial increase in battery life along with sandy bridge based processors. When battery is not a requirement it allows one to go immediately to an i7.

if ur going for a gaming laptop, expect the battery life to be short. battery technology cannot keep up with power usage

ya I generally do not care about battery life so much since I'll be playing plugged in all the time. but the longer-lasting the battery the better

Originally Posted by blackdragon

I was reading this article recently that said next year (2012) prices for SSD's are expected to go mainstream. So if you can wait, I'd suggest waiting till then, if not, let me know what type your looking for and ill search for one in that price range.

My personal opinion though is just wait. SSD's are quicker, but you only really notice the "big" differences when loading and shutting down your PC (there are other differences for gaming and such as well), so they are not an upgrade that is absolutely necessary.

As someone who bought an SSD earlier this year, I can confirm this. The opening of programs is much faster too. I would definitely not recommend SSDs to non super techy people right now because the technology isn't exactly perfected. Write performance is generally equal or less than that of hard drives and the write lifetime is comparatively short to hard drives as well. Because of this, you have to take a ton of precautions to avoid writing to the thing as much as possible (disabling swap/paging, enabling TRIM, moving temp folder to RAM. etc). The drive will die pretty fast if you treat it like a normal hard drive.

If you really want speed, consider looking into 10,000 rpm drives instead for the time being.

RyanC: For under $800, it is really hard to find a laptop with a solid graphics card for gaming. You can get a good processor, hdd space, and ram, but the graphics card would suffer. The best I could find right now are these, which are closer to $800:
1) http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...otebook. html
2) http://www.canadacomputers.c om/pro...em_id =035843
3) http://www.canadacomputers.c om/pro...em_id =036322
4) http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...dpNo=689 1953


RankNullity: It was much easier to find one for the $1000 budget:
1) http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...dpNo=689 1953
2) http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applicatio...046&CatId=4938 (has an SSD and HDD, and its dual graphics (intel and Ati)!)

Leeoku: Why are you looking at such high prices for a 2.1 or 2.0 system? If you want a 2.1 system, check out these:
1) http://www.directcanada.com/products...itech%20Canada
2) http://www.directcanada.com/products...ure=LO GITECH
3) http://www.directcanada.com/products...ure=LO GITECH

Maybe consider this 5.1 for under $100:
http://www.directcanada.com/products...cture=Ot hers
1)

Originally Posted by Leeoku

im looking for a 2.1 or a nice 2.0 computer speakers <150 bucks. this is what i came up with so far. thoughts/recommendations? My main usage is for movies/games so i dont know if i really need a subwoofer

http://www.long-mcquade.com/products/5853/Pro_Audio_Recording/Studio_Monitors/M-Audio/AV-40_-_Studiophile_Desktop_Monitors.htm
http://canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=41_535&item_id=005685

I own the one you've linked to in Canada Computers. I got them on sale at best buy for $100. I've liked them very much, though I feel like I'm hindering its performance since I don't have a decent sound card.

The subwoofer is HUGE, it's almost as big as my colour laser jet printer. I think a subwoofer should be necessary for games and movies, since it takes care of all the bass, which games and movies will definitely have a lot of. If you look at home theatre surround sound systems, they usually have a subwoofer.

And I did have this one problem, the wire screwed up because it was flimsy and I didn't take care of it. So I ended up having to snip it off the failing part and connect another wire to it.

my friend tells me that because theres only one circle on the side speakers, it would miss alot on the mid range frequency level. is that true, aka would sounds of that level come out muffled or is it hard to hear?

Originally Posted by Leeoku

my friend tells me that because theres only one circle on the side speakers, it would miss alot on the mid range frequency level. is that true, aka would sounds of that level come out muffled or is it hard to hear?

Hmm... I'm not sure about the theory behind that, but from experience I haven't noticed any sort of missing frequencies.

Originally Posted by Leeoku

my friend tells me that because theres only one circle on the side speakers, it would miss alot on the mid range frequency level. is that true, aka would sounds of that level come out muffled or is it hard to hear?

Not even sure what you're talking about with regards to 'side speakers', but most speakers have two drivers that deal with two frequency ranges. Obviously more 'circles' would give you low mid and high to give a more defined sound.. most laptop/computer speakers really have problems with a nice bass, which is why people talk about getting subwoofers, etc.

the side speakers are the satellites and they only have one driver on each hence my concern for the output. i can tell from those specs that setup will have no problem with the bass, just worried about what is outputted from the satellites on the mid-high range frequencies

Originally Posted by Desda

People should l2google.

...quoth the chick who posted a thread asking how to type in Chinese on an Ipod touch?