17" vs 18"
Both screens look good but have you considered the following....
1) The power required to power the screens will be different and will impact battery life. If you are using as a portable desktop this is not an issue but with large screens such as these you will be lucky to get near 2hrs battery life and may require carrying spare batteries if you need to use portable (extra weight and expense).
2) The graphics card will need to perform more work to drive the larger screen - the 9700m is a good card but will give off alot of heat under load. This will require the inbuilt cooling system (the fans) to perform more work in dissipating the heat and may lead to a noisier machine (not familiar with either so cant say which will be noisier).
3) How good is your eyesight, although 17"/18" seems quite large those resolutions are normally suited to 22-24" monitors so whilst working on the laptops at their native resolutions the default fonts will be quite small. I dont find it uncomfortable on my toshiba but I know plenty of people that do.
4) Portability - My tosh has a 17" screen and just fits inside the laptop rucksack that I have for carrying it around - they are a godsend as these beasts are heavy. I found it quite hard to get a decent protective case for a 17" laptop - you may find it near impossible for an 18.4".
If money is not an issue and some of the above is then you may do better to look at a totally different laptop. If battery life is of concern (and money isnt) then look for one that has solid state disks (SSD) as these require less power and perform much better (speed wise) than the traditional laptop winchester disk. Also if battery life is of concern go for as smaller screen as your comfortable with at the best resolution for your eyesight - easy way to find this out is take a trip to your local computer store(s) and find what your comfortable with - then do your research online to find best price/performance combination.
Cheers
Jof.
Last edited by Jofm5; 2nd December 2008 at 14:58.
Reason: Spelling/grammer