Off Topic VII

[fatlever]

OK hardcore computer nerds, help me out. I am in the market for a new laptop. I've had the same one for 6 years and even though it still runs like a champ, I'm ready for an upgrade. Currently I have a Toshiba Satellite, 14 inch, 4GB RAM, 350GB HD, Intel 2 duo processor, running Vista, with 1280 x 800 resolution. I've been waiting for this thing to die for 3 years but it keeps on going. I will make it my backup.

Here is what I want in a laptop:

Under $1000 (thinking something in the $700 t0 $1000 range)
something powerful enough to run some older games or games at lower settings, but not hardcore gaming laptop
super duper fast
14-15 inch screen
lightweight
thin
doesn't have to have DVD player
Windows based, not Apple
not a touchscreen
8GB+ RAM
500+ GB HD, terrabyte would be ideal
at least HD - 1366 x 768, but preferably full HD 1900 x 1000
Intel processor 5 or 7 series (what is the difference?)

should I get something with a dedicated graphics card?
should I get something that has SDD hard drive? What makes having an SDD so great?

Thoughts?

[HornetJail]

OK hardcore computer nerds, help me out. I am in the market for a new laptop. I've had the same one for 6 years and even though it still runs like a champ, I'm ready for an upgrade. Currently I have a Toshiba Satellite, 14 inch, 4GB RAM, 350GB HD, Intel 2 duo processor, running Vista, with 1280 x 800 resolution. I've been waiting for this thing to die for 3 years but it keeps on going. I will make it my backup.

Here is what I want in a laptop:

Under $1000 (thinking something in the $700 t0 $1000 range)
something powerful enough to run some older games or games at lower settings, but not hardcore gaming laptop
super duper fast
15-16 inch screen
lightweight
thin
doesn't have to have DVD player
Windows based, not Apple
not a touchscreen
8GB+ RAM
500+ GB HD, terrabyte would be ideal
at least HD - 1366 x 768, but preferably full HD 1900 x 1000
Intel processor 5 or 7 series (what is the difference?)

should I get something with a dedicated graphics card?
should I get something that has SDD hard drive? What makes having an SDD so great?

Thoughts?

I'll answer some of this:

In that price range, you should have no problem running most games. I have a $450 Samsung laptop (i5 processor, 6GB RAM, 750GB, 15.6" 1366x768 screen, running Win8.1, and very lightweight- I sometimes forget that it's in my book bag) that runs 2k15 on medium to high settings, which is pretty much the extent of what I push it to, but I love it for a budget laptop.

With a $1000 budget, I imagine you'll be able to get an i7 (which is a much faster processor- definitely "super duper fast") integrated graphics, 8GB RAM, etc.

SSDs are kinda tricky. They're faster and highly durable as they have no moving parts (Flash memory), but you probably won't find a large solid state drive without really breaking the bank. I'd recommend a solid state if you're traveling a lot with the laptop and you're worried about it getting banged around, or if you don't need a ton of hard drive space (though it sounds like you probably do). I'd probably go with a regular hard drive in your situation.

I think your demands are definitely reasonable for your price range though.

Newegg search with some of your criteria

Also, I had a Toshiba Satellite, and my mom has had two of them- I'm never going back. Those things were disasters after the first year or two and Toshiba customer service was epic garbage. They tried to charge me $500 for a new screen after mine overheated and blew out- on a $550 laptop. Glad yours has lasted as long as it has, but my experience hasn't been good.

[fatlever]

Thanks Biz. I've been living on newegg, amazon and laptopninja the past few days. I figure if I went with an SSD I would just buy an external hard drive to make up for some of the space.

I was just reading about how the Toshiba brand went downhill the last few years. I guess I can strike those off my list. Glad mine was built back when they were making decent laptops. I got my in May 2009.

Been seeing a lot of nice Asus laptops that have a lot of what I am looking for. I've never had an Asus, but their fans seems to love them. Also seems like Acer has a few solid high performance laptops for decent price.

There is a tiny part of my that wouldnt mind a sweet 13 inch, powerful ultrabook, but then again, I don't really need a super portable laptop, since I am not really on the go like a college student or traveling salesman.

[Diop]

a lot of laptops have 2 drive bays now, so you can have a SSD for your operating system and a normal drive your most of your data.

SSD's are super fast, you gotta love the instant start up.

[Braggins]

OK hardcore computer nerds, help me out. I am in the market for a new laptop. I've had the same one for 6 years and even though it still runs like a champ, I'm ready for an upgrade. Currently I have a Toshiba Satellite, 14 inch, 4GB RAM, 350GB HD, Intel 2 duo processor, running Vista, with 1280 x 800 resolution. I've been waiting for this thing to die for 3 years but it keeps on going. I will make it my backup.

Here is what I want in a laptop:

Under $1000 (thinking something in the $700 t0 $1000 range)
something powerful enough to run some older games or games at lower settings, but not hardcore gaming laptop
super duper fast
14-15 inch screen
lightweight
thin
doesn't have to have DVD player
Windows based, not Apple
not a touchscreen
8GB+ RAM
500+ GB HD, terrabyte would be ideal
at least HD - 1366 x 768, but preferably full HD 1900 x 1000
Intel processor 5 or 7 series (what is the difference?)

should I get something with a dedicated graphics card?
should I get something that has SDD hard drive? What makes having an SDD so great?

Thoughts?

Newegg, DellOutlet, and the normal dell store, are the best places I've found for buying laptops/pc's. Dell outlet used to run amazing deals where you could get up to 15% off refurbished laptops, but I don't think they run those kinds of deals too often anymore, so newegg will likely be your best bet. I've never actually used amazon for cpu's but I'm sure they are a good option as well. I personally look for refurbished laptops on newegg as you can get significantly better hardware for your price point and I've never had a single issue with any refurbished product from newegg or dell. My current laptop is a mid-tier gaming laptop (at the time it was purchased, not so much anymore) that I bought refurbished 6 years ago and still runs perfectly. Your budget is enough that you could easily get a factory new laptop that could more than accomplish what you want, so buying refurbished might not be necessary for you, but it is an option to keep in mind.

Definitely go for a windows based non-apple product. Apple laptops are definitely very good but they are extremely overpriced for the hardware you get. Dell, HP, ASUS, ACER, and Lenovo are all decent. Avoid Alienware. They are good but very overpriced.

I would definitely go for an i-7 processor. You should have no problem finding something that fits everything you want and has at least a mid-tier i-7 processor. I-7 processors have 4 processing cores as opposed to 2 for most i-5's. I-7 is basically just the high end line of intel processors. I-5 if mid-tier and i-3 is low tier. I always go for intel processors and the i-7's are actually pretty reasonably priced these days.

Ram is extremely cheap so most of the laptops in your range will have more than you will actually need. You could go as low as 6-8gb and that would probably still be overkill, but most laptops you will probably be considering will have 8-16gb. I would go for 8gb in a laptop but you might find something that has 12-16 for a reasonable price.

You should be able to get at least a mid-tier gaming graphic card. Nvidia and Radeon graphics cards are both good, but I personally prefer Nvidia.They are pretty much the only graphics cards you can get, so if you are looking at a laptop and the graphics processor isn't Nvidia or Radeon then it likely means it doesn't actually have a dedicated graphics processor and won't be able to run any games on anything other than ultra low settings (if at all). Notebookcheck.net is an extremely useful resource. It has easily comparable performance benchmarks for virtually every graphic card available in laptops. Just use the search to find the card for whatever laptops you are considering and it will show their full technical specs and in most cases have specific stats on how well they can run specific games on different settings. They also rank every card in their database by overall performance and split them into tiers. On your budget I would want something in the upper half of the middle tier or bottom of the high tier.

I think the price of SSD's has went down a lot in the last few years so they are definitely worth it if you can afford it. As for HD size, I usually start out going for something on the low end of what I think I will need to keep my initial costs lower and then buy external HD's for additional storage as needed. I would personally start with 500gb but HD size is mostly just personal preference. Seagate makes small, fast, quiet, external HD's that are very reasonably priced. I bought one their 1tb hd's five years ago and it still works as well as it did on day one. It is usb 3.0 compatible (so very fast) and is really small (dimensions are probably 6 x 4 x 1 inch).

I'd go full hd for the screen resolution. I also find that 14-15 inches is the perfect screen size for laptops. I have a 17 inch dell and it feels too big and clunky. It is more of a desktop replacement than a laptop.

[penquin11]

And Wenger will probably ignore Arsenals biggest weaknesses again. They need a striker and defenders and a world class keeper (oh, nevermind, he says he has 3 world class keepers already), which means he will sign another 5 attacking midfielders.

To be fair Wojciech Szczęsny totally was the Keeper of the year just a season ago, but he really didn't look special this season. He's young though, so you never know.

That stated I agree about the need for a striker, it's been a while since they have had someone dominant in front and can only imagine that guys like Lacazette or Cavani would be clinical for them.

Being a Spurs fan I really want to see my team actually chase after some better defenders and a second striker. It would be nice to see us get Soldado off the books as well.

If Kane pulls a Sterling and starts talking about leaving the club I'm going to have a mental breakdown.

[EwingSweatsALot]

Btw I just want to get this off my chest.

I always thought something was sketchy, but it's been truly confirmed. Eff the effing Duggars.

[fatlever]

And Wenger will probably ignore Arsenals biggest weaknesses again. They need a striker and defenders and a world class keeper (oh, nevermind, he says he has 3 world class keepers already), which means he will sign another 5 attacking midfielders.

To be fair Wojciech Szczęsny totally was the Keeper of the year just a season ago, but he really didn't look special this season. He's young though, so you never know.

That stated I agree about the need for a striker, it's been a while since they have had someone dominant in front and can only imagine that guys like Lacazette or Cavani would be clinical for them.

Being a Spurs fan I really want to see my team actually chase after some better defenders and a second striker. It would be nice to see us get Soldado off the books as well.

If Kane pulls a Sterling and starts talking about leaving the club I'm going to have a mental breakdown.

I am rooting for you guys. Tottenham will always be my 2nd favorite of the bigger teams in England. Not sure why more of the good English teams recently don't spend much $$ on the spine of the team. Seems only Chelsea and Man City seem to care about that aspect. Spurs, Arsenal, LPool and lately Man U have largely ignored that part of their team. Get a great keeper, centerback, defensive midfielder and striker, first, then worry about the other areas.

[yosemiteben]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/InsideCarolina/status/601772982869086209[/tweet]

#itshappening

[fatlever]

@Braggins - thanks for the long write-up. Very helpful indeed. If you guys see any particular laptops that look good, post a link. I might post a few myself to see what others think.

[EwingSweatsALot]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/InsideCarolina/status/601772982869086209[/tweet]

#itshappening

Burn it to the ground and take that POS Swofford with you.

[fatlever]

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-Y40-80-Laptop-i7-5500U-80FA001CUS/dp/B00SIMWIZW/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8

Laptop under consideration, only $700

I'm guessing the very nice price for these specs has to do with this lawsuit about some spyware called Superfish, which was loaded on the Lenovo laptops.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2887392/ ... snafu.html

seems easy enough to remove.

[Vanderbilt_Grad]

Lenovo makes good laptops.

The one thing that I would add to the conversation is that Windows 8 was designed with a touch screen in mind. I don't really use a touch screen for anything else PC wise, but I find myself using it very naturally on my wife's laptop. It's well worth the extra $ IMHO.

[mattcampbell]

Lenovo laptop user here, I have an ideapad u530 and love it. The hard drive is a hybrid that is about as quick as the SSD I had in my desktop as well as having plenty of storage. Processor is quick and snappy and the overall build quality is nice.

[BigSlam]

@Braggins - thanks for the long write-up. Very helpful indeed. If you guys see any particular laptops that look good, post a link. I might post a few myself to see what others think.

MacBook Air.





Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

[fatlever]

@Braggins - thanks for the long write-up. Very helpful indeed. If you guys see any particular laptops that look good, post a link. I might post a few myself to see what others think.

MacBook Air.





Sent from my iPhone using RealGM Forums

A company man, through and through.

[Liver_Pooty]

Both of my grandparents are in the psychiatric ward in the hospital with dementia. Both of them started living and talking like they were back in the 70s, at the same time. Really, really rough visiting them, and them calling me by different names since they helped raise me. Depressing as hell actually. If you guys could send some good thoughts their way I'd appreciate it. Been a rough week.

[HornetJail]

Sorry to hear it LP.

[BeesWax]

My Grandmother was one of the sharpest people I knew and then it took a turn like this. I feel for you LP it is very hard to see people you care about take a turn like that. Thoughts out to you man.

[Snidely FC]

Charter looking to buy Time Warner and change the company name to New Charter. Will we be looking at New Charter Arena next season?