Laptop Suggestions

alright, so i will be going to University soon and am looking for a laptop that can fit both my battery needs in class and my moderate gaming needs out of class. i was looking at the m11x but was just thinking the screen may be a bit too small to be starring at during long essay writing sessions so im not so sure about it. but basically these are my requirements:

- 15.6 inch display or smaller (not too small though, no netbooks)
- a decent graphics card that should be able to handle most games today at reasonable settings, nothing hardcore needed
- a decent battery life (at least a few hours)
- priced around $1500 or less (give or take)

 

Would avoid the biggies such as Dell and HP for 3 reasons:

#1 - you OVERPAY!

#2 - you OVERPAY!

#3 - they only give you a 1 year warranty and want you to purchase extended warranties.

Go for Asus - best quality and bang for yer buck. $1500 should buy a nice one. And to protect your new laptop, just steer clear of Avast

 

lol at the last line, i think ill be good in that department, but im trying to find more specific model suggestions that meet the criteria. ASUS is a brand i was looking at, but ther site makes it very difficult to find individual model specs (or i missed it somehow)

 

mouse over to select various models and then select the specifications tab - http://ca.asus.com/ProductGroup1.aspx?PG_ID=1quIC6RvvlvcvNbn

 

That might be true where you live but in Bulgaria all DELL notebooks/netbooks come with 3-year-warranty and nobody pays extra for extended warranty or something else.

I previously used Toshiba (Satellite) , now I have got a DELL Vostro and an ASUS and believe me or not - DELL is way better . ASUS brand is if you want cheap machine but quality is not that good. The OP wants stable battery (=quality) ...

 

Yes, length of warranties are based upon where you live. The OP lives in canada and when i was shopping for a new laptop last fall, everywhere i went, all the biggies only offered a 1 year warranty (including dell) and extended warranties where being pushed upon the shopper.

However, MSI and ASUS were offering 2-3 year warranties depending on the model.

 

ok i dont want this thread to go off into what brands are best, i need suggestions on laptop models that are good from any vendors that meet my requirements

 

For this much cash. you may be able to get a high-end laptop like the ThinkPad T410. There are many cheaper alternatives, but the T410 with an i7 processor and a graphics card is hard to beat - especially if you remove most of the Lenovo bloatware. (I have the lighter and slightly cheaper X201 with Intel graphics, but it isn't suitable for gaming.)

 

This is generalizing thus not true. You can get models with 3 year warranties..and you can purchase additional warranties after that to extend to 5.

As I always mention, with most brands, there are the el cheapo home grade models with 1 year warranties (or less)..and then there are the true business grade models with 3 year warranties.

There is a reason the business grade models are more expensive....they use superior components under the hood.

 

And of course since the OP is going to a university...he can usually purchase a laptop dirt cheap...deeply discounted, at the student Co-Op on campus. And they can usually get serviced there also.

 

ive looked somewhat at business laptops as well, but they all typically seem to have underpowered GPU's.

 

maybe its just me, but i cant seem to find wer it shows specs for these systems, do u have a link to it?

 

You can take a look here for great deals in Canada: http://www.redflagdeals.com/deals/main.php/electronics/

 

juat looked at all the specs of timelines models from the canada page and unfortunetly, the GPU's are much lower than wat i was looking for, the highest level GPU the timelines offer was a 4330.

 

when it comes to battery life, the core I7 normally runs at 1.6ghz and is a quad core,while the core i5 runs at 2.4ghz and is a dual core, which is more power efficient since the i7 seems to run at lower clocks, but has more cores, kinda unsure?

 

Don't think anyone suggested a Mac yet .

Not all mobile i7 chips have 4 real cores - some have 2 physical cores and hyperthreading technology to maximize the performance of the 2 cores.

Plenty fast for any gaming. Your most likely to be held back by the graphics at any price range.

 

i know not all do, but the specific ones from the site said 4 cores, so i assume it means 4 real cores. and a mac is not even in the equation, ill never even consider one.

 

Here is a great site for a good Canadian Boy make sure you look at the new one's not the Refurbished one's! http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=17&name=Laptops,Notebooks maybe you will find something you like and they are all over Toronto and GTA! http://www.tigerdirect.ca/retailstores/indexca.asp

TH

 

I hear that PowerNotebook's PowerPro Brand is very good with excellent customer support.

http://www.powernotebooks.com/PowerPro-Custom-Built-Gaming-Laptops-Notebooks-cat-1.html

Some User Feedback:

http://www.resellerratings.com/store/PowerNotebooks

 

those computers are all the exact same as all the other custom building brands like ibuypowerpc, cyberpower, etc. that seem to be everywhere now, only laptop builders that ive seen with their own laptop designs and specs seem to be like VelocityMicro and Alienware, the other ones all share the same hardware.

 

Not sure if it's in your budget, but if I were buying a new laptop today I'd get one with USB 3.0 compatible ports and a solid state drive (SSD). SSDs are expensive, but some laptops have a smaller SSD for the system partition (64 GB would be enough for me, ~120 GB would be better), and a larger, regular second drive. As I understand it, the benefits of SSD are much higher speeds, no noise, less heat and energy use.

Ideally I'd also like it to have a touch-screen too (in addition to keyboard. i.e. not a tablet pc) and blu-ray compatible cd/dvd rw drive.