and another new laptop thread

[n0cturnal]

Meh, not that much more expensive ;D So not such a horrible deal I guess.

Just wondering though, will a laptop (thats, as far as I know, build compact and such) have room for another SSD? Even if it did have an extra spot (don't even know where I can find if it has an extra spot), will it have enough room compact/hardware wise?

It really depends on the model of the laptop, some laptops come with 2 slots for harddrives, some have the option to remove the optical drive to fit another harddrive and some just don't support it at all.

[Supern3rd]

Sorry to hi-jack your thread, but I posted a thread of my own with 0 luck. I'm hoping to get some extra suggestions here.

I have 1500 dollars to work with. I necessarily don't WANT to spend the entire 1500, but will if the deal is good enough.

The only game that I play religiously is Team Fortress 2, and occasionally play World of Warcraft. I will be playing MoP when it comes out. I'm not necessarily looking for a gaming laptop, but I want a laptop that will be able to handle those 2 games at the least. I do also play games such as Max Payne 3, The Walking Dead, and LA Noire, but very, very, occasionally.

The main thing I'm using this laptop for is college. I am getting my Computer Science degree with a high emphasis in Java programming, so a lot of the time I will be compiling and coding. The more screen space, the better.

But the times where I need to take a break from looking at broken code, I will need the laptop to be able to handle games like TF2/WoW:MoP/Max Payne 3(even if it's on the lowest settings).

1500 to work with, I truly only want to spend about 1000, but if the deal is right and worth it (meaning computer A for $1000 is an i7 @ 2.7 ghz, and computer B for $1500 is an i7 @ 2.8 ghz, that's not worth it to me), I will spend the extra money. Realistically, getting away with only spending about $700-$800 would be perfect so I can keep the extra $700-$800 dollars for myself, but. We'll see.


Suggestions, please! I truly don't know what is considered optimal in the laptop world!

[Eroginous]

..........

[Nerph-]

Sorry to hi-jack your thread, but I posted a thread of my own with 0 luck. I'm hoping to get some extra suggestions here.

I have 1500 dollars to work with. I necessarily don't WANT to spend the entire 1500, but will if the deal is good enough.

The only game that I play religiously is Team Fortress 2, and occasionally play World of Warcraft. I will be playing MoP when it comes out. I'm not necessarily looking for a gaming laptop, but I want a laptop that will be able to handle those 2 games at the least. I do also play games such as Max Payne 3, The Walking Dead, and LA Noire, but very, very, occasionally.

The main thing I'm using this laptop for is college. I am getting my Computer Science degree with a high emphasis in Java programming, so a lot of the time I will be compiling and coding. The more screen space, the better.

But the times where I need to take a break from looking at broken code, I will need the laptop to be able to handle games like TF2/WoW:MoP/Max Payne 3(even if it's on the lowest settings).

1500 to work with, I truly only want to spend about 1000, but if the deal is right and worth it (meaning computer A for $1000 is an i7 @ 2.7 ghz, and computer B for $1500 is an i7 @ 2.8 ghz, that's not worth it to me), I will spend the extra money. Realistically, getting away with only spending about $700-$800 would be perfect so I can keep the extra $700-$800 dollars for myself, but. We'll see.


Suggestions, please! I truly don't know what is considered optimal in the laptop world!

Well, I don't know much about laptops, but the Alienware M17x starts at $1499... it's 17.3" (seeing you wanted a big screen) but tbh all I've heard about Alienware is that they are overpriced.

Maybe look into Asus' Republic of Gaming Laptops? Don't have a price on this one, but it looks pretty decent. http://rog.asus.com/notebook/17-inch/g75vw/

The killer here is you said you wanted to play TF2 and WoW, which a $600 laptop would be sufficient for, however you then mentioned Max Payne 3, LA Noire etc, which I think is going to need a more expensive laptop (hence why I mentioned Alienware and Asus Republic of Gaming laptops).

edit: found a price for the laptop I linked: http://www.amazon.com/ASUS-G75VW-AS7.../dp/B007MW73C2

probably cheaper from newegg or whatever but seeing I live in Belgium I never use those sites. As you can see it's also at the top end of your budget, but has very decent specs. I'm not going to go ahead and recommend it though, as I don't have that much knowledge on laptops and frankly, you can probably get something cheaper that will run Max Payne 3 and LA Noire just fine.

[n0cturnal]

Suggestions, please! I truly don't know what is considered optimal in the laptop world!

Optimal is not having a gaming laptop for school, they are big, heavy and have bad battery times.

[Supern3rd]

Optimal is not having a gaming laptop for school, they are big, heavy and have bad battery times.

I thought I had mentioned it in my first post, but I guess I forgot to type it, or left it in my thread. 99% of the time, the computer will be plugged in, even during classes. So the battery times isn't an issue. As far as big and heavy, I'll get over it.

[Eroginous]

Dammit, I posted and it accidentally posted twice in a row, so I edited the first post out hoping they'd delete it, and they deleted the post with the relevant info instead.....

Okay, so here's my take on it:

Ditch the HDD for a SSD and get some external storage if you need it.

Keep the mechanical HDD for now while you wait for technology to improve. Current lifespans on SSD technology is not where it should be, and the size is way too small for the current environment for gaming. I'd wait until they match the current mechanical drives in both size and lifespan before I'd invest.

Sorry to hi-jack your thread, but I posted a thread of my own with 0 luck. I'm hoping to get some extra suggestions here.

I have 1500 dollars to work with. I necessarily don't WANT to spend the entire 1500, but will if the deal is good enough.

http://www.xoticpc.com/asus-n73smds72-p-3574.html

The main thing I'm using this laptop for is college. I am getting my Computer Science degree with a high emphasis in Java programming, so a lot of the time I will be compiling and coding. The more screen space, the better.

The best thing for you to do is shop around and spend about 1k on a desktop computer for your dorm/apartment. You'll get a lot better hardware for the price than you would with a laptop. Then you need to buy one of these for school:

https://play.google.com/store/device...d=nexus_7_16gb

Portable, lightweight, insane battery life, quad core 1.3 ghz cpu, 12 core Nvidia GPU. Light on Hard drive space, but if you're just taking notes and web surfing during class, this will be more than sufficient.

And if you really want a real keyboard with more space, you get one of these:

http://www.google.com/products/catal...d=0CLoBEPMCMAE

The bottom line is you should never buy a full sized laptop for school. Get something small and light weight that can fulfill the basic purposes you need it for in class, then use a real computer at home for normal stuff.

[n0cturnal]

Keep the mechanical HDD for now while you wait for technology to improve. Current lifespans on SSD technology is not where it should be, and the size is way too small for the current environment for gaming. I'd wait until they match the current mechanical drives in both size and lifespan before I'd invest.

The current generation SSD will last over 5 years with proper usage, sure they wont last 30 years as some mechanical drives could do, but who wants to sit around using a 128GB SSD in 5 years when you most likely can get a way faster 1TB+ SSD for less than $100.
As it is right now a SSD is the best investment you can do for a computer and 128GB is enough to fit Windows, a bunch of programs and 4-5 games on top of that.

[Eroginous]

The current generation SSD will last over 5 years with proper usage, sure they wont last 30 years as some mechanical drives could do, but who wants to sit around using a 128GB SSD in 5 years when you most likely can get a way faster 1TB+ SSD for less than $100.
As it is right now a SSD is the best investment you can do for a computer and 128GB is enough to fit Windows, a bunch of programs and 4-5 games on top of that.

I don't want to argue with you, so:

1. You've already conceded both my points on lifespan and storage space.

2. The cost of an SSD it equal to or greater than the typical mechanical storage drive, while the typical mechanical storage drive boasts 9-18 times as much storage space.

3. The person in question is looking to buy a laptop (which has limited space for hard drives, most can only hold one), so he's literally making a choice between one or the other. In that case he's better off with more storage space because it's a budget laptop we are talking about here, which is intended to be used for both school and gaming.

I have a desktop computer in my house setup for my friend to use, and it has an old 80 gb hard drive (which has lasted more than 5 years of constant up time) and with Windows 7, Wow, SC2, and a couple smaller steam games, he's maxed out for space and doesn't have room for anything else. He can't download any movies, music, or keep anything on the drive other than the few games that will fit. MoP is coming out soon and we are looking at another large patch which will increase the installation size of Wow considerably.

A single 128gb SSD is not going to be sufficient for the average user. Sure, the load speeds will be good, but that's about it. He'll have to buy an external hard drive to have more storage space, and at that point he might as well just buy a bigger internal HD. If we were talking about a desktop computer which can hold numerous drives, then yeah, he'd want an SSD (or two) for his OS and programs, and a big mechanical for everything else. But when we are talking about a sole primary drive, SSDs are not competitive with the rest of technology.

It's also funny that we're talking about this. Typically new technology boasts superior features to existing technology when it comes out. SSDs are the first computing technology (that I can think of) that have taken a step back in features in order to boast faster read/write speeds.