LF Opinions/Advice on buying a new laptop

[Sylfa]

Hey there guys,

First thing's first, I'm not at all good with the technological side of gaming, or laptops/computers. I know the basics, but anything too advanced and my mind crumbles, so please, dumb it down for me .

What I want
I'm after a laptop. I like how accessible they are. It should "preferably" be quite sleek and stylish, but really I'm after performance.

What I want from it
I'm going to be playing World of Warcraft 95% of the time if I'm playing games. So I want it to be able to run WoW incredibly smoothly, with little to no lag in high action encounters such as world boss raids. However I will be playing other games from time to time such as Football Manager, which can actually be quite demanding to run. I will also be wanting to run applications in the background such as web browsers, music players etc.

Past Experience with Pc's
My first ever personal laptop was an Asus. This is a good 5 years ago now and I can't really remember what it was in terms of model specifics, I paid around £500 for it, that's all I can remember .

Secondly, which is my latest laptop in my brief history of pc's, was my Alienware m11x. As a teenager with little computer knowledge I had always looked at Alienware as the benchmark in gaming laptops. I loved the way they looked, basically. Now I know a bit more about the specs I know that they're not completely useless. And mine lasted me a year and a half before the hinges broke and I had to be very careful in using it as no where local would repair it for me. Now, the screen has compeltely died, so it's time for a new laptop. Prior to the hinges breaking it was a very good machine that only ever had over-heating issues (like most laptops). I paid around £650 for this.

Budget
Ideally, I would like to spend between £700-1000, maybe more depending on the feedback I get from you guys . Just as a sidenote, I would prefer to pay via finance too.

Now, after writing all this it may sound like I'm asking all of the work to be done for me, although I have been to many stores locally such as Curry's or PC World and asked in-store advisors there only to be met with information I already know, which is very little.

I do love the look of the Alienware laptops, and I'm a fan of the customer service the guys at Dell have given me in the past, even if I haven't been able to resolve my current laptop issue. So I would ideally like to stick with them although they are pricey for what you're getting. And their only major downside is the physical quality of the product, feels quite plastic and cheap. I am completely open to the suggestion of anything other than an Alienware, because I know you can get awesome gear for the same overcharged price, I'm just not confident in what to buy and I'm the type of person that doesn't like change and sticking to what I know best.

I appreciate your time in reading my dilemma. And I would be very grateful for any help!

Thanks,
Sylfa.

[Biernot]

First of all, if you care about price/performance - stay away from Alienware. They are generally more expensive than comparable models from other manufacturers. Also, if you had good experience with Dell customer support, consider yourself lucky.

Now for the laptop itself:
If you want to run wow very smooth, you either need to make sure that your display resolution isn't too great (meaning, at most 1600x900) or prepare to spend above 1000 GBP. The price you pay for good gaming performance in laptops is just way higher than in a normal tower, and you still won't even come close to the performance of a normal pc. (The highest laptop gpus can't even compete with a $200 graphics card.)

[Sylfa]

First of all, if you care about price/performance - stay away from Alienware. They are generally more expensive than comparable models from other manufacturers.

Yeah I had a rough idea that I was being ripped off by Alienware, but there is something about it that I love. Probably just the aesthetics. Do you have any model/manufacturer recommendations for me to start looking in to? Not too sure where to begin with what's good for what I need.

Thanks, for replying.
Sylfa

[Biernot]

Asus gaming laptops are usually nice (but a little bit above your budget i think).
MSI also offers a lot of power for the money: http://msi.com/product/nb/#/?sk=Gaming%20Series and they have some models in your price range. (GE60 / GE70)