What kind of laptop would you choose for school? w/ a 1200 budget.

[Dreadstar24]

I'm attending the University of Utah from a small town college and don't have a laptop.

My major is engineering and will eventually get to using auto-cad and other software along the way.

Currently, I work 40 hours and go to school full-time without a laptop.

This semester half my books are on interactive websites vs actual text books.

I only have a 1200.00 at most to spend on a laptop that will run my engineering software plus
any game such as Worldofwarcraft, Hearthstone, or League of Legends.

Don't expect my laptop to be like our desktops nor will I try to shoot for those specs.

If you have any ideas or thoughts about laptops that would be powerful enough for a few games / autocad + lightweight please post finds. thanks all!!!

Happy Hunting!

-Dreadstar24

[Vermicious]

Take a look at this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...&PriceMax=1205

Stick with those items with a discrete graphics card (nVidia or AMD) and at least 8Gb of RAM, or otherwise upgradeable. Otherwise you'd need to decide what other features you like... SSD, screen size, etc and go from there.

[Dreadstar24]

Thank you. I had been looking at the Lenovo's for a week now and they honestly seem to be the best deal.

Unfortunately, I build AMD desktops and know next to nothing about I'5 or I'7's. Though their both great Cpu's is it even worth shooting for an I7 and only worry about HD/Ram?

[Masark]

Sager NP7358

15.6" 1920x1080
Core i7-4710MQ
8GB RAM (with 2 extra slots free for the future)
860M graphics

Added to the stock config

120GB Crucial mSATA SSD as OS drive - $100 - There is no good reason not to have an SSD in this day and age. It's the biggest single general performance boost you can get.
1TB 7200rpm hard drive - It's a free upgrade from the stock 750GB 7200rpm, so take it. You'll also have a second empty hard drive bay available for future upgrading.
Intel® Dual Band AC 7260 wireless - It's a free upgrade, so take it.
Pick windows 7 or 8.1, whichever you want. 8.1 is $15 cheaper if you're really pinching pennies.
Be sure to use the free shipping option.

End price : $1194

Alternatively, the NP7378, which is identical other than the 17.3" screen (you might appreciate the extra inches when doing CAD work) would be $1214 with the same config changes.

Looking at the Lenovos, I can't see one that can match specs with this for the price. The Y50 4K matches it mostly (at the cost of exceeding your budget by $50) and has a 4k screen (though I question the worth of that high a resolution on that size of screen), but you only get an SSD or a hard drive, not both.

[Cyanotical]

if this is something that you will be dragging to and from class all the time, a 13" macbook pro is the best choice with little if any competition

if this is something that will sit in your dorm room all the time and rarely move, i'd second Masark's recommendation on the Sager

[Masark]

if this is something that you will be dragging to and from class all the time, a 13" macbook pro is the best choice with little if any competition

if this is something that will sit in your dorm room all the time and rarely move, i'd second Masark's recommendation on the Sager

Sager also offers the NP7338, a 4.6lbs 13.3" model with the same other specs as my other suggestions, though it sacrifices the 2nd hard drive bay, a RAM slot, and the internal optical drive. It comes in at $1214 with the configuration changes and win 7 home. Adding an external DVD burner is an extra $25.

[nemex]

I use a Sager NP7338 with mostly stock configuration. I added an mSATA 120gb SSD later and put the OS on it. Still have an additional mSATA to work with and can always upgrade the RAM to 16gb and the HDD to an SSD. It runs anything I throw at it beautifully - I run 6-8 VM's during class with no sweat (more with more RAM), it plays BF4 on Med/High at smooth 60FPS (vsync), WoW and all other games run well on it. I never purchased it to run video games, but when I'm on vacation it works well.

In hindsight I probably would have gone with the 15.6" Sager instead because it was on the same price-point with additional room for components and upgrades mentioned above, and the small 13.3" 1920x1080 can be hard to read sometimes. I also miss having a numpad as well.

All in all I recommend Sager notebooks based on the price for the hardware they include, and they always have room for expansion later. I found similar form factor ultrabooks and notebooks with the same hardware from other manufacturers to be much higher priced for limited benefits. Very high quality product - I am satisfied with mine.

[Lektrik]

Thank you. I had been looking at the Lenovo's for a week now and they honestly seem to be the best deal.

Unfortunately, I build AMD desktops and know next to nothing about I'5 or I'7's. Though their both great Cpu's is it even worth shooting for an I7 and only worry about HD/Ram?

Mobile i5s are only dual core I believe, so i7 would be worth it.

[Masark]

Mobile i5s are only dual core I believe, so i7 would be worth it.

Yup, all mobile i5 processors are dualies.

[Cyanotical]

Sager also offers the NP7338, a 4.6lbs 13.3" model with the same other specs as my other suggestions, though it sacrifices the 2nd hard drive bay, a RAM slot, and the internal optical drive. It comes in at $1214 with the configuration changes and win 7 home. Adding an external DVD burner is an extra $25.

the problem is that the modular chassis that make sager great for enthusiasts makes them not very good for general abuse, so there is a huge build quality difference between anything sager makes and a macbook,

but the other thing is that the touchpad on macbooks is the best on the market, the ones on sagers are pretty much crap, which is fine for gamers since they'll use a mouse, but in class you'd be using the touchpad

going with a macbook you give up a bit of performance in exchange for reliability, durability, and battery life, all three are vastly more important than performance when mobility is a concern


another option could be a Surface3, but that's probably a bit too mobile

[Lillyth]

None. Teachers are too paranoid and will force you to use pen and paper.

[Cyanotical]

None. Teachers are too paranoid and will force you to use pen and paper.

it's 2014, not 1914

if your teacher says no, ignore them, you're there to learn, how you do that is up to you, but when i ran into this when i was in school this was my usual retort:

1. im an adult
2. i pay tuition
3. make me

the only time i ran into any issues was with an english teacher, who was so backwards that she would not accept any sources that came from a .com domain as she was under the impression that TLDs still mean something, my approach was to use exclusively .com domains in my papers and then just pull this out when she tried to argue me on it


this is irrelevant as most modern STEM programs require a laptop or highly recommend one, and the OP might not get a choice anyway if one of his classes require an Apple (its common enough that im mentioning it)

[skitszo]

lol...i was gonna try and find some AMD kaveri APU business machines but AMD seems to be stonewalled and intel is somehow running a monopoly in the CPU markets. AMD can't get any traction.....

[Deleted]

it's 2014, not 1914

if your teacher says no, ignore them, you're there to learn, how you do that is up to you, but when i ran into this when i was in school this was my usual retort:

1. im an adult
2. i pay tuition
3. make me

I have to say, the first and third reason somewhat clash.

[Cyanotical]

I have to say, the first and third reason somewhat clash.

3 is if 1 and 2 don't work

edit, also, standing your ground is not childish, not standing up for yourself is, maturity is knowing when it is appropriate