Laptop needed

[Valiea]

I need a laptop that has at least 17'' display, preferably 1920x1080 resolution, a DVD R/W Optical drive is a must, physical size doesn't matter. Needs to be around or under $1,000 US (I live in Indiana USA)

Also hoping an SSD will be in there, but not needed if it isn't possible. No gaming. Mostly fb, watching movies, streaming NPR, listening to music and files and documents. Never really bothered with laptops so my knowledge is limited. Help me out if you can, thanks!

[Deleted]

17" laptop? That's ridiculously big for something you just want to drag around with you!

I think any laptop that says SSD, 4+GB ram, 17" will perfectly do whatever you want to throw at it... think of Asus, or even at your local store. They'll certainly have the casual gear for the casual user

My biggest problem was heat dissipation when looking for laptops, as I tend to use some resource-heavy software but if you're merely watching movies on it don't bother and go for the one that looks slick to you.
Use other criteria such as comfortable keyboard? screen size? Usb ports?

[Valiea]

Well, it's not for me. It's for my stepdad and he is adamant about the size. The SSD is just something I was hoping to get for him as he uses an external HDD. I'll look further into it.

[Masark]

Sager NP2670

1920x1080 17.3", i7-4710MQ, 8GB RAM, Intel graphics, 120GB mSATA SSD, 1TB hard drive, dvd burner (can be upgraded to a blu-ray reader/dvd burner or a blu-ray burner), windows 8.1, $1069

Jettisoning the SSD (which you can always add later, though transferring the OS to the SSD will be a bit more annoying than having it installed on it from the get go) would bring it down to $969.