Two Laptop Models, help me decide!

[camcamroar]

Hello all!
Next week I am returning to college for my second semester and I don't think I can survive with another garbage laptop!

With a little research and the right budget, it has come to this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834232574

This laptop has two builds which offer:

Build 1: Intel Core i5, 5200U (2.20GHz), 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD.
Build 2: Intel Core i7, 5500U (2.40GHz), 256GB SSD, and no HDD. (Though apparently this particular laptop does have an open SATA slot for a very slim 2.5 inch 7mm HDD for future space??)

This laptop will most likely just have WoW installed along with Microsoft Office, Excel, all the necessary stuff for school, etc.

My main concern is obviously space. WoW is a large game and I love running it on an SSD. I am worried about not having enough space for WoW and all the other software bloat with a 256GB SSD.
The other thing to be concerned about is the processor. Will the i7 perform that much better than the i5, (especially since I know WoW is a CPU heavy game).

Thanks for any feedback and suggestions!
-Cam

[Pyromelter]

Hello all!
Next week I am returning to college for my second semester and I don't think I can survive with another garbage laptop!

With a little research and the right budget, it has come to this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834232574

This laptop has two builds which offer:

Build 1: Intel Core i5, 5200U (2.20GHz), 128GB SSD, and a 1TB HDD.
Build 2: Intel Core i7, 5500U (2.40GHz), 256GB SSD, and no HDD. (Though apparently this particular laptop does have an open SATA slot for a very slim 2.5 inch 7mm HDD for future space??)

This laptop will most likely just have WoW installed along with Microsoft Office, Excel, all the necessary stuff for school, etc.

My main concern is obviously space. WoW is a large game and I love running it on an SSD. I am worried about not having enough space for WoW and all the other software bloat with a 256GB SSD.
The other thing to be concerned about is the processor. Will the i7 perform that much better than the i5, (especially since I know WoW is a CPU heavy game).

Thanks for any feedback and suggestions!
-Cam

IMO the extra 50 bucks for the i7 is worth it for future proofing your laptop. You can get an external hard drive or even thumb drives are now in the 128 gb range if you need extra storage. It won't make too much difference now, but when you're ready to replace the laptop in a few years, the extra little speed will keep your machine humming at a more acceptable pace.

If you were looking to put a lot more games, movies, music on your computer, I'd consider the i5 with the HDD. I'm a bit of a music junkie, and I don't like the whole cloud thing (I want my music stored locally), so for me, a HDD is an absolute necessity. If you are either not into music or mostly using like spotify or pandora though, I'd definitely go with the i7 model.

[Restic]

3rd option if you have the budget and are comfortable/know someone who is, would be to get the i7 version and buy a 2.5" 7mm hdd and install it into the laptop. The i7 with an external hdd or pens drives sounds like the best option to me as well of the 2 you put there.

[Masark]

My main concern is obviously space. WoW is a large game and I love running it on an SSD. I am worried about not having enough space for WoW and all the other software bloat with a 256GB SSD.

With just WoW and misc. software, it might be enough.

But if you start adding in any modern heavy games (e.g. CoD series), or torrenting or whatnot, you'll find yourself running out of space quickly. With WoW, HoTS, Payday 2, CS:GO, and misc. other software on my 256GB SSD, I have about 57GB free i.e. almost enough to install COD:AW on it.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

The only differences between the i5 and the i7 are:

Clock speed, the i7 has 200MHz base clock speed and turbos 300MHz higher (i5 2.2GHz, turbos to 2.7. i7 2.4GHz turbos to 3.0)
The price, the i7' tray price is $393 and the i5' tray price is $281

That is all.

http://ark.intel.com/products/85214/...up-to-3_00-GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/85212/...up-to-2_70-GHz

So essentially you'd be paying the extra money for 300MHz clock speed, double the SSD space but you'd have to buy a hard-drive for the storage drive if you bought the i7 laptop over the i5.

There is no "future-proofing" argument when the only difference is a 10% increase in turbo clock speed (which it may or may not reach depending on how well the laptop dissipates the heat from the CPU). The laptops look otherwise to be exactly the same (other than the storage).