Looking for affordable laptop

[Vatheron]

Hey guys and gals,

I'm starting a new semester at school and I really need a laptop for my classes. I also love wow and want something that will be able to play it reasonably well. My Budget is 1500-1600$ It isn't a lot so I'm not expecting something amazing. But I would like to get as good a deal as possible!

Any advice or suggestions would be awesome!
Thanks so much!

Vath

[Noctua]

At the lower end of the spectrum - Dell Vostro 3560, barebones you can pick this up for about 650 USD. uses the i5's igp - so you're gonna have Intel HD4000 which can run wow - don't expect anything amazing, but it will run it.
I've got a slightly older vostro, which i use for work - it runs just fine. I have swapped out the RAM and HDD for 8gigs of Corsair ram, and an SSD - performs far better than the stock configuration, however this will void your warranty. so if you wanted to choose the least amound of ram, and smallest + cheapest hdd - you could always do that and replace those parts with parts of your own choosing.

Looking around the $820 mark, IdeaPad Y500 Lenovo - i7 with a gtx650 in there and 8gb ram - will offer you much better performance than Intel HD4000, but i'm not familiar with swapping out hardware in lenovo laptops (its quite easy in dells); you would want to swap out the 5400rpm hdd for an SSD.

If you're willing to go a bit more, for $1200 you could get the same Y500 wtih a 16gb SSD boot drive for your OS, but that won't be big enough to host your wow folder anyway, so i'm not sure if i'd recommend that. But, bottom line, Y500's will let you do your work fine and will play wow acceptably - bear in mind they use gtx650's - which aren't top of the line cards - but they're better than intel HD4000.

If you wanted gaming specific laptops - you might wanna check out MSI - but these are stupidly big (i mean HUGE), and quite expensive. I think you may want to steer more towards the lenovo/dell side for more versatility

btw; this is just my opinion - because i only have experience using lenovo and dell laptops - there may be better options out there from the likes of Acer, Asus, HP, Samsung, etc.

[vesseblah]

Start from here, and pick up SSD boot drive, windows and extra battery. Will be under your budget and run modern games fine.

Sadly battery life isn't that hot for full day use cordless, but you can't have that on a gaming laptop.

[Vatheron]

What about something like this? Would this play Modern games well?

http://www.msimobile.com/level3_prod...x?cid=6&id=362

[vesseblah]

Yeah, just dont like the fact that it has no SSD. Modern gaming computer without one isn't...

[Russell1214]

I recently got the Asus G75 which yet has the same problem no SSD and it's pretty massive but I play wow, firefall, Black ops2, Assassin's Creed, Guild Wars 2 and many others for hour's on end without it getting warm. Bought from Best Buy for $1200

[Vatheron]

I'm not very tech savy. What is SSD? and what does it do?

[Toffie]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lR0XoHFU6Y

Faster loading times, you whole system will feel smooth.

[Vatheron]

Toffie, do you have any ideas where I could start to find an affordable laptop with SSD?

[Noctua]

Heya, an SSD is a different type hard drive - Solid State Drive (SSD) instead of Hard Disk Drive (HDD).
These are much faster (unimaginably faster if you haven't used one before), but also significantly more expensive when you look at price-per-gigabyte.

Some laptops are easy enough for you to buy one with a HDD and then put an SSD of your choosing in there instead of the HDD. However, this will undoubtedly void your warranty. I know that when customizing some laptops from Dell or Lenovo - and surely Asus / Samsung / Toshiba, you will have to option to add an SSD in there as well for between 50 and 200 dollars extra depending on the size of the SSD you want in there. but the Asus G55/75 are definitely skewed towarsd gaming, and will perform better than work or business oriented laptops - i'm quite sure you can find some customizing options where you can add

[Vatheron]

So the one on the far left has SSD if I understand it correctly. Does this look like a good gaming lap top?

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/c...B#.UOB7ZHf5Muc

[Noctua]

Weak gpu, but it will play wow at the laptop's resolution fine.
Will also play bf3 etc, but won't be as amazing as what you'd expect from a desktop, or a bespoke gaming laptop.
From a realistic point of view - usability for work, and transportability - looks good; unlike the absurdly large gx60 / g55 varieties.

[Toffie]

Would you be willing to go down in performance for a SSD?

[rudydimacali]

If you want something a bit more portable and are willing to sacrifice some graphics performance for portability, I'd go with the Lenovo Y580 - http://www.frys.com/product/7344684?...H:MAIN_RSLT_PG

I was originally going to purchase one myself, but ended up going for MSI's GT70 17 inch laptop, the 0ND variant (comes with a gtx 675m as opposed to the 0NC's 670m). This is still within your budget, at $1500.

The main difference is the performance, screen size, and portability. For gaming, I'm happy I decided to go with a 17 inch laptop, as this is my desktop replacement as of now. I can't speak for the performance of the gtx 660m in the Lenovo Y580, but with my GT70 I'm playing all current games (Far Cry 3, Battlefield 3, Assassin's Creed 3) at 60 fps with textures on high and everything else on medium. I run WoW at 80+ fps in Stormwind with EVERYTHING on ultra.

The only downside to this laptop, that I'm willing to deal with because I love the screen size, is that it weighs about 9 pounds. It's not a problem, but if you want a laptop you can hold with one arm for a long period of time, this isn't it.

The standard matte displays on the GT70 are nice as well; I can use this laptop outdoors easily with no reduced visibilty. It's nice that the keyboard LED's aren't overly flashy as well; they are definitely noticeable in a room, but they are not even visible in a sunny environment.

[nathan2013]

Hey guys and gals,

I'm starting a new semester at school and I really need a laptop for my classes. I also love wow and want something that will be able to play it reasonably well. My Budget is 1500-1600$ It isn't a lot so I'm not expecting something amazing. But I would like to get as good a deal as possible!

Any advice or suggestions would be awesome!
Thanks so much!

Vath

Try to check out Dell Inspiron 14" Laptop. I think it will be perfect. Its a 14" monitor and weighs 5 pounds. Very convenient when used and i think it will be very useful for your school. One of the best affordable laptops in the market.

[Butler to Baby Sloths]

You could also look at laptops with SSD cached HDDs. Regularly used files will be cached on the SSD for fast access, but you don't lose the benefit of a 500+GB storage drive.

[vesseblah]

I think any suggestions at this point are few months late, as are the replies...