1200$ School/Game laptop

[Piderman]

Hello everyone im going to school this fall and i am going to need a laptop for NAIT.

With that being said i love my games and so i ask for the wise words of HWC to give some advice/suggestions, for a suitable laptop.

This laptop is also going to be dual booted for linux. I am not the most knowledgeable person on this spectrum of hardware so this is currently what i have in mind.

ASUS U53JC-C1
- 15.6” HD 16:9 LED Backlit Wide screen (1366x768)
- Intel® Core™ i5-480M
- nVidia G310M 1024MB
- 6GB (2 SODIMM) DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (1x4GB, 1x2GB)
- 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Buffer (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s)
- Intel® Advanced-N 6200 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module
- Smart Li-ion Battery (8-Cell)
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- All this for 1200$ before shipping taxes


This laptop has a battery life of 8 hours a big plus for me keeping the school in mind but enough power to game a bit on the side

[Caldezar]

YGPM...

[geokilla]

Link does not work. Judging by the specs that you posted, that is a TERRIBLE laptop.

Acer AS3820TG-6829, Notebook - Intel Core i5-480M 2.66GHz, 13.3" LCD, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD, AMD Radeon HD 6550 1GB, No ODD, Wireless BGN, Bluetooth, HDMI, Webcam, Windows 7 Home Premium | Canada Computers

Only $750. It was $700 two weeks ago so if you don't mind waiting to save $50, well wait!

[_dangtx_]

that gpu is not really meant for gaming. the 480m above will do nicely,given you keep your eye candy
on this planet. most games, at that resolution (1366 x 768) will be fine cranked up.

[SneakySnake]

the 480m is the CPU in that case, the GPU is the 6550.

There some good deals in the buy and sell right now, one guy (I think he PM'ed you) is selling a Dell XPS with an i7 and 430m for $1200 shipped, another guy is selling a lenovo with an i5 and a 5730 for $750. Both of those would game pretty much everything at at least medium settings.

If your getting it for school though I think battery life should be your biggest concern. You don't want to have to be charging your laptop throughout the day, or lug extra batteries around.

If you want to buy a new laptop you can get a 13" Macbook Pro for $1200 which has an 10 hour battery, and will be better in gaming. Plus you'll be able to sell it in a few years for around $700. A lot of people swear not to buy apple, but I think for school they are best solution. They give you a laptop that will do everything, and has the best battery life I've seen in a laptop. You can literally start browsing the web and listen to tunes on your laptop at 9 am and not have to look for a plugin until around 7 pm. Apple doesn't exaggerate on their battery life, if anything they've been known to be a little conservative.

There's gonna be a major macbook pro revision in the next few weeks (to Sandy Bridge), so I'd hold out for that. (Hold out for Sandy Bridge CPU's regradless of what laptop your going with, they start shipping on Feb 20th according to Intel)

[Stock]

$1100 MSI GX660

You get a superior 5870m graphics card with a WSXGA+ resolution. Simply can't be beat, bang for buck.

Although this is a previous generation product, I still use a GX620 from 2 years ago. This laptop has never blue-screened, random reset, keyboard jam, dieing pixels, faulty touch pad, or anything on me. It was used intensively for school and gaming (mostly WoW/DoW2/Civ) - and "on" for an average of 8-12 hours/day. Battery life is still 2 hours on battery saving mode, which I use for watching 1 movie on long rides. I've also dropped my backpack god knows how many times, and it's still going strong. The build quality is simply great in MSI's GX line-up. If I had the cash, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade to this new generation, as it looks even better!

[SneakySnake]

Originally Posted by Stock

$1100 MSI GX660

You get a superior 5870m graphics card with a WSXGA+ resolution. Simply can't be beat, bang for buck.

Although this is a previous generation product, I still use a GX620 from 2 years ago. This laptop has never blue-screened, random reset, keyboard jam, dieing pixels, faulty touch pad, or anything on me. It was used intensively for school and gaming (mostly WoW/DoW2/Civ) - and "on" for an average of 8-12 hours/day. Battery life is still 2 hours on battery saving mode, which I use for watching 1 movie on long rides. I've also dropped my backpack god knows how many times, and it's still going strong. The build quality is simply great in MSI's GX line-up. If I had the cash, I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade to this new generation, as it looks even better!

I wouldn't get a gaming laptop for school use. I had an alienware m11x, which I got rid of after about a month of university. That MSI laptop is 2 lb's heavier then a MBP and nearly an inch thicker, it has sexy specs, but when your typing notes and mobile all day, your graphics card and CPU don't really matter, its your battery life and portability that you'll appreciate.

Your laptop purchase should be based off of what your going to be doing for 90% of the time your on the laptop, not the 10% of time you spend gaming.

[_dangtx_]

yup, at that resolution itll play a good deal of importance. the 6550 will do pretty well too.

[Piderman]

Thanks for the responses and i think SneakySnake puts it best.

Originally Posted by SneakySnake

Your laptop purchase should be based off of what your going to be doing for 90% of the time your on the laptop, not the 10% of time you spend gaming.

I'm going in for computer engineer so i want something with power but not exactly for the gaming.

Since i'm not going to buy this moment i may let the dust settle on the SB end of things.
I know it may not hold the best laptop in store for me but better prices are always a good thing.