1911 Beta

Hi there,

Taking the opportunity of my stay in the US and the fact that I have some REAL good corporate discounts at Dell, Sony, Lenovo and Best Buy stores, I really would like your advice (looking at you defrag, ward, and other srs people. No D-bos plz) before I buy a laptop.

I don't have a price threshold but I would like not to spend over $800 on it. The ideal price range would be something like $500-800. I don't really care if it's a Nasa laptop, I just want to retire my old desktop PC and finally get in the laptop era.

I don't care about the config, as long as I can run Assassin's Creed 4 decently n Steam without any video lags what not.

Many thanks!

Anecdotal, but every Lenovo laptop I've ever used I've had issues with. It's usually something small, but highly annoying (like the HDMI port not working on 95% of TV's).

Can you use your Dell discount on alienware products?? I'm assuming you could, might be enough to knock down their markups at least, I've liked the alienware laptops I've gotten the chance to use, just sucks they overprice them so much.

There's a few questions you need to ask yourself.

What video resolution are you looking to run in your game? 1080p vs 720p in notebooks makes a huge difference in which graphics card you would be looking to get.

Ideally, if this is for gaming and such, you are looking at an nVidia Geforce 780M which is on par with a GTX 660 (maybe a Ti version) in terms of desktop gpu power vs mobile.

Unfortunately, that gpu in a notebook will put you well over your budget.

Your budget allows for about a 760M at best and even that is pushing it.

I would post up some examples of your discounts so we can better gauge what you are working with.

A core i5 is plenty of cpu for gaming and anything. Only get an i7 if you can make use of the hyper-threading, otherwise you are just adding heat, power draw, and cost.

An SSD makes all the different in a notebook. SSD + HDD = win.

Gaming notebooks won't have great battery life, so don't expect much from any brand. This isn't something you should let influence your decision.

Truth be told, I have retired my gaming notebooks. I just wasn't using them and I hated playing on them unless I had a seperate mouse and keyboard hooked up. Even then, a 17" screen isn't the most fun to play on unless you need to get that gaming itch outta your system.

Best bang for your buck is still building a gaming desktop and a cheapy notebook for portable computing unless you require mobile gameplay.

I also recommend going into Best Buy and talking with the store manager about his open box stock. The store managers have the authority to give additional discounts on open box items, and even more so if they have been sitting around for awhile. I can't tell you have many notebooks I have come up on well under 50% of the original price. It makes for some great side cash for me. I just got an Asus i5 touchscreen ultrabook for $250 + tax this past week. Perfect condition.

All in all, best bet is to hunt down something on Craigslist while you are out here. Let someone else waste their money and pay full price on the items, than you swoop in and take it off their hands for a great price. Check it thoroughly, open it up, use Crystal Disk Info to check HDD hours which usually gives you a solid idea of how much usage the notebook has in general, and don't buy a piece of shit.

If you are ballin or find one for sale used, go for a Clevo or a Sager. They are pretty sweet.

You can also check out System76 Ubuntu notebooks. My favorite Linux systems hands down and great support. They also give Windows 7 drivers for their systems. I have a Gazelle Professional myself.

www.system76.com

Hit me up on steam if you need some other help.

Your budget is a good bit short of a gamers paradise so I'm hoping you have a pretty boss discount. Honestly though, I just think it's a bad investment all around unless you absolutely must have a mobile gaming solution.

I think what you're going to end up with is a laptop that will barely be able to push 30fps on the latest and greatest games (without major graphical sacrifice), that's poorly designed and while may have decent hardware, may not have decent build quality.

As time goes on, since laptops have absolutely ZERO scalability with respect to relevant performance upgrades the only thing you'll experience is dropping frame rates as newer, more demanding games come out.

All the while, you could have invested in a perfectly scalable desktop that you can throw chunks of cash at for timely upgrades.

All that being said if you really still want a laptop your choices without a discount look pretty grim. Post that discount let's see what's out there.

Sears wrote:Anecdotal, but every Lenovo laptop I've ever used I've had issues with. It's usually something small, but highly annoying (like the HDMI port not working on 95% of TV's).

LOL Eric. Enough to say, the corporate laptop I have been given is a 2nd generation i5 Lenovo. So far so good but time will tell (that you are right haha).

dogfire wrote:Your budget is a good bit short of a gamers paradise so I'm hoping you have a pretty boss discount. Honestly though, I just think it's a bad investment all around unless you absolutely must have a mobile gaming solution.

All the while, you could have invested in a perfectly scalable desktop that you can throw chunks of cash at for timely upgrades.

Yeah, I could probably buy (or build) a high end PC. But outside the pain that would be carrying it over along with 2 baggages full of clothes for a 3 week stay... It simply wouldn`t workout. In the event of the laptop doesn't fit gaming the way I wanted, I can sell it at home pretty easily.

I mean, I know that I will never get like movie graphics without having a hardcore gaming machine and I accept that. I just want to play my games hooking it up on a dock station, plugging keyboard and mouse and. If I happen to travel, then, I still have my personal notebook with MS Office, YouTube, etc.

My utopia would consist in pretty much going to their retail (or online store), pick one up and that's it!

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Thanks for your quick reply, Paul. I'm gonna shoot you a PM over steam!

You should just get Laura to send you a free PC in exchange for nudez.

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Chuck whats that one crazy white bitch music video that you used to have for your sig? I was trying to send it to someone the other day but I couldn't find it.

I think a lot of people on here are overlooking the fact that most laptops run at a native resolution that is less than 1080p. You won't really need SLI 780s to run at some garbage resolution like 1366x768. Now if you plan on hooking it up to an external monitor with 1080p, you will start to run into problems. Also, keep in mind that laptops tend to become obsolete much faster than desktops, and they are also essentially non-upgradeable. I'd stay away from Alienware as previously mentioned, because they will rip you off. I'd scope out NewEgg / Amazon and look for legit customer reviews on performance laptops that meet your price range and go from there. Avoid retail stores for sales unless you've researched the item there extensively and you're willing to pay the extra costs associated with it.

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