I'm planning on buying a laptop for Starcraft 2 just for temporary use until I buy my gaming desktop. I was planning on buying a Dell because of the low monthly payment plan, but I saw that the customization options were really bad. I just found out that newegg has a similar monthly payment plan.

The laptop I want has to be able to run Starcraft 2 smoothly in mid settings and be pretty decent overall.

I don't plan on spending more than $800 and I would like something around $700.

Thanks in advance

Can I just ask why you don't want to get a desktop and just upgrade it later? I'm sure Ex can make you something for $700 that can both run SCII well and is fully upgradeable.

If you actually want a laptop because you want to be portable, maybe specify desired weight/screensize/anything else?

I currently have no internet and I'm using wifi from someone in the apartment. I'm already planning to get a gaming desktop sometime in the future, but right now, all it would do is just waste space and money.


Anyways, what do you guys think of this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220701

You do realize you can put a wireless card in a desktop that has 3x the range of any integrated laptop card right?

As for that lappy, I don't really like it. Video is sub-par and I just wouldn't be buying a laptop in your situation. You could have a really nice desky for 700$ Echo.

I don't want to really buy the laptop either, but I don't really have a guaranteed place to stay right now, so the laptop is the best choice for me.

Desktops aren't THAT hard to move. And if you're moving around a whole lot, you might not have a great setup to play SC2 anyways.

By buying the laptop you're just wasting money bro...

SC2 isn't even out. Sure, you can already have fun with the beta, but is that worth $700? I'd just wait until the release and hope your situation has changed by then.
A friend of mine is basically doing the same.

In the meantime you might want to borrow someone's old lappy or buy a used one you can find locally in classified ads of your newspaper. If it's too old for WLAN you can still buy a WLAN stick to plug into your USB port. Overall that should still be way cheaper than buying a new one now just to bridge a few months.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115733
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834146612
The lenovo is nicer, but slower, and probably has more battery life. I don't know if either have multitouch, but let me tell you-that's the only redeeming quality of touchpads. Without multitouch, it's just a really shitty mouse.

Normally I'm all for a laptop-desktop combo, but the laptop costs about $100 extra, and having a laptop for college is nice. Don't forget that you'd have to buy a screen, which is $150 on a desktop.

The Acer seems better, but I have had people tell me to never get Acer. What's wrong with Acer?

if you put a "C" in front of the a, and an "n" after the a, it spells cancer.

Also, it's not considered a top tier manufacturer. The lenovo is top tier, unless something seriously changed when IBM sold the thinkpad line. The nice part about the low quality stuff is that you get what you pay for--always. top tier stuff charges one hell of a premium, especially on laptops.

Oh, btw, when I said "nicer" I meant nicer as it better quality. The Acer is faster, but by how much is pretty much negligible. Either will play all source games with ease, sc2 with ease, and the Acer might get a few fps better on really demanding 3d games. Either way, you won't be able to play something on the Acer and not on the lenovo.

I think the i5 is a quad core too, so you can look at it as a power hog or a much faster processor. IIRC, the new macbooks are overheating due to either a shitty design or the huge heat of intel's new processors. If you want a desktop replacement, get the acer. If you want a nice computer, get the lenovo. I can't recommend you a choice, since both have their strong suit. Also, you can pay $50 more for an i3 in the lenovo, or an upgraded i5 in the Acer, or possibly get an asus of similar specs.

Ugh... From my experience, Acer seems to cheap out externally and internally on parts. The plastic on most of there laptops are awful and the cheap mobos they use tend to fail. I don't understand why people buy Acer maybe since the price and looks I guess. But at least they are better then a HP

If your going buy a laptop, buy a ASUS. I have not seen one ASUS come back to the computer storeb (if they do come back usually software problem blah) when I sold a customer one.

Can you recommend me an Asus?

Yeah you can find an ASUS core2duo that should handle SC2 very well for about 800. Let me look, I'll update post when I finish..

Here you are: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220634

Core2Duo P series (newer than T series, and more efficient), with a very decent gfx card. The entire laptop is small so it's very portable, and all for 800 with free shipping. I'd recommend this to you -seems perfect for your situation. Read the reviews and make sure there isn't anything quirky with it that would deter you from buying.

While looking for a laptop for myself, I stumbled upon (with Rockz's guidance ) this. It's not exactly what you want, but it's portable (small size + small weight), has a very long battery life, and the GPU should be enough to play SCII fairly well (though you should look to someone else to find out exactly how well). It's a bit over your price range, but unlike the ones you're looking at so far it'll remain useful after you get your desktop and isn't just a temporary replacement. If you're going to be wanting to do something with a PC outside your home after you get your desktop, I'd get that.

Also, it's $880 on J&R

Err I've been under the impression that the 210-230 and 310-330 series really suck, badly.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-310M.22439.0.html

SCII isn't a graphically intensive game - I would expect it to work. If it doesn't, I expect someone with more experience than me to comment on that. Which isn't you, Cecil. <_<.

Oh sorry, didn't realize that your ego would be hurt by the fact that I can google a graphics card and pull up a legitimate article to back up my claims. Next time I'll wait for someone who has better experience in doing so?

I don't see any information on that website that says that that graphics card can't run SCII well. Please don't link to articles that you don't understand and try to use them as evidence. Neither you nor me know about the requirements or how specifications practically translate into performance. That laptop was recommended to me by Rockz when playing SCII and DIII on low settings was a minimum requirement, so, again, I would expect it to run them fairly well. You don't know about hardware any more than I do, so don't try to pretend that linking to an article proves your point. When Ex or Rockz or someone else who's experienced at this comes, they can judge.

Eh, SCII might be alright for maps that aren't GPU intensive, but this sentence is pretty clear. All I'm saying is the card sucks.

Correct.

Correct.

The laptop would be able to run SC2 but only on low-medium settings with decent framerates. Complexity of the map is obviously another factor. Big battles might cause the framerate to drop significantly.