Buying a laptop for three years shouldn't be a problem, gaming-wise; My 330M handles SCII, and though I'll have to lower graphics and possibly resolution for newer and newer games, it should definitely last two more years. If I'd gone for a 15" laptop, I'd have a better GPU and wouldn't have to sacrifice so much. It's really not realistic for six, however.

As for heating issues - again, I've had no issues with this whatsoever on my nice 13" lappy. Maybe better GPU's are less efficient or something? I would expect a 17" monster to have enough room for decent air ventilation. I'll note again that I saw someone with the Alienware 11" laptop, and lol'd. He had to keep it on a cooling pad because it scorched his table because the vent was on the bottom. Wat? Just read enough reviews for whatever you buy, and if it says that overheating is a major problem, don't buy it. It's not a universal, guaranteed problem. As for bloatware, it's a necessarily evil. Most laptop makers put it on the laptop because they get money for it. And they don't typically sell laptops without Windows installed. Just uninstall it.

$1800 on a 15" thinkpad. Lasted 4 years. Barely used it.

$500 on a 9" netbook. Has lasted 2.5 years. Used it almost every day. The only bad part was all the guys who kept talking about how cute my laptop was. Yes, guys, not girls. And the shitty touchpad, but anyone who's used a trackpoint for an extended period of time will tell you how terrible touchpads are.

They were making passes at you, obviously.

Hmm, it seems like my plan to splurge once and keep the investment for a long time isn't going to work from the replies that I have seen on this thread so far. I thought over it for a while and I agree with the recommendation for me to get an inexpensive laptop and a desktop that I can upgrade later; I most likely won't be needing the computational power for school-related things, and desktop parts are a lot less expensive than their laptop counterparts from what I can see so far. The option thus also opens me up to more upgrading options in the future.

I guess my purchase criteria have changed from selecting a good, powerful laptop to a durable, portable one. Is there going to be a lot of customization necessary to get a decent lifespan out of a laptop that I'll probably be taking around with me each day or will the base config work? I might start looking at some Asus laptops for the rumored 10+ hour battery life but I guess it's better to hear from the fellow SENers who have first-hand knowledge of these things before I order.


Haha, I don't think that's going to happen no matter where I purchase the laptop from. I even have a Win7 disc too.

I'll let Cent or someone else handle the laptop end of this. If you agree to my usual terms of not being a fanboy, not listening to fanboys, and taking the advice I give you, I'd be happy to design your desktop.

Maybe if you talk to a sales rep instead of purchasing it through the website then you can squeeze the operating system out. Try calling the phone number and be all like

You: Yeah I want these specs and stuff, but I don't want any operating system or software on it
Sales Rep: Oh sorry the operating system is part of the package
You: oh well maybe I'll purchase it somewhere else then
Sales Rep: NO WAIT ILL FIX IT FOR U CAUSE I GET MONEY WHEN I MAKE SALES

- problem solved?

Well, what's your price range? If you don't need a great GPU, take a look at Lenovo and Asus offerings; I feel like they have good computers, but you should still provide more information. Desired price, screen size? Do you drop your sandy bridge requirement? Weight?

I'd suggest a desktop-netbook combo if you want to play games on the computer.

Or just take a nice ultraportable and make your best bet that your hallmates will bring in console games.

Pc games in college is not the best thing for your social life. When you're playing console games, you get to make new friends and consolidate older ones.. It's especially important to make a lot of friends in your freshman year.

15" and even 14" laptops are going to be stuck in your room. They are not suitable for regular note taking and visitng the library. They are also more susceptible to damage and wear than smaller laptops.

I'd recommend ThinkPad X120e or X220 or a Macbook

If your main reason for wanting a gaming laptop is to play SC2, well I think SC2 is boring. I don't play it much.

Don't worry, its called Toy Box Syndrome.

I went with the one big laptop option, too. I have a 17" msi that I got for ~$1,300. It has a pretty big battery so I can get up to 4 or 4 1/2 hours of battery life with my wireless card turned off and display at minimum brightness, or ~3 hrs under normal working conditions. Sure if I engage the graphics card and start gaming the battery lasts for ~1 hr or less, but you shouldn't be gaming on battery. I leave it on my desk most of the time (at 17" and ~8 lbs fitting it into a backpack can be annoying), but it is completely portable when needed. It still runs fine, and I expect to get at least 3 years out of it, perhaps 4.

Personally I'm glad I don't have a giant desktop to try to store somewhere and lug around every time I move. I'm not the kind of person who needs their netbook with them every waking hour, and even so these days your iPhone/iPad will cover that need.

Ah, that reminds me - there was a nice light laptop called the Toshiba Portege (R705 or something) that went for ~$800 and seemed to be a good deal. I don't want to check in on it again, but you could - I believe it doesn't come with Sandy Bridge, but should otherwise be just what you need as a lighter computer.

Some things to remember if you go to buy a netbook:

- They don't come with an optical drive. You'll need to install any new OS via USB - all netbooks should support this.
- They are completely hopeless for gaming. Most still use the Intel GMA3150 series graphics chip - 256MB VRAM and piddly clock speed (which will be even more crippled in order to increase battery life).
- The screen is small. This can get annoying when looking at long documents, not to mention a little hard on the eyes.

That said, they are amazingly convenient to have around. Get rid of all the bloatware and it will handle normal tasks effectively. You can dual boot Linux for a bit of extra speed as well. I got a Samsung N150+ recently and it's so much better for what I want to do than my old laptop. That one had a battery life of 20 minutes towards the end, overheated without warning and was badly built. Now I have 7-8 hours of battery life in normal use, zero overheating and fan noise, and I can carry it around in my palm easily. Plus this new model of the N150+ has dual-core.

I have a noob question to ask about netbooks, because I don't know much about them, but since we're on the topic...how do netbooks handle things like youtube videos, or websites with uhhh 'difficult' or flashy rendering? Is it really awkward and annoying? When my boyfriend bought his, the guy that sold it told us he couldn't do mroe than one program at a time or else it'd crash. Now while that proved to be false, I wonder if that has improved at all? I multitask a lot.

I wouldn't expect most netbooks to be able of having ten tabs open, play music, and have a messenger application - not enough memory, I think (at least those that come with 1GB, those with 2GB might be able to). Also, I wouldn't expect to be able to watch HD video well, though I would expect youtube to be doable.

That said, I don't have a netbook. I have a superawesomepicbook.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 5 2011, 3:18 am by Centreri.

Yeah I forgot to add that you owe it to yourself if you get a netbook, to upgrade the RAM to 2GB, which is the maximum the Intel Atom chipset will allow, and especially if you plan on changing to a less crippled version of Windows 7. Netbooks tend to ship now with Starter, which has a lot of features removed but will still function for basic use and uses less memory. I "upgraded" *cough cough* to Home Premium using the Anytime Upgrade application recently because I realised ad hoc networks were disabled in Starter. The difference is a slightly slower boot time as the system loads more services.

Installing Windows XP will result in very quick speeds in general as it was designed to run on lower-end hardware, however a lot of people find that it gets slower quicker than other OSes.

So, with the following specs:
Intel Atom N550 1.5Ghz
2GB RAM
Intel GMA3150
Windows 7 Home Premium

Using Process Explorer in idle I get 35% memory usage. With 5 tabs open in Chrome, including a Youtube video, I have 43% memory usage and 29-40% CPU usage. With a document in Word 2010 open as well, I have same CPU usage and 48% memory usage.

If I up the resolution of the Youtube video to 720p, CPU use jumps to 50-70% but there are no problems. 90% at 1080p, and I get occasional stutter and the smell of hot components. Note that all this is on AC power. On battery, 1080p is a slideshow as one of the cores gets throttled. It still handles 720p ok.

In response to Kame - in Chrome I have no problems with Youtube as referenced by my tests above. It's a mess on Linux though - Flash is very poorly optimised for Linux.

I wouldn't get a netbook. I'd get a weaker ~13" notebook. It'll be nicer to work on, it'll still be portable. Especially since your budget is ~$2000, you have money to splurge; buy something that you can truly multitask on and not feel limited. The gaming desktop won't be expensive, Ex can get you what you want for ~$700.

Thank you for the offer Ex; I accept your terms of service.

Newegg is running a promotional offer for a $400 15" laptop; sounds tempting, but I foresee problems with the resolution (1366x768 on a 15.6"), the HDD rpm (5400), and the low quality of the peripheral hardware (optical drive/speakers/touchpad). Should I anticipate significantly higher spending for the notebook computer to get a non-crappy one, or will I be able to get a superior product for a similar price range (<$600)? The Asus laptops that fit my specifications are unfortunately all in the $800+ range (and I am not quite sure if I want to even consider an eee PC for the cheaper end), so that's potentially out of the window since I can max out the specs on a hp dv6t for only $1088 and get a lot more bang for the buck.

By the way, Windows 7 Starter does not come with the ability to change the desktop background for some reason.

My boyfriend picked up a refurbished netbook yesterday for $200. Its an old-ish one, but its red. So who cares about specs

If you don't tell me what you consider to be a "decent" or "non-crappy" laptop, I won't be able to help...

Ah yes, my error.

Base preferences:
- 7200 rpm HDD 400 GB+
- 4+ hours battery life if possible; it seems to be pretty common
- RAM 4GB+ (1066 MHz is enough for whatever that the laptop is going to be used for)
- The processor should be dual-core with at least 1.8 GHz (not the 1GHz underclocked crap found in some netbooks)
- I would prefer a display that had at least 1000 horizontal lines, but 1366x768 seems to be the prevailing resolution for all the smaller dimension laptops that still have the "HD" aspect ratio.

Mostly it would be used for note-taking, web browsing, some light application usage (PS/3DSM/VS). Peak performance doesn't need to be extremely good, but I do need to have as little delay in common tasks as possible; extra seconds opening or loading/processing something due to a slow HD can really add up.