Alright, so my bro's going to college, and as i value the input of the tech section here so much, I decided to ask what your opinions are on what would be best.

Budget: 1000-1200 US
-He'll be doing some gaming on it, but as far as he said, nothing too intense. Should be able to run SC2 well, if possible.
-He's also going into school for engineering, so he may need a decent processer if he needs to do anything with it.
-15" is preferred.
- portability is always something to look at, as well as battery life. Would be good to get 3-4 hours if possible.
- HDD should be at least 250, if not larger.

If more info is needed, i'll update the OP. Any questions are more than welcome, and I look forward to the responses.

Dell XPS 15z
Sony Vaio C 15.5"
HP Pavilion dv6
Toshiba Satellite A660 & A665
Lenovo Thinkpad T520 or W520
Samsung RF511
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220996
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152258
Other manufacturers? Sager?

Brief wrapup. I'd expect any of these to have good battery life. When researching, look for things like turbo boost (uses a small SSD to store stuff to allow for faster startup), Optimus (automatic, seamless switching between GPU's for conservation of battery life), USB 3.0, and compare the GPUs and CPUs. I think all of these use Sandy Bridge, meaning the processor should be good enough, but clock speed is a good tiebreaker; as for GPUs, I really don't know how to compare how good they are by their names. Find some benchmarks to see how well they play games to compare them. All should have discrete options; the first few are all customizable, if you want to play SCII well, make sure you upgrade the GPU to discrete.

The Newegg links are pretty safe; those two have full HD resolution, Sandy Bridge, Optimus, and good GPUs. I would expect ~4 hours of battery life, but I'm not sure. Read reviews on sites other than newegg, whatever you choose. Some laptops overheat or have build quality issues. Screens vary as well; glossy screens are more reflective than matte screens, and different displays have different view angles; IPS displays are the best for this, but they're rare.

Lastly, check weight and dimensions; laptops vary in both (I believe the MSI Newegg link, for example, is more than a pound lighter than the Asus), which is more portability. But it likely won't feel as nice to work on (more plastics in construction). Dimensions could vary too, and I'm not talking about depth here; width and height can vary because bezels around screens on various laptops can be very different. I would expect the less-premium laptops to do worse with this, though I didn't check; I'd expect the Dell, Lenovo W520, and maybe the Sony to do best in this department.

I should just make a "Buying a laptop guide" thread.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Jun 5 2011, 3:46 am by Centreri.

This is why i love SEN's tech help. The wrap up helped a lot too. Thanks a lot cent.

I'll make a second post: Some laptops can come with an additional sheet battery that you can attach to the bottom of your laptop to increase battery life. I believe some Sonys and some Lenovos support this (and likely have their proprietary batteries); I believe the one for Sony C is $100. I'd definitely get one now if my laptop was new enough to support this, because it seeems much less painful than a traditional extra-capacity battery to attach (in that it won't tilt your laptop), and much cheaper.

I won't make a list of smaller laptops for you, but the Sony C comes in 15.5" and the otherwise-nearly-identical 14.1" version; they also have the 13.1" S, which is as or more powerful (but more expensive) as the C; additionally, my laptop is the older Sony Vaio Z, which is now not being sold, but was a 13.3" laptop with a screen resolution going up to 1920x1080, and there's no replacement for it yet, so if you're interested, you could wait and see what Sony pushes out. It'll probably be the best thing on the market (mine had tiny bezels, good battery life, thinness, 3 pounds, SSDs, RAID0, etc); when it comes out, though, it likely WILL be more expensive than your maximum by a few hundred dollars. Waiting's a frustrating thing to do, anyway; just an option.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 5 2011, 4:17 am by Centreri.

Aight, looked over all the stuff, and he liked the MSI one that you posted the best, basically did well in every area, and after looking up other reviews, saw that the only issue people were having was software that msi itself installed, but also found a fix that apparently works very well.

Haven't bought it quite yet, but it's a pretty sure thing. The extra battery wont really be necessary. Looks like it should get a good four hours, which is perfectly fine. I knw mine pretty much gets four and i havent really ever seen it as an issue.

He'll probably need to be able to run Matlab. No idea what kind of specs that requires, but that's pretty standard for every engineering school I've talked to.


As always though, have to say don't repeat the mistake I made: get a netbook and get a gaming desktop. You save money, get more portability, and get better gaming potential.

Remember.. Don't buy Lenovo Ideapads
Thinkpads are okay... but Ideapads break all the time.

Try to look for good deals @ dedicated computer forums. There'll sometimes be digital coupons that would make the comps a lot cheaper.

He's not looking to do any really heavy gaming, and I already discussed te idea with him but he didnt like it.

gaming is the only reason to get a fast computer.

Get a $400 computer if you're not gaming at all.

Bullshit. RAM and high resolution for multitasking. CPU/GPU for modelling. CPU for giving stressed programs the resources they need while allowing you to do your work simultaneously (eg Zune with animations, playing music, downloading and syncing to two devices, averages ~30% CPU on my i5). Just because all the work you do can be done in Word doesn't mean that's true of everyone.

As for your brothers choice... well, I really haven't done the research you have. Hopefully. If you haven't researched the alternatives a lot, though, I'd look further into it, as I'd expect the newegg ones to be better in raw specifications but worse in the less-immediately-noticable departments - that is, overheating, weight, size, construction, speaker quality, battery life, and extras (I believe Samsung laptops can wirelessly stream video to Samsung smart TV's, for example). Anyway, good luck.

Note the word there.
Most of my issues with the other computers was with specifications. He liked the msi one best, but after looking into it, still not so sure.

The dell options i didnt feel were set to very good standards, and i personally dont like the lack of customization, but beyond that they weren't so bad.
deal breaker was that the 1100 model, while having much better specs in other areas for the same price as competitors, only had 720p, which was weird since the 1000 model did. VAIOs look pretty nice too, although it seems like they might have a good deal of bloatware. The thinkpad put me off when it both charged 250 off the base model for a 1080p screen, and has no dedicated graphics card options. Didn't like how samsung doesn't sell direct. The two newegg ones do seem pretty safe, but some of the reviews are concerning, like shipping with dead pixels and having speakers that distort under low stress kinda thing.

Also looked at sager. They seem a bit more expensive, but otherwise look quality. Was a bit weird that they offer dead pixel insurance though, doesnt exactly give me a whole lot of confidence.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 6 2011, 11:28 pm by ShredderIV.

... Eh. I think that if you had crappy screens, the last thing you'd want is a paper saying that you have to pay anyone with dead pixels. Probably a good thing. Also, pretty sure the specific models I linked all had options for discrete GPUs; you're probably looking at the wrong Lenovos. Not sure how good they are, though, that's on you. Dell... again, I was pointing specifically at the 15z. I was under the impression that it was good - it's been derided as being a macbook pro clone, but even if that's true, that's not a bad thing. And it's thinner.

Vaios have bloatware. It's removable, and some of the programs I decided to keep because they filled a niche. Not sure how it compares to others bloatware.

The t-series has one laptop with a dedicated card, and apparently it can't run sc2 very well, at least according to benchmarks. The w-series had them, but were a bit high on the price range.

nehalem and sandy bridge graphics are good enough to not heavy gaming and are standard on almost all computers.

Could they play SC2? according to this they can play it on low with not-stellar framerates.. Believe me, I already did my research on the subject.

Honestly rockz, we already determined he wants a dedicated card, so why are you still arguing this? Getting to be like you're just trolling the thread.

If you consider 44+ fps not stellar then I pity you.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2011/01/27/intel-hd-graphics-3000-performance-review/6
desktop 2500k plays sc2 fine.

Get a dedicated card though; you've got your mind made up, and I can't convince you you don't need it. I couldn't spend $200 on a crappy graphics card though if it were me, especially if it killed my battery life.

The two Newegg choices I picked have Optimus, meaning that when the dedicated GPU isn't needed, the computer will automatically switch to integrated graphics. No loss of battery life.

Like cent said, it doesn't kill the battery life, and usually, at least in my experience, gaming on battery power almost never happens.

44+ fps isn't stellar when you consider that it's on SC2 on low.

And on 1024x720 resolution. If he bumps it up to native, it'll drop below playable.