Best Laptop for Video & Photo Editing, Digital Painting & Gaming Preferably under $1800 USD

[charlesez16]

I'm looking for a laptop preferably $1800 or under that I will get at least 5 years of solid use from. As stated in the topic I will be using it to edit photos and videos and for gaming.

So far I've had two 15" macbook pro's. The first developed heating issues and needed a new logic board after 2 years and the second which I have had for about 3 years now has developed issues as well. The SD card slot, one of the usb ports and the firebolt port don't work. If I try to do any gaming on it the computer overheats terribly to the point where it cannot be touched. I've also grown tired of Apple's charger design and the price it takes to replace one but if I must I would be willing to bite the bullet and purchase another macbook.

The programs I use the most are Photoshop CS6 and Premier Pro CS6
Games I wish to play on it would include things such as The Witcher games, Guild Wars 2, Total War Games and Skyrim.

Can anyone offer me some advice on purchases? So far I've mainly been looking at the alienware 15 and the 15" macbook pro once more but have been reading that the alienware excels at gaming but falls far behind in video editing and the macbook excels at video editing but falls far behind in video gaming (something that I can attest to with the heating issues)

 

[Phil923]

I've never really had problems with video editing and other things such as that on PCs. The hardware in macs are geared more towards production, but I have never had issues with the software on PCs. Alienware computers aren't as good as they once were and I would suggest looking on newegg and seeing what you like, some things that come to mind in your price range are the ASUS G751 series laptop or MSI GT70 laptops.

Another note is that gaming laptops greatly suffer in terms of battery life compared to macs though, but that's the price to pay for power. It's fine if you're just looking for a mobile workstation though.