Solved! Best laptop to choose for engineering @ university

[reignsupreme11]

hey all

i've never owned a notebook before, i've always forayed into the desktop market. i'll be living at home, where I have a custom built desktop with the following relative specs:

i5-2500k CPU
6950 2gb vid card
8gb ram
120GB agility 3 ssd
500gb seagate HDD

however, i don't expect to be able to use this gaming system a lot for schoolwork as i expect to be at the university a lot working with friends and in study groups. what i'm trying to say is that i want my notebook to do more than just word process.

i'm trying to narrow it down because there are 1000 laptops on the market. i know what my criteria are for my laptop but i'm struggling to find models that fit. it'd be great to start by me giving my desired specifications and going with some recommendations.

also, any advice on which brands are best as far as quality, customer service etc. would be appreciated.

here is what i want/thing i need, feel free to advise me otherwise!

1) no longer than 15.6", this is very important to me
2) ~900$ CAD
3) 320GB HDD is fine, bigger than 500 is kind of overkill.
4) a quality CPU--i'm used to a an i2500k. i feel that i need a true quad core, preferably an intel i-2630QM but if i'm wrong about that let me know
5) some sort of discrete graphics. i do not want intel integrated hd 3000 graphics on my laptop because i may occassionally game on it.
6) decent battery

that should be it. i know that it is specific and what not. i've been looking and i will post any models that i find.

thanks in advance for the help!

 

[sidewinderx2]

If you do get an SSD (which i strongly recommend, especially since you'll be saving some money on the graphics card side), you'll have to install it by yourself (and windows along with it), so just keep that in mind. If you wont do much more than office applications, you can just spend about $1-200 on a good ~60-120 gb SSD. It'll be enough for windows + office suite + visual studio and/or Eclipse + a couple of games. You'll probably want to carry a small (size, not capacity) hard drive with you for your media files if you have lots of music/movies though.

For the laptop itself, try Lenovo's Thinkpad series. The T420 is an awesome laptop, with great build quality and reliability. You can customize a few options on it too if you go to their website. Just don't bother upgrading the HDD to a SSD on there... do it yourself, it's much cheaper.

 

[reignsupreme11]

hey, i may have reason to change my mind again!

i've been looking on cyberpowerpc.com and they are giving a 5% instant rebate and 50$ MIR on any item over 999$ and are also offering a free upgrade to 8gb fo ram on certain models. This essentially brings the cost back within my 900$ limit. i have customized a system for 1001$ with the following specifications:

intel 2630QM CPU
windows 7 home premium
15.6" 1366 x 768 (don't sell anything smaller)
nvidia GT 540m 2GB
range booster wireless card
OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD
8GB DDR3 RAM

they are also adding in a free copy of shogun 2, a basic mouse and a headset with mic. this totals 1001$ and then 50$ is taken off and i qualify for an additional 50$ MIR.

now all these goodies so pretty damn good to me, what do you guys have to say/think?

 

[sidewinderx2]

that actually sounds pretty awesome. The only thing with a small-ish SSD is that you'll only be able to keep a handful of games on there at once... which isnt really that big a problem, tbh, but it's something to keep in mind about anyways.

 

[reignsupreme11]

that actually sounds pretty awesome. The only thing with a small-ish SSD is that you'll only be able to keep a handful of games on there at once... which isnt really that big a problem, tbh, but it's something to keep in mind about anyways.

their will only be 2-3 games that i will play on this laptop, so i'm not really worried, i figured that'd leave me with about 50GB of storage space, plus i have an external hard drive. thanks for the advice though, anybody have any other thoughts?