Choosing a laptop for college

sylarender

Honorable
May 24, 2013
1
0
10,510
This is a laptop I'm helping my girlfriend choose and I've looked and can't find anything that's quite what she wants. Just looking for some recommendations.

1. What is your budget? - Under $900

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? - Smallish, she isn't too big so preferably under 16 inch screen and under 6 lbs, the smaller the better really

3. What screen resolution do you want? - not too important for her

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? - portable, although it will be her only computer

5. How much battery life do you need? - about 8 hours

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? - Yes she wants to play some games, but not extreme gaming. perhaps borderlands 2 or such, but low settings should be fine.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) - average college tasks, so basic photo/video stuff (if it can play games it'll be able to handle this)

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? - at least 500 GB more doesn't hurt

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. - well my favorite sites are amazon.com newegg.com tigerdirect.com but anything trustworthy works

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? - at least through college, so 4 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? - basic cd/dvd drive.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons. - no preference really

13. What country do you live in? - USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. - Here are some of the laptops i've chosen so far -
http://www.amazon.com/HP-15-3040NR-Laptop-Black-Silver/dp/B006PCDJI2/ref=sr_1_5?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1402361290&sr=1-5

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834314578

 


They said low to medium is fine, So I think a gt 740M will be more than enough.
OP: I think this is exactly what you're looking for : http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=8557209&CatId=927
14'' 1080p screen, gt 750M so it can handle games fairly nicely, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD and weighs 4.4 lb. Battery life is about 8 hours.
 
As with the above choices, I don't see the CPU keeping up thru 4 years.... it's only 60% of the speed (1.6 GHz... 2.6 Turbu) as the Clevo model (2.5 ...3.5 w/ Turbo).

There's many more feature differences but most significant are:

14" is a bit small

slow 5400 rpm HD, Clevo model has 750 GB 7200 rpm free option

3 times as many USB 3 ports

6 cell versus 4 cell battery

My son worked for Acer Tech Support while in college, he used a Clevo for school.