Good laptop for work and light gaming?

[jboy7789]

So, I'm looking to invest in a new laptop as I will be starting a new job at a social media company, and my current mini-laptop is frustratingly slow.

I want to keep the price down a bit, as it will be solely for work related things (Microsoft Office, web browsing) and VERY light gaming (At the most-Magic: The Gathering Online and MAYBE Team Fortress 2).

I've heard good things about Sony Vaio's. Here's one I found at a decent price.

http/www.amazon.com/Sony-Series-VPCEL24FX-15-5-Inch-Charcoal/dp/B005JY5Q8S/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1345783409&sr=8-11&keywords=sony+vaio

Would like to know if it's good. Want to try to keep the price at/under/near $500.

 

[username134]

These might be a little over your budget but I've looked at hundreds of laptops in the last few days in the £500 price range, here's the thread I started (The links are on the thread, click on the names of the laptops)

 

[username134]

Tiny url link didn't work for some reason http/www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/81823-20-what-laptop

 

[jboy7789]

I have heard great things about Lenovo's. My good friend got one for his bday and never looked back, so I'll consider it.

 

[jboy7789]

Also do keep in mind that, with the conversion rate, 500 pounds would be very much out of my budget.

 

[quilciri]

Asus book w/A6-3420m is $350; gets you basically a 4-core phenom 2, and can run all but the most demanding games w/good framerates at med-low settings....way stonger APU than the E-series in the sony, and the Asus book is a higher quality build than the Vaio, imo.

...With everything turned down @ it's native res of 1366x768, it can even pull off crysis around 35 fps.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230457&Tpk=asus%203420m

That price would leave enough in your budget to slap a 120gb SSD in (and maybe put the 320gb in an optical bay adapter) and bump the memory to 8gb, which is what I did

have fun!

 

[jboy7789]

That laptop..is beautiful. Is 8 gb of ram even necessary? Heck, I don't even need to have my games in full HD. Beautiful piece of advice. Unfortunately, I have noooo clue how to put in an optical bay adapter or an SSD. I probably wouldn't need the SSD, as I don't plan on installing many games at all to it (once you have a 2k desktop and game on that, it's really hard to do anything less).

 

[quilciri]

hey man, whatever floats your boat . There's tutorials on youtube and everywhere for ssd's and hdd in optical bay adapters if you ever decide to do that.

I run several VM's on the latop, so 8gb is a necessity for me. It definitely isn't necessary for most people. Since it uses shared memory, if you had 8gb there would still be 4+ gb left to the system after alotting 1 - 1.5 to the GPU, and windows grabbing its share.

....but even bone stock, it's amazing for it's price.

It'll easily handle TF2.

Enjoy!