Good Laptop on a budget?

pandawok56

Honorable
May 28, 2012
4
0
10,510
1. What is your budget?
Some where around $800, maybe $900 max if it's a computer that will last

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Anything portable

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Doesn't matter, whatevers good for gaming and that price range.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Need something for school, but will mostly be used at home, if not at school.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Enough to get through a class unplugged, so let's say at least 3 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 sir, any game really, I'll take what I can get but I'm mostly into RPG's, RTS's etc. I would love to be able to play Guild Wars 2 and/or Diablo 3 on at least medium. As long as I can play most games recently made on medium I'll be happy.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Standard school things. Majoring in CAD so preferably able to handle things like that. Games and video watching on the side

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Doesn't matter too much because I can just use an external for most stuff, but somewhere around 250 GB would be nice.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Wherever is cheapest

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Preferably 3-4 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I'll take whatever I can get but a Bluray player is preferred

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.
Doesn't matter to me

13. What country do you live in?
The US

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I've been looking at the HP Pavilion dv6z-6c00 Quad Edition for $795 with
AMD Quad-Core A8-3550MX Accelerated Processor (2.7GHz/2.0GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA]
6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
640GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard)
15.6" Full HD HP Anti-glare LED (1920 x 1080)
SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support

Was also looking at the Acer TravelMate Timeline 8573T-6834-Core i7 2.7 GHz-4 GB Ram
 

pandawok56

Honorable
May 28, 2012
4
0
10,510
I'm also thinking about

HP Pavilion dv6z Quad Edition customizable Notebook PC [$925]
AMD Quad-Core A8-3550MX Accelerated Processor (2.7GHz/2.0GHz, 4MB L2 Cache)
1GB AMD Radeon(TM) HD 7690M GDDR5 Discrete Graphics(TM) [HDMI, VGA]
6GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
640GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard) - Up to 5.5 hours of battery life
15.6" Full HD HP Anti-glare LED (1920 x 1080)
SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
HP TrueVision HD Webcam with Integrated Digital Microphone and HP SimplePass Fingerprint Reader
802.11b/g/n WLAN


HP Pavilion dv7t Quad Edition customizable Notebook PC [$925]
3rd generation Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM Processor (2.3 GHz, 6MB L3 Cache)
NVIDIA(R) GeForce(R) GT 650M Graphics with 2GB GDDR5 memory [HDMI, VGA]
8GB DDR3 System Memory (2 Dimm)
1TB 5400 rpm Hard Drive
6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery - Up to 5.75 hours of battery life +++
17.3-inch diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit Display (1600 x 900)
Blu-ray player & SuperMulti DVD burner
HP TrueVision HD Webcam
802.11b/g/n WLAN

I'm thinking the dvt7t is the better pick of the two, but thoughts?