Help in finding the right laptop.

Krattos

Distinguished
Mar 27, 2011
4
0
18,510
Was hoping that I could get some help in trying to find a new laptop. First I will start out by filling out the questionnaire from the sticky. After that I will show you what I have found so far.

1. What is your budget?
I would like to stay under $2,000.00. If I have to go a bit over I will survive.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Within the 15-17 inch range.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Looking for a high resolution screen. 1920x1080

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
While portable is nice it will probably serve more as a desktop replacement.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not concerned about battery life.

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)?
I don't play anything that is graphic intensive (mostly WoW), but if I ever wanted to play like Crysis it would be nice to know that I could run it at a reasonable frame rate. if I am going to spend money on a laptop I don't want it outdated in 2 yrs.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
Just normal web browsing.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
The amount of storage is not a huge concern. All though I would prefer a SSD. I would of course be willing to add the addition after market as I have been having a hard time finding one.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
A long time.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Minimum DVD drive, strong preference towards Bluray.

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.
I have looked mostly at just Asus so far.

13. What country do you live in?
United States.

So far I have been looking mostly at the Asus G73SW series as it seems to offer most of what I am looking for, except for the SSD which I can add later. I've looked at the different packages on the following sites, Newegg, Tiger Direct, Amazon, Buy.com, Bestbuy, and a few others that I can't really remember at the moment. So far it looks like TigerDirect has the best package. Here are the specs of the laptop:

Asus G73SW-XT1
Intel Core i7-2630QM 2.0GHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460M 1.5GB DDR5 VRAM
8GB DDR3 1333MHz
Blu-ray/DVDRW
17.3" Screen 1920x1080

So my question is, what do you think of that laptop and most importantly what other comparable suggestions would there be? Trying to get the best deal I can get.
 

Krattos

Distinguished
Mar 27, 2011
4
0
18,510
Thanks for your input. Just for comparison I went through and with the exact same specs the Asus beats the Sager cost wise. However, being able to customize the Sager fully definitely has its advantage. One question though, when looking at the graphic cards, the nVidia GeForce GTX 485M says User Upgradeable, what exactly does that mean? Thanks.
 

It means that you can buy the card separately and upgrade it yourself.