Help on picking a new laptop

[Vmav]

If you'd like you can skip to the end for the criteria but here's a little back story. My girlfriend has had an HP pavilion for a few years now (i believe its the dv-1400(?)). The screen randomly started to go black and after some trouble shooting i figured it was one of the inverter cables. I generally deal with tearing down desktops that have wayyy more room making it such an easy job, but i followed the simple steps and it wasnt too bad. Issue is when i started to open it up I unleashed a can of worms with plastic pieces just randomly floating around, and even discovering that the metal bracket that was holding the LCD was snapped. Instead of spending more time breaking it down and putting it back together with no reassurance it'd work or last very long, she concluded that its about time to buy a new laptop.

She's on a tight budget, being a college student, and needs a laptop for internet surfing, streaming shows, word processing, and some light gaming. Her budget is tops 400$ and id prefer she spends less than that unless is a considerable difference in upgrade. Coming from the desktop scene, im not the best at figuring out laptops so i came to the community. Im not a fanboy of either AMD or Intel, i go with whichever is the best value at that price point. Rather it not be a chrome book or netbook, and i have a few licenses of W7 left so a laptop without an OS can work too. Thanks.

1. What is your budget? 400 at most, prefer less.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15" or above

3. What screen resolution do you want? preferably 1080, 768 is ok.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? desktop replacement laptop

5. How much battery life do you need? Not a crazy requirement but the longer the better

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)? Very light gaming (some portal and flash games) any setting.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Web surfing, streaming, word processing

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? preferably 500gb but any hdd will suffice.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Im ok with any major site such as newegg, amazon, tigerdirect, etc

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? as long as possible. 4 years+

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? DVD/CD-R

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. Not a fanboy, just looking for value and reliability.

13. What country do you live in? Good Ole USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. n/a

 

[Vmav]

Any suggestions at all?

 

[JD88]

Honestly, at that price point what you're going to get is about the same.

Intel Core i3
500GB HDD
4 GB RAM
1366x768 screen.

Sometimes you can find some crazy deal on one with an i5, or maybe an open box item somewhere with a lot better specs.

It basically comes down to brand name.

I personally think Asus and Lenovo are the best with Dell and Toshiba at the bottom. Everything else is hit or miss.

 

[Vmav]

Thanks for the reply. I know you said I3 but what do you think about this?
http/www.amazon.com/ASUS-K55N-DB81-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Black/dp/B00COR29XI/ref=sr_1_3?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1378481134&sr=1-3
Seems like a lot of features for the price.

 

[Vmav]

If its a substantially better laptop I'd be willing to help her out and get to around a 450-500$ budget

 

[JD88]

Yeah that looks solid. The A8 isn't quite as stong as the i3 on the CPU front but it's got decent graphics. Good brand, 6GB RAM.

 

[Vmav]

Is any I3 series good? like between the 2xxx or 3xxx. Again power consumption isnt by biggest concern but i also wouldnt mind it.

 

[JD88]

Well the difference between the 2000 series and 3000 series or Sandy Bridge to Ivy Bridge is around 5% when clocked the same.

The big thing you want to look for is CPU clock speed. Some laptops use the ultra low power versions of the i3 and i5 which are only clocked to around 1.5-1.8 GHz. Since you don't care a lot about battery life, you want the highest clock speeds possible. (2.4-2.5 GHz for an i3 and maybe more for an i5).

Both the i3 and i5 are dual core CPUs with Hyper Threading, the difference being clock speed and the ability to use Turbo Boost which raises the clock speed based on load and temperature.

That a8 unit is a decent CPU too though.

 

[Vmav]

i was gonna go for the a8 but it seems its sold out, the link i posted has a pre-order button and i cant seem to find it anywhere else. so the hunt continues, but thank you for your help. Any suggestions linked would help as well :-D.

 

[Vmav]

http/www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=7616793&Tab=11&NoMapp=
would you say this is worth the extra 50$?

 

[JD88]

Does she mind pink?

http/www.amazon.com/ASUS-A55A-AH51-PK-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Pink/dp/B009MBC2N6/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1378495843&sr=1-6

 

[Vmav]

Sadly she does :-/.

 

[Vmav]

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230987R thats what i think she'll end up going with. what do you think?

 

[Vmav]

Wow it just jumped 40$ when she was about to order it -_-. The search continues.

 

[Vmav]

Well she called newegg and they reduced the price for her. Thanks for all your help! This thread can be closed now.

 

[JD88]

That's a really nice laptop. Should last a long time. Probably overkill for your needs but that will be great for longevity.

Good luck! Thanks for the best answer.