- Dec 4, 2009
- 33
- 0
- 18,580
EDIT: Okay, I saw the sticky - leaving this here for anyone who wants to read it but please skip to the bottom for the formatted version as per sticky.
EDIT 11/18: Okay guys skip to the last post, have some questions asked there so this stuff up here is no longer relevant.
I received as a gift in late 2007 an HP laptop with a 15" screen, a Pentium D dual core processor and 2 GB of ram along with either a 120 GB or 160 GB hard drive - I forget exactly. I use my laptop on campus to take notes and access my university's online website. The thing is, I'm a gamer when I'm at home on my PC - and it handles it well. My laptop on the other hand is the most pathetic excuse for a gaming device ever. Anything above the built-in games, flash based games, or old games pre-2000 are way too much for it to handle. The best looking game it will run smoothly is Half Life (Not Source, just the vanilla original Half Life). It has Vista installed on it, which I'm sure is not helping, and I have access to Windows 7 32-bit I could install on it - but I feel that's largely a waste with it because it's just so weak. The processor is like a 1.46 GHz dual core.
I've tried cleaning the registry, spyware checks, etc (Not that I use the thing much) and they're all temporary fixes that speed it up slightly and then it gets real slow again. It's so slow that from power on to desktop it takes literally 1 minute 30 seconds or more (I timed it). I have only the minimal amount of software running (Avast anti-virus, Comodo firewall, no extra game or chat programs or anything like that). When I try to open things like the internet it takes it probably 15-20 seconds to fully render the first webpage - the rest come at the normal speed but it's really slow to start. Basically this describes everything it does - it works for basic functions but it just annoys me far too much with how slow it is, and it even does these basic functions slowly. Office is okay once it has loaded but it takes it some time before office is loaded and the document is loaded, hitting save takes some time as well - my PC is a 3.0 GHz C2D with 4 GB of ram and Windows 7 64-bit, I'm used to power and speed not this pokey click something then wait several seconds for it to respond business.
I thought I wanted a gaming laptop some time back, but honestly I'm not one of those "laptop" kind of people. I prefer my big desktop PC with my large display and surround sound - a laptop will never replace that for me. So I don't need top end performance, as cool as it might be to play games maxed out that are relatively new on my laptop. I want respectably good battery life (3 hours or more would be suitable, 2 hours+ could work if it had power to compensate for this lesser battery life), a good sized screen (13" bare minimum, 15" a preferred minimal size though - not opposed to the big 17" laptops). I want to be able to play a modest amount of games (For example, my laptop cannot play Minecraft...ugh...face + keyboard), the ability to play source games like Half Life 2 and TF2, L4D2 and some relatively decent graphic RTS games at decent FPS without being absolute minimum settings would be excellent for me. I wouldn't play games on it a lot, but would like the ability to do so more than I am now (which is basically nil since it can't run even the simplest of games).
I'm an Intel fanboy, so that's pretty much a given for me that it will be Intel processor based. I'm thinking i3 or i5 - but would perhaps a decent older C2D laptop be sufficient? I don't mind buying used, just seems like people overprice stuff a lot in that regard. I hate to spend too much on a laptop because I am not sure how much if I had an expensive one that I'd do any more than I do with my current laptop which is slow. The $400-$500 range would be nice to stay in - I'll sell the old laptop whenever I get a new one which will make the cost lower. I do not want any Dell laptops (Personal issues I have with Dell as a company so I am not going to be buying any of their laptops), other than that I'm open to ideas.
Just to throw out this idea (which goes against what I said above), are any of the netbooks powerful enough to play some games like Minecraft and some Source based games? Their screens are tiny, but perhaps their low cost would negate that and be a more reasonable solution for me. I sincerely doubt that I'll ever become a laptop only kind of person - so a laptop mostly needs to just be fast and not slow at booting up, starting Office, surfing the web - and if it can do some light-moderate gaming I'd be a happy camper. Anyone make it through my wall of text ( :lol: ) to give me suggestions?
EDIT
1. What is your budget?
$400-$500 - can be less obviously, and possibly a little more depending on the difference it would make
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Prefer a 15" or larger, but a 13" might be considerable if it has the right features.
3. What screen resolution do you want?
The highest possible given the screen size - but I expect most have the 1280 x 800 which is meh at best to me.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable, I'll never be a laptop only kind of guy.
5. How much battery life do you need?
2 hours+ is minimum 3 hours+ is preferred
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)?
Minecraft (High), HL2/TF2/L4D2/Gmod/CSS (Medium/High), Fallout 3 (Medium), Company of Heroes (Medium)
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
First and foremost is note taking, using the entire suite of Office. Will not ever do video or photo editing on it - would do that on my desktop. Internet surfing a given as well, like YouTube and such.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
160 GB+ - larger is better of course but I don't need lots
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
I always like www.Newegg.com but they seem a bit high, would also consider www.TigerDirect.com. Not opposed to other websites per se, just don't know of many others.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Ideally for several years - it doesn't need to keep up with the latest games, but as long as it can keep playing my old games I'll be happy with it. I'd say around 4-5 years if not longer.
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD-ROM is basically it, Blu-ray drive would be cool but totally not needed (Don't even have one on my desktop). I expect most laptops have DVD-RW drives minimum anymore though.
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 don't have any decided brand preferences - I never buy pre-built PCs, have always built my own so I don't really know what brands actually make decent PCs. My current laptop is an HP, albeit an older one - I'm disappointed with how slow it is but functionally it's just fine and hasn't really crashed or done stupid things to me. I will not buy Dell laptops however, too many people complain about Dell's poor service and I recently experienced it through a pre-order of something on their website - which they screwed me over on and now I get nothing and lost pre-order bonuses thanks to their incompetence. Dell is the only big no that I have.
13. What country do you live in?
United States
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
For this, see above paragraphs. Will add that I hate glossy screens if they're avoidable I would prefer a matte finish screen all day long - but don't expect this to be very likely since every laptop it seems is glossy finish anymore.
EDIT 11/18: Okay guys skip to the last post, have some questions asked there so this stuff up here is no longer relevant.
I received as a gift in late 2007 an HP laptop with a 15" screen, a Pentium D dual core processor and 2 GB of ram along with either a 120 GB or 160 GB hard drive - I forget exactly. I use my laptop on campus to take notes and access my university's online website. The thing is, I'm a gamer when I'm at home on my PC - and it handles it well. My laptop on the other hand is the most pathetic excuse for a gaming device ever. Anything above the built-in games, flash based games, or old games pre-2000 are way too much for it to handle. The best looking game it will run smoothly is Half Life (Not Source, just the vanilla original Half Life). It has Vista installed on it, which I'm sure is not helping, and I have access to Windows 7 32-bit I could install on it - but I feel that's largely a waste with it because it's just so weak. The processor is like a 1.46 GHz dual core.
I've tried cleaning the registry, spyware checks, etc (Not that I use the thing much) and they're all temporary fixes that speed it up slightly and then it gets real slow again. It's so slow that from power on to desktop it takes literally 1 minute 30 seconds or more (I timed it). I have only the minimal amount of software running (Avast anti-virus, Comodo firewall, no extra game or chat programs or anything like that). When I try to open things like the internet it takes it probably 15-20 seconds to fully render the first webpage - the rest come at the normal speed but it's really slow to start. Basically this describes everything it does - it works for basic functions but it just annoys me far too much with how slow it is, and it even does these basic functions slowly. Office is okay once it has loaded but it takes it some time before office is loaded and the document is loaded, hitting save takes some time as well - my PC is a 3.0 GHz C2D with 4 GB of ram and Windows 7 64-bit, I'm used to power and speed not this pokey click something then wait several seconds for it to respond business.
I thought I wanted a gaming laptop some time back, but honestly I'm not one of those "laptop" kind of people. I prefer my big desktop PC with my large display and surround sound - a laptop will never replace that for me. So I don't need top end performance, as cool as it might be to play games maxed out that are relatively new on my laptop. I want respectably good battery life (3 hours or more would be suitable, 2 hours+ could work if it had power to compensate for this lesser battery life), a good sized screen (13" bare minimum, 15" a preferred minimal size though - not opposed to the big 17" laptops). I want to be able to play a modest amount of games (For example, my laptop cannot play Minecraft...ugh...face + keyboard), the ability to play source games like Half Life 2 and TF2, L4D2 and some relatively decent graphic RTS games at decent FPS without being absolute minimum settings would be excellent for me. I wouldn't play games on it a lot, but would like the ability to do so more than I am now (which is basically nil since it can't run even the simplest of games).
I'm an Intel fanboy, so that's pretty much a given for me that it will be Intel processor based. I'm thinking i3 or i5 - but would perhaps a decent older C2D laptop be sufficient? I don't mind buying used, just seems like people overprice stuff a lot in that regard. I hate to spend too much on a laptop because I am not sure how much if I had an expensive one that I'd do any more than I do with my current laptop which is slow. The $400-$500 range would be nice to stay in - I'll sell the old laptop whenever I get a new one which will make the cost lower. I do not want any Dell laptops (Personal issues I have with Dell as a company so I am not going to be buying any of their laptops), other than that I'm open to ideas.
Just to throw out this idea (which goes against what I said above), are any of the netbooks powerful enough to play some games like Minecraft and some Source based games? Their screens are tiny, but perhaps their low cost would negate that and be a more reasonable solution for me. I sincerely doubt that I'll ever become a laptop only kind of person - so a laptop mostly needs to just be fast and not slow at booting up, starting Office, surfing the web - and if it can do some light-moderate gaming I'd be a happy camper. Anyone make it through my wall of text ( :lol: ) to give me suggestions?
EDIT
1. What is your budget?
$400-$500 - can be less obviously, and possibly a little more depending on the difference it would make
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Prefer a 15" or larger, but a 13" might be considerable if it has the right features.
3. What screen resolution do you want?
The highest possible given the screen size - but I expect most have the 1280 x 800 which is meh at best to me.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Portable, I'll never be a laptop only kind of guy.
5. How much battery life do you need?
2 hours+ is minimum 3 hours+ is preferred
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)?
Minecraft (High), HL2/TF2/L4D2/Gmod/CSS (Medium/High), Fallout 3 (Medium), Company of Heroes (Medium)
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
First and foremost is note taking, using the entire suite of Office. Will not ever do video or photo editing on it - would do that on my desktop. Internet surfing a given as well, like YouTube and such.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
160 GB+ - larger is better of course but I don't need lots
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
I always like www.Newegg.com but they seem a bit high, would also consider www.TigerDirect.com. Not opposed to other websites per se, just don't know of many others.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Ideally for several years - it doesn't need to keep up with the latest games, but as long as it can keep playing my old games I'll be happy with it. I'd say around 4-5 years if not longer.
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD-ROM is basically it, Blu-ray drive would be cool but totally not needed (Don't even have one on my desktop). I expect most laptops have DVD-RW drives minimum anymore though.
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 don't have any decided brand preferences - I never buy pre-built PCs, have always built my own so I don't really know what brands actually make decent PCs. My current laptop is an HP, albeit an older one - I'm disappointed with how slow it is but functionally it's just fine and hasn't really crashed or done stupid things to me. I will not buy Dell laptops however, too many people complain about Dell's poor service and I recently experienced it through a pre-order of something on their website - which they screwed me over on and now I get nothing and lost pre-order bonuses thanks to their incompetence. Dell is the only big no that I have.
13. What country do you live in?
United States
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
For this, see above paragraphs. Will add that I hate glossy screens if they're avoidable I would prefer a matte finish screen all day long - but don't expect this to be very likely since every laptop it seems is glossy finish anymore.
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