I am buying my first laptop and need advice

[JLumpkin]

I am researching to buy my first laptop and I am pretty overwhelmed since I do not know a lot about the inner workings of a computer.

1. What is your budget?

Up to $1,000.00


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

A 15" screen


3. What screen resolution do you want?

I'm not really sure. Average I guess.


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

I need to be able to travel with it.


5. How much battery life do you need?

Not a lot. The longest I would be away from an outlet would be a couple of 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)?

The Sims 3 - High


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

I have my own business so I need to be able to make flyers and business cards and have it hold all of my clients' information. Web browsing and email is a must.


8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

Enough to hold a lot of photos and business details.


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

None at the moment.


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

As long as possible. This is a long term investment.


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

DVD ROM/Writer


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.

This is where I am having trouble. I know I don't like the Sony Vaio because I use my friend's quite frequently and it is very sluggish and freezes up constantly. The design is nice tho. I'm not too familiar with any other brands.


13. What country do you live in?

USA


14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I would like it to be durable.


Help please

 

[hang-the-9]

One of the most durable laptops are the Lenovo ThinkPads, I have used several generations and liked them better than anything else. The L530 model with the i5 CPU will be fast for a while and will play lower end games OK. At a bit higher end is a T530 with the Nvidia graphics for right around $1,000.

I use a T420 with nVidia NVS video and can run WOW on it at pretty good settings, so the T530 would handle SIMS3 just fine.

 

[JLumpkin]

How about the AMD radeon hd 7670m? I'm looking at customizing a laptop that has that. One website said that many games run fine with it. Have you had any experience with it?

 

[thomasf94]

This should give a pretty good idea to what that gpu can handle:

So yeah, sims on high should run fine on that with highest settings, its not a very demanding game