Laptop buying selection (filled FAQ)

[trivialstein]

Hello TH forum! Long time visitor - first time poster.

1. What is your budget?
$400-750

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
14"+

3. What screen resolution do you want?
at least 1280 x 720

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
~4 hrs

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)?
Minor game play - older games at low-medium settings (would prefer a dedicated graphics card rather than integrated.

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

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
At least 400gb HDD and I would really like to have a SSD.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
<intentionally left blank>

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
at least 5 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD - no need for a 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.
No brand preference.

13. What country do you live in?
USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
The primary function of the laptop is to keep my wife happy when she's multi-tasking between online surfing, photo editting & video watching when she's on the couch watching TV.

Thanks for all of the help gurus!

 

[affroman112]

Looks like any laptop with an A series processor from AMD or a Intel chip with an HD4000 would work for you. Lenovo makes nice laptops that will fit in your price range. You might find yourself having to install your own SSD.

 

[trivialstein]

Looks like any laptop with an A series processor from AMD or a Intel chip with an HD4000 would work for you. Lenovo makes nice laptops that will fit in your price range. You might find yourself having to install your own SSD.

Thanks for the info - I'll take a look at the Lenovo ones.

One of the problems that I have been having is I read somewhere that some laptop cases won't have enough room to accommodate a SSD. I'm just struggling trying to figure out which ones will work..

 

[affroman112]

If you want to add a SSD to a machine with an existing mechanical hard drive, you will need a mSSD port or a larger laptop with two bays. Another option is to install the SSD in the optical drive spot.