Laptop For School within 300-400

BrandonLD

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Feb 16, 2013
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What is your budget? $300-400 can go above 400 but has to stay under 480.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 15inch

3. What screen resolution do you want? At least 1366x768

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

5. How much battery life do you need? 2+ 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)? Medium, Skyrim and maybe a few others not really any new games. Various Emulators of old school systems.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Typical word processing, internet, watch high quality videos

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? At least 100GB

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

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

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

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. Any.

13. What country do you live in? USA.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. I will be very grateful to any informative replies.
 
Solution


I wouldn't buy a used laptop at that price with those specs.

Here is the best one I can find, factory refurbished, with AMD Radeon HD 8610G graphics. It should actually play most games fairly decent, for a mobile APU, and has an A10 APU so it's at the upper end of the AMD mobile APU market.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-geek-squad-certified-refurbished-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-6gb-memory-750gb-hard-drive-modern-silver/5350018.p?id=1219120769181&skuId=5350018&st=pcmcat138500050001_categoryid$abcat0502000&cp=1&lp=1

ronintexas

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Dec 10, 2012
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This: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834317596

Gaming is out of the question for any laptop under 700 bucks and anything less than 900 is going to be pretty much restricted to lower settings. I realize you don't intend to do any high end gaming, but for 400 bucks, even 480, it's pretty thin.

This isn't too terrible either:

http://www.ncixus.com/products/?sku=94508&vpn=20B2001CUS&manufacture=Lenovo


Also, pretty much any of the A series APU's are going to give you better graphics than most of the Intel HD series graphics. There are a few exceptions, but they're not on models this cheap.
 


That unit has Intel HD 4400 graphics which is pretty terrible, worse than the A series APU's graphics. Although, I know that for these prices it's going to either be somewhat fair CPU and lousy graphics, or somewhat fair graphics and lousy CPU.
 

ronintexas

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Dec 10, 2012
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I purchased one of the ASUS laptops with a core i-7 and the NVIDIA GTX 860M GPU - it doesn't play games well.....although it is a huge step up when comparing it to the Intel HD Graphics.....the notebook was on sale for $999 (was $1299). I normally don't play games on the laptop - a friend asked me about how well it performed with games so I let him try it with his game.
 


Hey i7. Seems that unit has NVS 3100M graphics which pretty much almost won't game at all. From what I hear it's not one of the business class GPU's that games well even without the game driver support. Again, I realize the OP isn't looking for an outstanding gaming machine but I doubt that those graphics would play Skyrim if the feedback I read is correct.
 

ronintexas

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The GPU is about 10% better performance as compared to Intel HD 4400 graphics. The Intel CPU would be a lot faster.

Both would be decent for general purpose use. They are both about the same size, same weight and similar battery life (about 5.5-6 hours).
 


I wouldn't buy a used laptop at that price with those specs.

Here is the best one I can find, factory refurbished, with AMD Radeon HD 8610G graphics. It should actually play most games fairly decent, for a mobile APU, and has an A10 APU so it's at the upper end of the AMD mobile APU market.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-geek-squad-certified-refurbished-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-6gb-memory-750gb-hard-drive-modern-silver/5350018.p?id=1219120769181&skuId=5350018&st=pcmcat138500050001_categoryid$abcat0502000&cp=1&lp=1
 
Solution

ronintexas

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Dec 10, 2012
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"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)? Medium, Skyrim and maybe a few others not really any new games. Various Emulators of old school systems."

 
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)?

Medium, Skyrim and maybe a few others not really any new games. Various Emulators of old school systems.

The unit I linked to, here: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-geek-squad-certified-refurbished-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-6gb-memory-750gb-hard-drive-modern-silver/5350018.p?id=1219120769181&skuId=5350018&st=pcmcat138500050001_categoryid$abcat0502000&cp=1&lp=1

will game most titles at low or medium settings which is more than can be said for almost any other unit in it's price range, that's all I was saying.
 


This laptop I linked to, while refurbished, does have the AMD Radeon HD 8610G graphics. As per the game debate information panel, which I know isn't entirely accurate but it's a fair estimation in most cases, as follows:

Its performance depends heavily on whether or not the memory is dual-channelled. Benchmarks put its performance on level with today's middle-class GPUs such as GeForce GT 540M-GeForce GT 630M or Radeon HD 7650M/7670M. Therefore, modern demanding games can be played with medium detail.