Looking for a laptop, around $700.

[ferrari91169]

1. What is your budget?
Would like to spend $700 or less.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
Any size, 14"-17.3".

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1366x768, 1600x900, 1920x1080...again, any is fine.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
It will be portable, but I don't mind carrying around a big laptop.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Doesn't matter, it'll be plugged in 99% of the time I'm using it.

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)?
Would like to play games such as Borderlands/Fallout 3 on med-high settings with 60FPS average.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Mostly for watching movies/blurays, doing light-moderate gaming, browsing the web, and using Microsoft Office.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
This again, doens't really matter. I would maybe have about 60-70GB's worth of games on it. And about 10GB's of iTunes/Amazon videos at any given time.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Prefer Amazon for free 2-day shipping via Amazon Prime and no tax. Also Tiger Direct, Newegg, and Best Buy...but I'm open to suggestions.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Until it dies? As longs as it plays Blu-Rays and moderate gaming on some older games, I'll be fine. Don't necessarily have to have great performance in games that will be released in the future.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
Definitely would like Blu-Ray unless there is a REALLY good laptop for a substationally smaller price. I can always buy an internal slim blu-ray drive for $80, so if it's not included, but the laptop is cheap enough, I'll still be for it.

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.
ASUS, HP, Toshiba, Acer, but again, open to suggestions.


13. What country do you live in?
United States of America

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Can't think of anything. Would like it to be somewhat durable as I will be moving it alot.



I found this laptop for $650, would it be any good for my needs? My friend has a 525M 1GB and he says he can play games fine, and even play max settings on Borderlands (minus shadows) and average 60FPS @ 1600x900 resolution. So it seems like a 540M should be good enough. Just not sure if it's worth $650 or not, or if there's better options available out there.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1976964&CatId=4938

Thanks for any help!

 

[WR2]

Core i5-2430M / GeForce GT 540M is a great combo for Fallout3/Borderlands.
And @ $650 is also a great deal.

Borderlands game play Core i5 / GT 540M
http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=inGBkVvjvEU

Fallout New Vegas game play Core i5 / GT 540M
http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=US__n3Rr03c

 

[edit1754]

Consider instead the HP DV6z Quad Edition in a configuration that includes the Radeon 7690M and the 1920x1080 display. Such a configuration will be $699 after discounts.

HP DV6z Quad Edition (A6-3420M, AMD Radeon 7690M, 15.6" 1920x1080 matte display) - $699 + tax after coupon code NBW3244

- http/www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/load_configuration.do?destination=review&config_id=7232597 (Saved Configuration on HP's website)
- Don't downgrade the GPU to integrated graphics if you plan on gaming.
- Don't downgrade the display to 1366x768. This laptop generally shouldn't be bought in any configuration that includes the stock 1366x768 display unless your budget does not allow you to spend more than ~$600 or if you require larger text for eyesight-related reasons.

--------

With this laptop, you get a considerably faster GPU (AMD Radeon 7690M), and a much better display (15.6" 1920x1080 matte).

The AMD CPU isn't as powerful, but it is generally more important to have a faster GPU (for game performance, because gaming is bottlenecked much more by the GPU than it is by the CPU) and a decent display (in the general case, because the display affects much of everything you do with your computer) than it is to have a particularly fast processor.