Solved! Medium Video Editing/ Light Gaming/ All School laptop

TMW1986

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Aug 24, 2010
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Hi. My Ideapad y510 isn't really handling the video editing all that well. I looked at the Asus G series monsters, but I just can't spend $1600 on a laptop. So please help me find something in my budget.

1_What is your budget?
$800? If there is a lot more value a little higher, that's fine.


2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?

I'd take a faster 15.4 over a 17, but 17 would be nice.

3_What screen resolution do you want? Not critical.

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

It'd be a desktop replacement that I'd carry around to school. But given how many books I'm carrying, 3-4lbs isn't a big deal.

5_How much battery life do you need?

2 hours is plenty, lot of outlets where I go.

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)? I play games, but usually older games, or somewhat newer on low settings is fine. I'd prefer a faster processor for editing over a great GPU.

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

Will be used for school, video editing (home videos nothing hardcore) and watching movies.

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need? 300+ GB

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

Where the best deal is.

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop?

3-4 years :\ Through college.

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

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.

As long as it's a name brand with an okay warranty, I'm fine.

13_What country do you live in?
USA.

14_Please tell us any additional information if needed.

I know this is kind of vague, I just would like to basically ask the collective braintrust, what the best $700-900 laptop is. I'm looking for horsepower over portability.

Thanks for the help!
 

rpg123

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Jun 28, 2010
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Intel i7 quads excel at video editing, they are out of your price range though.

This MSI $599 i5 should work well if you don't need a lot of gpu. The IGP Intel has in the i series is much improved, it can handle older games now. You can also probably find an i5 with a low level dedicated gpu in your price range if you want a bit more gpu punch.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/541572/MSI-S6000-017US-156-LED-Backlit/#reviewTab
 
Solution

IsabellaWinTeam

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Apr 27, 2010
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Hi there,

You should check out the Toshiba Satellite A500-ST56X6. It is a great value, even though it is slightly over your price range ($999). It has a 1.6 GHz Intel® Core™ i7-720QM processor, NVIDIA® GeForce® 310M graphics, 4 GB of RAM, and 500 GB of hard drive space.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Isabella
MSFT Windows Outreach Team
 

zoomy123

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Aug 27, 2010
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Based on the needs you have described, it is clear that you DON'T need an i7 laptop. i7's are for people who want to build video editing work stations. If you want to do light video editing an i3 would be the ideal laptop for your needs and price range; therefore, any system configuration with an i3 (or any dual-core laptop with at least 2GHz clockspeed) and at least 3GB of ram should be good for you. (Personally, I would go for an i3-350 because it has 3MB of L3-Cache, which leads to improved performance.)

As for gaming, given the fact that you also do light gaming Intel HD graphics, the newest integrated graphics chipset by Intel, should be enough to cover your needs; although I'm not sure about playing the newest games.

With these modest specs finding a laptop under $800 will be as easy as cake. However, finding a laptop that has a 17" screen and is between 3-4 pounds is not likely. Expect a laptop that is upwards of 6 pounds.

A laptop like this HP G72-250US, for example, seems like it would fit your needs. It is on sale at amazon.com for $660.

Good luck.

 

sidewinderx2

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Jul 19, 2010
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For video editing, what software are you using? Adobe Premere? or...?

Depending on the software, you may want to either get a more powerful CPU or GPU, as some video editing software supports GPU acceleration, and some does not.