Solved! Need a gaming laptop

ragenalien

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May 6, 2011
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My girlfriends laptop broke the other day and after a couple frustrating hours attempting to fix it I've decided just to get her a new one as a christmas gift. I'm on a budget (obviously I didn't plan on buying something this expensive for a gift, good thing its a birthday present as well ;) so I can't spend too much on one.

Here's what I need:

1. What is your budget?
700-800 dollars (us)

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

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Doesn't matter

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

5. How much battery life do you need?
At least 4 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)?
Sims 2,3, medieval, Skyrim, maybe other RPG's. Low to med setting are fine for the bigger stuff like skyrim.

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

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Doesn't matter, 500g is the standard amount now and that will be fine.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Nothing in mind, I do use tiger and newegg occasionally.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
More than a few years, not forever obviously but I would like to keep it around 4 years or so.

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

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.
Open to anything, not particularly fond of hp, toshiba, sony, or gateway but thats just because I have to fix those more often than not.

13. What country do you live in?
USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
She really doesn't do a whole lot of gaming other than the described games, she plays skyrim on the xbox mostly but wants something more mobile, she's played sims on her old laptop for years so I know that doesn't take much more than integrated graphics to play. She had a Nvidia 310m in her old laptop and I managed to pull 12 fps in skyrim with everything on the lowest settings and a few community improvements. I'm open to any suggestions just post the links for them or enough detail so I can not be lazy and look them up myself.