Need help finding a laptop with specific criteria

[nightale]

Hi guys, I'm looking to buy a laptop for my lab. I've made some research but I'm not familiar with laptop hardware, and I can't seem to find one that satisfy all my criteria. The laptop will be used for fMRI experiments (w/ E-Prime, Psychopy) and will need heavy processing capacities. It won't be used for gaming, so the graphic card is not an important point.

1. What is your budget? under 3000.00$ taxes included

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 14.4 and over

3. What screen resolution do you want? ideally at least 1920*1080 resolution

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? I don't know? Portable I guess.

5. How much battery life do you need? Acceptable battery life. Will be plugged in half of the time

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)? no

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) To run experiment with minimum latency. Data processing (heavy on CPU and RAM) for fMRI studies. Run virtual machine (for linux)

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? One SSD for the OS and main software, at least 256gb. A 1TB 7200rpm or so HDD would be nice on top of that.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? It needs to be able to keep up for at least 3 years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?No need

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. I want a brand that uses quality hardware.

Other criteria: numeric pad would be very useful, touchscreen is very appreciated on our current laptop but is not mandatory. At least 16gb of ram.

PC or MAC?
I don't know. When I was looking for quadcore laptops, 15.5 macbook pro almost seemed like a better bang for the bucks.

I am more of a PC guy though. The softwares we will use run on windows/and or mac and linux, so either way I'm going to need a virtual machine on it.

Any recommandations? With my criteria, I only find gaming-oriented laptop... I'd prefer if it's not bulky/heavy.

Thanks a lot!

 

[Deleted member 1697763]

How does this look? http/www.originpc.com/gaming/laptops/evo15-s/ It's really slim and is currently on my wishlist . It is gaming oriented but should be absolutely fine for what you will be doing with it.

 

[bootcher]

http/www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-laptops-notebooks-clevo-sager-notebooks-ct-95_51_162.html

Several Sager notebooks are on sale, you can configure them how you please. Several come without a dedicated gpu and use the built-in intel i7 HD graphics.

 

[nightale]

Thanks guys. I'm not familiar with ORIGINPC, what is that brand and are they reputable? I like the customization options on the SAGER laptops, but once again, I never heard of that brand before.

 

[Deleted member 1697763]

Thanks guys. I'm not familiar with ORIGINPC, what is that brand and are they reputable? I like the customization options on the SAGER laptops, but once again, I never heard of that brand before.

Origin PC are a pretty good brand. They are reputable and have received mostly very positive reviews. The components they use are really good and they are mostly off the shelf ones (so you can upgrade them later if you want to).

 

[bootcher]

Sager/Clevo are usually high end gaming/workstation laptops. Since they are barebones they can be configured the way you want, for example with the i7 and without a dedicated gpu. Since the cpu/gpu/other parts can be upgraded you can keep one for a longer time. They sell them at several retailers also, like rjtech.com or on Amazon.