1. What is your budget? $3000
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? Size isn't really a factor. I'll be traveling, but I don't mind it being large or heavy if that's required.
3. What screen resolution do you want? 1920x1080. If it's greater that's ok, but 1080p seems fine by me.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Desktop replacement. It doesn't need to be able to be whipped out and used on my lap on a subway. Would probably be using it in hotels/at home.
5. How much battery life do you need? Not a factor. Will almost always use it while plugged in. If not, I accept that it will probably have a short battery life.
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)? Yep. That will be the primary use.
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Coding and watching movies.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 1 TB - 2 TB. I don't really care about whether it's a hybrid or a SSD or a platter drive. If it comes down to it fault tolerance and capacity are roughly tied for most important to me. I don't much care about speed of HDD. I've used both high end SSD's and 5400 rpm platter drives in destop PC's and never noticed much of a day-to-day difference. At least not enough to justify the limited capacity.
A popular offering from laptop manufacturers seems to be 2x 1 TB platter drives in a RAID 0. Low fault tolerance but awesome capacity and performance. This is something I wouldn't be averse to. I also wouldn't be averse to SSD's and Hybrids if a good model was suggested.
Another popular configuration I've seen is the 1 TB drive + 384 GB drive (which is actually 3x128 GB SSD's in RAID 0) which seems cool and I could definitely work with that.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 2-3 years.
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?Bluray Reader
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 have no brand preference.
13. What country do you live in? USA
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.I did a lot of initial research. I eventually narrowed my choices down to the HX7-300 from Cyberpower, the DominatorPro-889 from MSI, and no specific model, but the Alienware 18's (for their SLI options)
The Alienwares are very expensive, but I was attracted to SLI, since it seems to roughly double gaming performance on laptops.
The Cyberpowers seem like good deals, but I contacted their customer support with four fairly simple and polite questions about the options in order to make the correct selections before ordering and never got a reply. Further research led me to countless horror stories of terrible build quality and customer support. This didn't conclusively dissuade me from choosing them, but it put me back in "not sure which brand to go with" territory.
I haven't heard much bad about the MSI laptops and they are also a good value compared to Alienware. But Alienware has the SLI and I don't see many others that offer it. (I saw some 'Origin' laptops that offered it as well)
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? Size isn't really a factor. I'll be traveling, but I don't mind it being large or heavy if that's required.
3. What screen resolution do you want? 1920x1080. If it's greater that's ok, but 1080p seems fine by me.
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Desktop replacement. It doesn't need to be able to be whipped out and used on my lap on a subway. Would probably be using it in hotels/at home.
5. How much battery life do you need? Not a factor. Will almost always use it while plugged in. If not, I accept that it will probably have a short battery life.
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)? Yep. That will be the primary use.
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Coding and watching movies.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 1 TB - 2 TB. I don't really care about whether it's a hybrid or a SSD or a platter drive. If it comes down to it fault tolerance and capacity are roughly tied for most important to me. I don't much care about speed of HDD. I've used both high end SSD's and 5400 rpm platter drives in destop PC's and never noticed much of a day-to-day difference. At least not enough to justify the limited capacity.
A popular offering from laptop manufacturers seems to be 2x 1 TB platter drives in a RAID 0. Low fault tolerance but awesome capacity and performance. This is something I wouldn't be averse to. I also wouldn't be averse to SSD's and Hybrids if a good model was suggested.
Another popular configuration I've seen is the 1 TB drive + 384 GB drive (which is actually 3x128 GB SSD's in RAID 0) which seems cool and I could definitely work with that.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
http
/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152548
http/www.cyberpowerpc.com/category/notebook/ (specifically the HX7-300)
http/www.alienware.com/Landings/laptops.aspx (specifically the 17's and 18's)
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 2-3 years.
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?Bluray Reader
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 have no brand preference.
13. What country do you live in? USA
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.I did a lot of initial research. I eventually narrowed my choices down to the HX7-300 from Cyberpower, the DominatorPro-889 from MSI, and no specific model, but the Alienware 18's (for their SLI options)
The Alienwares are very expensive, but I was attracted to SLI, since it seems to roughly double gaming performance on laptops.
The Cyberpowers seem like good deals, but I contacted their customer support with four fairly simple and polite questions about the options in order to make the correct selections before ordering and never got a reply. Further research led me to countless horror stories of terrible build quality and customer support. This didn't conclusively dissuade me from choosing them, but it put me back in "not sure which brand to go with" territory.
I haven't heard much bad about the MSI laptops and they are also a good value compared to Alienware. But Alienware has the SLI and I don't see many others that offer it. (I saw some 'Origin' laptops that offered it as well)
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