New Laptop Form Completed

[trevorplatt]

1. What is your budget?
*Around £500-£600

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
*Suitable for the answers I give below.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
*Suitable for watching BluRay/HD movies

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
*It will be plugged in most of the time, I'll probably take it on holiday once or twice a year (at most).

5. How much battery life do you need?
*It will be plugged in most 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)?
*I usually only play Civ II, CM 01/02, Sims 1. But recently bought Skyrim, Civ V and XCOM Enemy Unknown (which I'm loving). I also really like the look of Fallout 4, but to be honest I'm not a big gamer.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
*Watching Movies/TV (DVD and BluRay), Web Browsing, working with LibreOffice Databases and streaming US TV via "alternative websites"!

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
*My current Laptop has 451 GB and I've only used 172 GB after 3-4 years of use, so that might be an area where I can save some cash?

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

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
*I assume 4-5 years is the limit for laptops? If this is the case then I guess "future proofing" isn't really an issue?

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
*DVD/BluRay player.

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.
*My last two have been from Dell, this was because I liked how durable they were from using them at a previous job, but I'm open to using a different brand.

13. What country do you live in?
*UK.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
*Considering I want it to be able play HD movies should sound quality be a consideration, and if so are external speakers worth investing in? Also, I guess a HDMI out would be useful so I could watch via my TV?

Thank you for this. I've been looking at deals and specs for weeks and I'm more confused now than I was before I started!

 

[hang-the-9]

There are only a few specs that are important for gaming, at the core the video card. For light games (not Fallout 4 for example), an nVidia 940m or AMD A10 based system is good. For Fallout 4 you'd want an nVidia 950m or faster. BluRay is easier to do, any laptop with a BluRay player will be fine for that, you just need to figure out what size you want. With your budget you may be able to get a system with a 940m video card, maybe even a 950m. The CPU and drive space are not issues in systems with those video cards, but one with a BluRay player in your price range may be.