New notebook dilemma

eeje

Distinguished
May 30, 2010
3
0
18,510
hi , I hope you can help me narrow my search for a notebook, I used the form in the FAQ section to make it easier. Thank you for all your help


1_What is your budget? Up to 1000$ CAD

2_What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 13"-15"

3_What screen resolution do you want? Do not have a preference

4_Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Both, but more a desktop replacement

5_How much battery life do you need? The more the better but I can compromize

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 only play HMM V and flash games, maybe the new Star Trek Online Game.

7_What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.) Watching movies – a lot, I plan to connect it to the LCD and to use it as a media center/online tv tuner with WebTV options

8_How much storage (H.D.D Capacity) do you need? 500 GB (at least)

9_If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Tiger Direct , don’t know

10_How long do you want to keep your laptop? At least 3-4 years

11_What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? DVD-RW

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 thought about Dell, Lenovo and HP. I prefer reliable firm, I am a little bit cautious buying brands like "MSI, ACER, ASUS" , am I wrong?

13_What country do you live in? currently Israel, moving to Canada in a month
 

eeje

Distinguished
May 30, 2010
3
0
18,510



Thanks a lot for your recomendation, it seems your suggestion can be almost perfect.
The webcam has relativley low resolution, but except that everything seems perfect.

What can you say about ASUS, they are definetly cheaper than the big old brands (Dell, Lenovo, HP), what about asus ?
 

SofaKingWeird

Distinguished
Jun 21, 2008
5
0
18,520
Good luck, I'm on my 2nd Toshiba! So I'm a bit of a Toshiba snob, the first thing I do when I buy a laptop is replace the Hard Drive with a 7200 RPM variant. It seems to make it just a tad bit snappier. Plus I've noticed the battery life to be the same or a little better after doing so. The only reason I replaced my last Toshiba, was the new one has twice the battery life and a much faster CPU. The old one I sold to a friend, it is now 4 years old and still runs great. When my wife went to buy one she also bought Toshiba and loves hers too.

I went with my daughter when she bought hers and she looked at the Toshiba, but she bought HP. She bought it because of features and flashiness, two of the wrong reasons for buying a laptop. At the time it had a remote control, which she thought was cool. She has yet to use that feature. The Toshiba had Wireless N and the HP had Wireless G but she went HP anyway. Then while she was typing when her Laptop was only about a month old a key popped off. Yes, not abuse just typing. Then at 9 months old the keyboard had to be replaced, the enter key stopped working. So far I'm not impressed with HP, but maybe others will say differently.

If I was going to buy one today I would look at Toshiba 1st, then ASUS 2nd. For me a laptop is about convince and function. Plus if I want to game that's what the big one's for. The big one has 8 Gigs of RAM with an i7-860 overclocked to 3.6 GHz at stock voltage. 2-Radeon 4890’s, 3 Lite-On 24X DVD burners and a LG 10X Blu-Ray burner. LG 24” and 2 TB RAID 0 using the Western Digital Black. Plus a kick A$$ Soundblaster sound card. But on vacation it's nice to be able to have something to look at photos with. Also being able to watch DVD's is another plus. My latest Toshiba has a 16" screen with i3 Processor. If I had it to do over again I would go i5 just for the Turbo and better graphics. But at the time that would have put me over budget, but it's still a huge improvement over the Core2Duo at 1.66 GHz, which is what the last one had. I do know ASUS has the accidental coverage built into their laptops, which for some makes it much more attractive.
 

ASUS,HP,Dell and Lenovo are all good brands IMO