Notebook recommendation

jrel209

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Jan 21, 2010
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18,510
1. What is your budget?
approx 800 -/+ 100


2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15.6


3. What screen resolution do you want?
I plan on watching movies and playing League of Legends or SC2; so I'm guessing the best affordable with that? I will have a monitor that is 23" 1920x1080 res, how easy will it be to incorporate that when I plan on using it at home.


4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Trying to be ride of a desktop. I want to be able to do HW anywhere in the house and not be stuck at one desk anymore.


5. How much battery life do you need?
I mostly plan on using this with a power outlet near by so I don't need much.


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 play league of legends and sc2, and I want to be able to play them on a 23" 1920x1080 monitor, is that possible? I'm looking for at least med, and if lucky high!


7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
Task vary from streaming netflix, gaming, word processing. Will also be using putty for connecting to a school linux box and programming with Java/C++


8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
500gig is enough, plan on using an external for media later down the road. If I plan on using this for lots of school data will it really matter if its 5600 or 7200? I'm pretty certain SSD is out of my price range.


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

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
As long as possible.


11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer, Bluray ROM/Writer, etc?
DVD, I don't play on writing much, but it would be nice to have that option? Plus there are always USB writers now right? How likely is the market to move into Bluray or is that pretty much the standard now? I'm fairly new to notebooks.


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.
The only one that I seen that fit so far was a Lenova Y500. But I want something that wont break on me in 2years. I also want a company that doesn't have a history of poor manufacturing their notebooks.

13. What country do you live in?
USA


14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
- It will serve as my only computer and must be moderately durable.
- Prefer Windows 7 but open to windows 8
 

jrel209

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Jan 21, 2010
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18,510


What is the biggest difference between the y500 and y580? I was looking at the webpage to purchase one, and I can't really see a difference between the two. Other than the GTX 650m in the y500 and a 660m in the y580. But is paying an extra 100 dollars really worth it?

Current price with holiday savings for y500 is $849 and the y580 is $959.

Any other opinions or suggestions?
 
The GTX 660m provides better performance @ 1920x1080 resolution. So if you want better performance then you go with the Y580. I also believe it has more battery life as well. But I recall the price difference was only $50 the last time I checked a couple of days ago.

Also, the Y500 has keyboard backlight. The Y580 does not.
 

jrel209

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Jan 21, 2010
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18,510
I found a y580 for 800 on craiglist. He states he has invoices/receipt to prove he only had it for a few months. He's also looking into warranty. Is there any way I can check to see if there are hidden problems? Anyone know of a program that runs a quick diagnostic to check for any errors ect?

It seems like a good deal!
 

jrel209

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Jan 21, 2010
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18,510
OOHhhh I did it! For some reason it shows HD 4000 as the video card, but when I look in device manager the 660m is present and nothing wrong with it.

This is my first labtop, is it possible I can change between the onboard video w/ the external GPU at will? If so how lol.

It has blue-ray, fullHD 1920x1080, only 500g 5200, and upgraded to 16gig y580 for 800. I think it was a pretty good deal,excited to start loading up programs and testing it out later tonight.