seeking budget laptop

G

Guest

Guest
I am seeking to buy my 17 year old son a laptop which has the following criteria. He requires it for study and home use as he like watching movies and games. I have found out that all laptops are the same basic specifications but the efficiency of the battery, the processor and hard drive is important when it comes to product satisfaction. So I am considering the following

15.6 screen
4Gb memory
64 Bit Windows Home Premium
High resolution screen 1366 x 768 Pixels
Pentium 950 processor or Core i3 or i5
DVD hard drive 7,200 rpm
Very good battery life which does not overheat
Several ports
Maybe Bluetooth
Keyboard has to be comfortable and not too tight

I have been looking at several brands including Samsung and Lenova but there are such mixed reviews that it is confusing. I would appreciate your feedback.

Thanks
Jay56
 

LummusMaximus

Honorable
If your son wants to play games, DO NOT even consider the pentium. i3 is still pretty bad, go for i5 quad-core for power, look for 4th generation as it has increased efficiency (more battery) over 3rd gen by something like ~35%.

Look for a dedicated video card as well, or, if you'd rather not pay extra, look for AMD APUs. They have extremely strong integrated graphics capable of running several newer games. Look for A8 or A10. I'm not as much of an expert in AMD technology, though.

I'm bringing up the games so much because that's easily the most demanding task it looks like the laptop will have to cope with. So with that in ind, a good school-worthy system would be the Razer Blade. Only problem is, no disc drive and it's quite pricy.

Alternatively, look at the Samsung Series 5: it's thin, light, has a disc drive, decent gaming performance, decent battery life and a low, low price. Here's a review:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6635&review=Samsung+Series+5+AMD+Trinity+Ultrabook+Alternative

And then, if you like what the review is saying, look for it at sites like newegg. It meets all of your requirements except for the hard drive speed, but these days you can pick up a faster, larger drive to put in on the cheap, and replacing the HDD of a system is quite easy. Just remember to copy over all of your data to the new drive, and you'll be fine. Google 'how to replace laptop hard drive'.

I hope this helps. Sorry if it's a bit long and/or complicated.