Solved! Thinking of buying a new Laptop

[startrtied]

1. What is your budget?
I am not sure but i would like as cheap as possible, Maybe about 750 as a limit.

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
I got a 17.3 now, would like something a bit smaller, about 14-15.6(not terribly important for me

3. What screen resolution do you want?
once again, not really important something decent for gaming( not a hardcore gamer) and watching HD movies and anime( I do this alot so I would prefer it be comfortable and nice to watch it on)

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
More portable but not too small..

5. How much battery life do you need?
i am always plugged in generally so as long as it lasts a hour or two i am good i guess

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 mostly will play emulators which require High raw clock rates of two cores(pcsx2 doesnt even use more than 2 cores so its a waste for me)
I play other low end games like
spore
NFS most wanted
Deus ex
call of duty 1 and 2(not modern warfare, the older ones)
and SIMS 3( i think this one is the only one requiring a little extra; would love to play it on max if possible with my budget)
League of legends(for got about this one, I can barely run it on my laptop now, would love to run it better on medium or high or even max if possible)

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
I watch HD movies, compiling and programming on it....nothing all that much that requires much strength except the games like web browsing, listening to music...cant think of anything i do that would be necessary here lol.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
above 160 is good for me, hopefully a 7200RPM is good.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
Not really considering any atm but I am not a US or canadian citizen so I would have to ask a relative to buy it or let them ship it to me.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
Long as possible, more than 2 years i figure

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
dont really care as long as it can burn dvds and cds.

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 dont really like dell inspiron, friend had one and the battery went dead quickly and i heard its the same with other inspirons. Would still take one if it was cheap with what i want but i would rather stay from them...I dont really know about other brands...I have an older gateway and its been problemfree so maybe it would be good to get another one.

13. What country do you live in?
Jamaica

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
Okay
for the processor I want if possible
A dual core that has high clock speed (like the I5-460M for example)
Graphics-Something mid end or low end i guess preferably Geforce but ATI is fine as well, (all my life i have been cursed with intel integrated cards so I can live with taking the intel HD graphics if the price is going thorugh my budget i guess )

Since i dont have anyone in the US newegg is a bit iffy, i have a relative i could ask to buy it and ship it but its uncertain.

The main purpose of the laptop will be for my computer science course at High school and at university but i think any decent laptop is good enough for that (including my old one)
I want a laptop that will atleast beat my current one in the simple gaming i do:
SPECS to my old laptop:
CPU; intel core solo T2250 @ 1.73 GHz
RAM: 1GB @ 667MHz
Graphics: intel GMA 950 with the 945 Chipset 224 Shared memory.

Lastly, I probably wont be buying this til January or February but i wanted to see what kind of system i can possibly get for then.

So sorry for the huge wall of text but Thanks in advance(I know I am asking alot but i hope you guys can help me out LOL)

 

[hpfreak]

here are a few things i found that you might like. in all the laptops i am about to post you will see a huge increase in performance from your current laptop,
anyway, here are some of them:

Toshiba Satellite A665-S6055 LED TruBrite 16-Inch Laptop
Core i5-450m
16 inch 720p HD capable
320 GB HDD 5400 RPM
4 GB DDR3
nVideia Geforce 310m (512 Megabytes)
DVD player/writer
Supplier: http/www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-A665-S6055-TruBrite-16-Inch/dp/B003MVZ8CY/ref=sr_1_3?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1293311129&sr=1-3
Price: 729.99 US Dollars
Note: this is a very good laptop, it fits everything you've been looking for except the HDD, and the price. overall it will do everyday tasks very well, and the GPU will give you ok graphics. i rate this a 8.5/10 based upon what your looking for. and it has a nice layout which will provide a lot of multimedia functionalities.


i will be posting more, but i need to go now... anyways, look at the toshiba, and see if you like it, it looks very decent.

 

[startrtied]

form what i looked on it looks really light, about half the weight of mine atm, i wonder how portable is it? apart from that i cant wait to see the others you got coming, it looks awesome. Although if it is possible to cut off those little extra functionalities for a price cut or something that would be even better lol
thanks for that one so far

 

[hpfreak]

i will post each 1 in a new post, here is one from hp
it cost 550 dollars and it has a reasonable GPU and CPU, i don't think it is as good as a Core i5 though. but it's always good to look and see:

http/www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_can_series.do?storeName=computer_store&category=notebooks&a1=Category&v1=High+performance&series_name=dv6z_series&jumpid=in_R329_prodexp/hhoslp/psg/notebooks/High_performance/dv6z_series

 

[hpfreak]

here is another Toshiba, it is very similar, but it is uses a AMD processor and GPU,
still not a core i5, but this processor is a Quad Core, and the Core i5 is a dual-core.
the difference is, is that even though the Core i5 is faster, if you do more things at once it will slow dramatically, while a Quad core, has 4 differet processing sections that will be able to go with the same speed but it has more things running at the same time. it also has a ATI Radeon 4250 which is pretty good for a budget laptop.
and it cost 579.99

http/www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0041O42BE/ref=s9_hps_bw_ir03?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-4&pf_rd_r=0YEYXZ09X1F8JTNY0Y0K&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1284057302&pf_rd_i=565108

 

[hpfreak]

Toshiba Satellite L645D-S4058BN is another nice toshiba laptop, but instead ofa quad core it has a triple-core, which is not as good for heavy duty multitasking, but is faster. it has a 500 GB HDD, and a 14 inch display that supports 720p HD content.
I know that you'd prefer a Core i5 or even i7, but if your looking for budget laptops with either processors, you will end up with Intel HD Graphics, which any AMD CPU laptop would have a better GPU, right now, i use a laptop with a ATI Radeon 3200 ( the TOSHIBA has a 4250) and it works well with Call Of Duty 4 on lower settings, and it works perfectly fine on League of Lengends on mid settings.
so i wouldn't be surprised if the 4250 was much, much better.

anyway here is the amazon page, i'm sticking to amazon, because i want to be able to povide you with companies that ship internationally, unlike bestbuy, and frys etc.


http/www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satellite-L645D-S4058BN-14-0-Inch-Notebook/dp/tech-data/B004533GUE/ref=de_a_smtd

 

[startrtied]

sorry for the late response, christmas and all
firstly, the HP one looks good as i can choose the 2.9 Dual core which is almost as good for me. the problem why i am avoiding triple and quad cores is because i hardly do much multitasking ever but i need the as high as clock speed as i can get due to cpu intensive programs that i use and because they are older programs, they tend to use only one or two cores max...so its a waste of cahs spending it on the 3 and quad core to me or maybe i got something wrong here?

the toshiba with the quad would effectively be a 1.7 dual core for me as the last two cores would do nothing but just idle 90% of the time which is arguably close to mine in CPU i guess

the next toshiba is similar as the clock speed is higher than the quad but still pretty low..

another thing i wouldnt prefer an I7 over an i5 simply because of price and the whole number of core thing although turbo boost helped to ease that making 2 core at extremely high clock speed but i7 are ridiculously expensive from what i seen.

Maybe i should have added this but i forgot, I want something dual core possibly in the range of 2.8 and above, the I5 is maxed at 2.8 so i was just suing it as an example i guess

I found this while looking at the first one you posted (http/www.amazon.com/Samsung-14-Inch-Laptop-Aluminum-surface/dp/B0043B7WDK/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)
what do you think of it? I think i basically settled for the SAMSUNG but i still have my doubt about it.


I have also heard really bad things about HP and Dell lately, has this been improved? That HP looks decent but I am kinda dubious about the Brand.

Also you can search other sites if you want to as I wont be able to get it from amazon without letting a relative over there buy it and ship it to me so its all the same i guess.

And sorry for my extremely picky taste =)

 

[hpfreak]

i can't believe a didn't see that laptop. it looks great. it will be too outdated in a few years, but it is a great deal for what your looking for.
there are no cons, unless your a performance geek or something, but for basic, and more advanced things, it will do fine, it won't do 2010 games on high settings most of the time, but it will be able to play them overall.
the resolution of the screen isn't the best, you will still be able to watch 720p HD clips, but i guess it would be impossible to use the LCD if the screen was full 1080p HD.
anyways, i hope you enjoy the laptop, it does look fishy, and SAMSUNG isn't exactly famous for there laptops, but thats what warranties are for.
merry Christmas and happy New Year!