What internals should I be looking for?

[Shawn Dunmire]

Hey guys,
I've decided to get rid of my desktop. I'm starting a doctorate program next year for nursing and I just don't have time to use my poor PC like I used to. I am going to sell it to my friend for $500 bucks and have another $500 to put towards a laptop.

Where you guys come in...

What specs are most important for my needs? I'll be using it for media consumption, streaming movies, school stuff. (so 1080p would probably be something I should look for yeah?) I like to keep 20 tabs open all the time on my browser. I would like to not have janky laggy animations when switching windows and alt tabbing around. Is a fast CPU the number one thing to look for? I'd also like a really nice trackpad, i've been using my girlfriends macboook and the trackpad functionality makes day to day tasks and navigation wonderful. is 8gb RAM preferred or "just enough"? is a SSD pretty mainstream for anything that will be someones workhorse? Is it necessary to get a dedicated GPU when all I play is league of legends, diablo 3 once in a while, and will play overwatch when released.

 

[darkbreeze]

How portable/light do you prefer this to be insofar as larger screens tend to be heavier units, do you have a particular screen size in mind? If you're going to have 20 tabs open plus probably other applications as well, I'd highly recommend a unit with an i7 and at minimum very good integrated graphics if not even possibly a discreet GPU.

 

[darkbreeze]

For your price range of 1000.00-ish, this would be an excellent choice.

http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA8S13RH3021

 

[Shawn Dunmire]

What about this!

http/www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i7-8gb-memory-256gb-solid-state-drive-black/7162141.p?id=1219668769483&skuId=7162141

 

[darkbreeze]

Actually, that looks like a pretty good unit too. It actually still has a quad core i7, unlike many of the i7 models out there that are only dual core like the i5, and it has better graphics than the model I pointed out. HP is a pretty reliable brand as well, and I didn't even notice that the unit I linked to was an off brand. I'd go with that model you found without any hesitation. Good brand with good customer support, fast quad core CPU, GTX960m graphics. You could probably even game on that unit at a pretty decent level if that was something you were into.

For multitasking and media it's likely a pretty solid choice. The SSD doesn't hurt either as it will make accessing stored data much faster.