WoW Laptop

[christopheru]

I'm looking for a new laptop and I'm hoping y'all can help. I used to be up on what's good and what's not, but I'm not anymore, so any input is greatly appreciated. I have been looking on sites like alienware and cyberpower, but I'm thoroughly confused.


1. What is your budget?

Approximately $1000 (US), I can go up $200 or so but I'd prefer not to. I'll prioritize anything under $1000.

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

15" and larger.

3. What screen resolution do you want?

Unsure

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?

Not sure what's meant by this. I don't have a desktop, and the laptop will be on external power 95% of the time.

5. How much battery life do you need?

Minimal. The laptop will be on external power 95% of the time.

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)?

The laptop will probably be used for playing WoW more than anything else. My current laptop is about 4 years old and I'd like something that can handle WoW at high or ultra mode. I also use quite a few addons if that makes a difference. I tried reading through the WoW graphics card review found on this site but I found myself confused as all hell; I THINK that I want an Intel Processor and a good (but not one of the brand new) NVIDIA graphics cards, probably a 460?

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)

General internet, MS Office, PureEdge, media player. I'm pretty sure that every laptop out there can handle these.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?

I'm currently at 180 gb out of 500 on my current laptop and I have an external HD so...

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

I bought my last one from Cyberpower, but I'm open to anything.

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

No less than 2 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?

I need a DVD/RW, I'm pretty sure that all of those come with CDRW capabilites, but if not then I need that too.

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'm a little bit apprehensive about buying from HP, but if you say it's great and will last, then no worries.

13. What country do you live in?

I live in the USA, I spend about half of my time in Afghanistan.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.

If it needs to be handled delicately, then it's probably not for me. I'm comfortable enough with computer stuff to buy a laptop and then upgrade it as well, if this will help make things cheaper then please let me know.

 

[Abyssalx]

Pentium is more or less obsolete now. This, however:
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246153
seems to be pretty sweet for you, you won't get performance like that for less that $150-$200 more.
The 460m is a much better card but Notebookcheck shows that the 550m(which is worse than that lenovo's graphics card) can get almost 70FPS on High on wow, I bet the 555m can do ultra no problem.

 

[christopheru]

Pentium is more or less obsolete now. This, however:
http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246153
seems to be pretty sweet for you, you won't get performance like that for less that $150-$200 more.
The 460m is a much better card but Notebookcheck shows that the 550m(which is worse than that lenovo's graphics card) can get almost 70FPS on High on wow, I bet the 555m can do ultra no problem.

Thank you very much for your recommendation. Out of curiosity, I tried to build a similar computer for the same price and I can't do it.

A couple questions:

1. I have a couple of bucks to spare thanks to you. Would a SSD be worth it on a costerformance ratio? What about a mixed SSD/HDD? I was thinking I would pick one of these up separately and swap it for the hefty HDD that came with the comp, turning the 750 gig HDD into a storage platform for media.

2. How much of a difference would it be going from a 5400 rpm HDD to a 7200 rpm HDD? What if I went from the included 4GB of RAM to 6 GB?

Again, thank you so much. At this point I'm 90% certain that this is what I'll be buying. You are awesome.

 

[Abyssalx]

Well, there are mSATA's that you can install alongside the HDD in this model, like this: http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227747 There are 30gb versions of that for ~$75 as well. Installing windows on the mSATA will speed up boot time considerably, and any programs on it will launch much faster (And load times for games will be very fast) As for replacing the main HDD with an SSD, SSD's are still ridiculously expensive. The cheapest you'll get a 256gb SSD for is almost $400. IMO that's not even close to worth the performance. And as for the mSATA, that's a pretty penny too for that amount of space, and to install windows on it would require a copy of windows, and you could install WoW on it too, but nothing else to be on the safe side.

The difference between the 5400rpm HDD and the 7200rpm HDD is the same thing as above, loading time and read time. I don't think you'll really notice the difference in speed, the max difference in a loading time in a game being a second or two, and file transfers are faster. If you were to upgrade though, I'd recommend spending the extra few bucks on a 7200rpm replacement.

4gb of ram is also fine, but 6gb or 8gb can increase responsiveness in programs like Photoshop, or video editors, etc. You can get 8gb of laptop DDR3 Ram of newegg for less than $50, so that's a cheap upgrade.

 

[christopheru]

Ok, am I correct in my understanding that the launch times of applications and Windows as a whole will be faster with a SSD, but it will not have any impact on in-game performance?

 

[Abyssalx]

Not in-game, but loading times for maps, instances etc will be faster. But in terms of FPS, no.

 

[christopheru]

I just ordered it, I'll be back in about a week to let you know how it does! Again, thank you for your suggestion.

 

[christopheru]

Best answer selected by christopheru.

 

[christohperu82]

I just ordered it, I'll be back in about a week to let you know how it does! Again, thank you for your suggestion.

Follow-up

This computer is pretty awesome. Games pop off the screen, the speakers are loud, and the keyboard isn't as crowded as I expected it to be when I saw that it also includes a numpad on a 15" laptop. It looks great when I hook it up to a 52" LCD as well. My only complaint (and this is minor for me) is that the touchpad isn't very good. I often hit it when I'm typing and that causes the cursor to jump around and click in odd places, and when I navigate the web using the keypad it keeps trying to scroll even when I'm not at all trying to scroll. Easy solution, just use a mouse.

Thank you for an excellent recommendation, I greatly appreciate it.