Laptop shopping

Tek7

Tek7

CGA President, Tribe of Judah Founder & President
Staff member
Since Ember's laptop is, for all intents and purposes, dead-dead, it's time to start looking at laptops!

Okay, so HP and Acer laptops are out. Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, and Samsung are at the top of the pile.

Is Intel HD graphics still terrible for gaming? Or has that changed in the last few years?

Is a quad-core a significant improvement over a dual-core for the average user?
 
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And what do you all think of this laptop?

A little more than we wanted to spend, but that looks like a pretty shiny machine.

EDIT: Oh my word, the more I read about the that Lenovo, the more I want one for myself. Seriously.
 
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Tek7 said:
Is Intel HD graphics still terrible for gaming? Or has that changed in the last few years?

And what do you all think of this laptop?
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I'm just going to pretend you didn't ask if Intel graphics are viable.

It has an nVidia chip in it. I would think long and hard on it before I buy it (you know how nVidia chips are...).

Other thoughts: The Core i5s you'll find in the laptops you're researching are not comparable to the i5s you find in desktops; keep that in mind.
 
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Any recommendations then? Ideally it'd be under $600 (though we could go $650) and have a decent enough video card to run some games but it doesn't need to run them well (didn't find an AMD one in the price range OR wasnt in a machine with a slowish processor but maybe it's out there somewhere).

Basically something that's "good enough" for me for right now...which might not be the same thing as good for most people on these forums.
 
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Heheh, I find it funny that the to brands you said were out were the two brands people recommended.. :p

But seriously, the Lenovo that you posted the link to is decent for what you are talking about doing with it.. Not sure how much this matters to you, but it doesnt look like it has a USB3.0 port, and only a 10/100 ethernet port.. Also, the Lenovos in this line feel cheap to me. My father has one, and I always feel like if I even hold it wrong it will break...

Just my two cents.. I have an Asus, and love it. I spent a little more on it than you are looking at spending, but was worth every penny to me. :)
 
What's the issue with HP and Acer? Based in recent reviews I have seen, they have been making some very reliable and decent products.
 
One personal problem I have with HP is the incredible amount of bloat ware that comes with it and the lack of decent ability to start from scratch with the os. What I wound up doing when my son game me his (twice) is buy a new windows os then wipe everything clean and reload only drivers with no bloat ware. Mine were free so it was worth it.

edit: Found this refurb on Tiger Direct http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1947924&CatId=4938
 
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Joshinator said:
What's the issue with HP and Acer? Based in recent reviews I have seen, they have been making some very reliable and decent products.
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What reviews? Everything from Consumer Reports and main testing sites have Acer dead last and HP right there with them.
 
one of the big problems in that price range is a lot of them are integrated graphics. Some are very good, but still integrated. Do you need a discreet graphics card?
 
ursen said:
one of the big problems in that price range is a lot of them are integrated graphics. Some are very good, but still integrated. Do you need a discreet graphics card?
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Well, Ember wants to at least have the option of playing some games with me. Technology may have changed drastically in the last few years, but integrated graphics used to mean that you weren't playing anything more complex than Solitaire with 30 FPS (slight exaggeration).
 
I have my reservations about many things consumer reports says.

I still feel compelled to tell you to try an Acer. Our Acers have performed reasonably well. My mom's Acer 9300 she got in 2006 is still going strong aside from the duct tape holding the screen in place (that's only because she's dropped it so many times). A friend of mine has an Acer he got in 2005 that is still going strong (he runs Ubuntu and Windows 7 on it, but sans the duct tape). Additionally my Acer Aspire One is still going strong. All of these Acers are still performing better than Ember's HP, that she hasn't had nearly as long, mind you.

I understand that you're not interested in Acer, but I'm convinced that if you treat the Acers with care (something you should be doing anyway) they will last as long as anything any other company produces.

Edit: There are plenty of reviews out there that show Acers make good products.
 
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Odale said:
Edit: There are plenty of reviews out there that show Acers make good products.
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The difference between the reviews you linked and Consumer Reports is a matter of time: The reviews only examined the laptops as they operated the day or short number of days they used them. Consumer Reports and other sources test longevity as well. I can appreciate that your, your mother's, and your friend's Acer laptops have lasted a long time, but 3 examples don't stack up to millions of samples. When my wife and I spend this much money on an item, we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the item we're buying will last as long as possible.

Given Acer's brand reputation, I can't, in good conscience, spend hundreds of dollars on an Acer laptop--just like we won't be buying another HP.

ColdSteel said:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/SKUSearch.asp?px=FO&scriteria=BE02353
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Intel HD Graphics 3000. :(

I only researched the chipset briefly, but the evidence I found suggests Intel HD Graphics 3000 isn't a viable option if you want to play recent (2010-2011) games with medium-and-higher image quality at a decent framerate.
 
ewoksrule said:
http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.php?page=product_customed&model_name=NP3260
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Very nice...but out of our price range. :(

ewoksrule said:
Also people say this runs diablo3 on high, SC2 and SWTOR. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834246328
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How would you say that laptop compares with this one?

I'd rather buy a laptop with a AMD GPU than a nVIDIA GPU, if only because of the shoddiness of the GeForce 8400M (which is the only faulty component in my wife's laptop), but I still want to make a rational (not an emotional) decision.

EDIT: Put another way: What's better: a dual-core processor at 2.5GHz or a quad-core processor at 1.5GHz?

EDIT#2: AMD Radeon HD 6650M vs. NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M.
 
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Aaand here's a technical comparison of the Lenovo IdeaPad Z575 and the Z570.

EDIT: So essentially it comes down to: AMD A6-3420M 1.5GHz + AMD Radeon HD 6650M vs. Intel Core i5-2450M 2.5GHz + Nvidia Geforce GT 630M.

After the premature passing of the GeForce 8400M in my wife's old HP Pavilion, I'm inclined to go with the AMD set. (The $100 savings doesn't hurt, either.)

EDIT#2: If we go with the Z575, we can put the $100 we save toward a 128GB SSD. :D
 
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