Some good puzzle games, I would think. (In response to the 'what more' question)

Touché ;)

Nnnnn it depends on your budget o u o What sort of price range are you looking at?

Iunno! <$2,000 if possible?

2000? Omg
Don't buy an HP unless it's an Envy or Pavillion, they have some of the worst reliability ratings [I've seen evidence of this first hand].

Also don't bother with an Alienware, 50% of the money you spend is for the name "Alienware" anyhow.

Though for that price anything with an i5/i7 and a discreete graphics card will do you good o u o Asus, Acer, and Toshiba have some really nice models~

Okay! Thanks for the brand suggestions!

I'm no expert, but I always advise people to stay away from HP and Toshiba. HPs like to run REALLY hot and Toshibas I have yet to see one of their laptops last more than a few months without needing repairs.

That's good to know. Thanks!

i run an acer aspire (and have done for 2 and a half years now) and haven't had any problems with it. I run SAI and Photoshop CS5 and it's comfortable running games and what not.

Oh, cool! Those seem very reasonable too.

good price too

I had an Acer for 5 years until the power connector died

I would Gladly get another one, matter of fact, when my HP dies I plan on getting another Acer

and this is coming from a guy that worked at IBM for three years

Haha, hooray product loyalty :P Acer is what I have now too and I have no complaints. Glad to hear other people have shared that experience!

I've had no complaints about Acer since 1992...

Depends on your budget... I can give out some recommendations based on how much you're planing to spend

I'd appreciate it! <$2,000, methinks?

You can get something really good with that budget!
You can easily get something with an intel core i5 or i7... Those are currently the best in terms of processors... You'll also need a good graphics card, which I think you can get too, I personally prefer AMD RADEON IF you can find something above the 5000 series... But anything with a GPU of more than 2 GBs should be perfect for a laptop!

I'm writing this down! Thanks :)

The biggest thing to do is to dig into the system specs. Especially the CPU and the graphics card. Like, my current laptop, I didn't dig deep enough into the "Radeon HD 4250" graphics card. I figured a 4000-series would be fine for just about anything I wanted to do (This was early 2011), but I didn't realize that the second digit was where the card is in the generation. So, it's a bit underpowered for gaming, but works fine for everything else.

As far as brand goes, I don't know how much of a difference the brand really makes. I've had good experience with Toshiba, but then I've only owned two laptops of my own. ^_^;;

No way - I never knew that! Always thought the first digit was the generation indicator too :o Thanks for the heads up.

First digit's the generation, second digit is "purpose". So, 1-2 is "Streaming movies", whereas 8-9 is "Heavy duty gaming/rendering work". A 6250 wouldn't perform as well as a 5770 because the first is a "low-end" sixth-gen while the second is a "higher-end" fifth-gen. The other two are more like revision numbers, if I remember correctly

From http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/
PassMark - G3D Mark
Radeon HD 6250 - 117
Radeon HD 5770 - 1,680

(Figured I'd look 'em up after pulling the model numbers out of thin air, just to make sure I wasn't giving you bad information. Didn't think the difference was THAT huge, but it makes sense.)

Yeah. Most people see the higher first number and just assume it's better. In truth, the higher the second number the better it is. A lot of times the increase from 5-6 or 7-8 is just a mid-cycle refresh for OEMs because they want bigger numbers every year, even if the hardware itself is only a very minor increase in clock speed. For example, Radeon 7970M to 8970M, very minor clock speed increase, but done solely for OEMs so their new model laptops sound like they got an upgrade.

I currently have a Lenovo X230T and I love it :) I can run games on it and I have photoshop and sai on here. It really does depend what you are looking for though. My current laptop has a twistable touch screen with a digitizer pen. It cost me about $1000. I did a bunch of research on laptops recently, so what are you looking for? :) (just got my current one in june)

Mainly looking to use it for illustration and to take a handful of games with me when I go abroad. Does the X230T have pressure sensitivity when you use the pen on it?

yes it does :) Check out the specs and look at some youtube videos, they are really helpful

My HP is running for 5 years now! =p
Though I must admit it was an expensive one....

It just depends on your budget, what you intend to do with it and how long you wish to use it.
Go for a cheap Acer: it will function fast enough, though not very reliably. You will buy a new one after 1-4 years depending on use. 6 years if you stretch it with repairs and upgrades.
Go for an expensive ASUS: it will function fast, reliably and solid. You will buy a new one after 4-7 years depending on use. 9 years if you stretch it with repairs and upgrades.

But MOST importantly is aesthetics:
make sure that the keyboard, mousepad and buttons are comfortable to use,
the screen is easy to read from,
and that it's not too noisy.

Speakers that are able to have a loud volume is a plus.

These things make a difference in between loving your notebook or being utterly annoyed, whether expensive or cheap.

That's a good point - it's easy to get caught up in the hardware specs and forget about aesthetics. I might try to scout out some laptops physically before I commit to any online purchases. Thanks!

Np!
I wish you good luck in finding a laptop to your liking!

(btw, lots of advice on this page =p)

I would check and see what dell has to offer really. As they do have some decent sales time to time. I haven't heard mnay good things on acer products since some fail badly and this coems form a guy who sells them at staples. Toshiba and Hp are pretty solid as is Lennovo

I wonder what ever happened to the "Dude, I'm getting a Dell" kid...

Hp Pavilion 15 sleekbook is a good recomendation with a good price

Looks solid and reasonable!

which ever brand you get, look at the business models as well as the personal ones. I went to dell and couldnt find much and went to the small business section and got a way better one for about the same price. Also it gave me more options for the OS and when it broke they has someone come out and fix it on site.

Oo, good suggestion! I'll do that. Thanks!

I've been researching/looking at the Lenovo Y500 series for a while earlier this year, but have held off on purchasing a new laptop myself. While browsing around, I think it may be a good bargain at the price range of 1000-1200 for a 15.6'' 1920x1080 resolution laptop containing an i7 processor, and dual nvidia gt750 graphics cards.

Sounds like it's got everything one would need, and for a good price!

Kinda reiterating some of the mentioned things here.

Don't just look at the sticker cost: See what's inside the unit first.
Really look at the warranty that the unit comes with at that price.
Does it cover everything?
How long does it take the company to fix things based on this warranty?
Do they send someone to you?
Do they just mail you parts, email you a manual and a "Good luck...?" card?
Do you have to ship the system to them?
Who pays for the postage on parts and service?
How long is this covered?
What if I drop it at the train station and crack the screen? Is that covered? (surprise: in most cases, NO, that's not covered, and you get to foot the bill for all the parts and labor to bring it up and running.)

If you can, call the company that will end up supporting the machine and talk to someone in tech support. Keep the call brief, if you can -- five or ten minutes of the agent's time. Ask them a few questions about the current line of systems, and emphasize that you'd prefer to ask someone who has to help support the machines about things you should know about before buying. Most support agents I've encountered actually appreciate the time to help someone make smart buying decisions, instead of hearing about it two months after you buy the machine and hate half of all the shit in it.

Don't just look at the consumer systems -- you might find more agreeable deals looking at the small to medium business line of systems.
Need Windows 7 instead of Windows 8? Best reason to look at the business systems.

If you have a sense of paranoia that won't let you return storage devices if a hard drive fails, ask the company at, or within the return period after purchase, if they have a provision that would allow you to keep your hard drive, should one fail. As of the time of this message, I know that Dell offers a 'Keep Your Hard Drive' warranty, and that it's pretty doggone cheap.

Consider weight when looking. I'd be at home with, for example, a Dell Precision Mobile Workstation M6700, but the machine weighs ten pounds at the very least. Some users aren't comfortable with a portable workstation of that weight.

Don't skimp on the screen. Generally, they will try to use the cheapest screen they can, which yields a 1366x768 pixel resolution, even on a 15" display.
If you're drawing, chances are this is too small.


If I distilled all of that stuff down (tl; dr) to the essences, they'd taste like:
Get accidental damage coverage unless the warranty already has it.
Get an onsite warranty - depot boxes suck and take two to three weeks to be handled.
Expect to pay more up front to not get screwed in the back.
Consider opting in to keep your hard drive instead of sending it back if you have to replace it.


Phew. I'm not normally this chatty. Sorry. ^^;

Goodness, that's a lot to digest! But I hadn't even considered the warranty, or the hard drive thing... you make good points! I'll be sure to do my homework before buying :)

I should have disclaimered when I wrote all that:

I do tech support for a living for a certain company.
Much of what I bring up is based on half a decade of answering these questions for callers.

To that end, I can fill in some of the blanks if you're considering a Dell. My data's based on purchases made in the USA. Unless country-specific, the data should apply worldwide.

1: No, your default warranty does not include accidental damage coverage. Feeding your laptop a smoothie does not a free repair get when the laptop proves it's food intolerant. If it's a laptop, get the accidental damage coverage. Yes, it's probably $100 up front. The cost of replacing parts without it in an accidental damage based situation is not cheap: $179 for the tech, plus the cost of parts.

2: PLEASE, opt for a machine with a next business day onsite warranty. When sending a machine to Depot if you're dealing with Dell in the USA, one of the cost saving measures is to pick the machine up via FedEx SmartPost, which means it'll take two weeks for the depot in Texas to receive the machine, IF it doesn't get snarbled up in the grand machine that is FedEx + USPS. It'll ship back quickly, though.

A corollary in the form of 2a: Guarantee and Warranty aren't the same word. This is important to point out for all companies. Next Business Day isn't a guarantee. It's a warranty offering that suggests that once the part is available to be shipped from warehouse to the tech or the end user, it should arrive on the next business day. Emphasis on 'part is available'. I've had so many calls where it is suggested that we promised everything will arrive on the next day and the computer will be up and running. If a part's on backlog, then we're stuck waiting for it, unless we find a way to prove the part's not needed.

3: Business line machines get better support offerings. One of the most voiced complaints I get is based on support in India (often accompanied by "Thank God you speak English!"). I've listened in on a warm transfer or fifty, and can say that the complaints I hear are well founded. I won't touch specifics, but I will say that some support queues, not just Dell's, but even their competitors, are filled with warm bodies collecting a check. Based on my own observations, the customers I deal with loathe being transferred to our Basic Consumer queue, which is mostly based out of India, but don't seem to mind being transferred to our Basic Small Business Queue, which is generally out of the Philippines.

4: Opt for the operating system media when purchasing. Dell was one of the last companies in the USA to switch away from shipping media by default. The discs usually cost $2 or $3 a piece at time of ordering. It'll save you from needing to go out and get a handful of dual layer DVD-RW discs when you buy the machine to make your own OS media.



... I've done it again.
I've gone chatty.
Sorry. ^^;

Hah, no worries - all good advice! Especially about the business line and the OS media. You must see a lot working in tech support ;)

Well, if you want one that isn't flashy, doesn't emphasize bells/accessories, your best bang for the buck buy would probably be from Sager/Clevo (I think they're named something else in Europe). They tend to focus only exclusively on raw power rather than fancy looking labeling and chassis.

You can easily buy a ridiculously powerful Sager for under $2000, but the sound quality of the speakers is kinda bad, the built in mic is going to be bad, and while the keyboard isn't bad, it isn't optimal for perfect-precision gaming. The plus side is that you get a crazy powerful computer with a durable chassis, decent cooling, nice screen.

I don't know exactly how to relate it in terms of car brands.. but think of Sager as spending almost all the money on the engine and the interior of the car, while keeping the outside on the downlow =p. Basically, you get good graphics/processor performance and a good screen, which are the parts I'd assume you are prioritizing.

*this*

In agreement here. Clevo chassis aren't the absolute best, but mine has certainly held together. For under 2k you could go to any number of custom companies and build exactly what you want.

Depending on how long you want to wait, if you're willing to wait until the end of 2013 to early 2014, AMD will have their next generation CPU and GPUs out. i7's are pretty overkill for any GPU you can get in a laptop and AMD is almost always cheaper than Intel for good performance. I'm hoping their next gen CPUs compete in the high end with Intel than their current offerings. Also, AMD APU's are miles better than even Intel's latest APU's.

Other than that. I recommend ASUS.

Yeah, I'm not in any particular hurry- good suggestions!

Yeah, that's exactly what I'm looking for! Huh- I'd not heard of Sager before but I'll definitely look them up now. Thanks Monkeyspirit!!!

I can tell you what NOT to get, my laptop

Toshiba Satellite C655-S5132 w/ windows 7. the thing has no hdmi port, can barely run Portal, and a derped internal wifi card

...yeah I know nothing :P

Hah, just think though, just 10 years ago it would have been a Cadillac of laptops!

Asking for tech advice on a website filled with techies; no doubt you would get quality recommendations! :3 And with that kind of budget, you can easily get something high tier for sure!

Therefore my recommendation would be Crusader Kings II, to get the most time out of your century spanning empire in EU4. And yes, play with Sunset Invasion as well, like the hardest of hardcore. >:)

Now if you excuse me, the Wendish Empire does not manage itself. I have a handful of plotting brothers and cousins that I'm- OH GOD REVOLTS!

XP Excellent suggestion- although I've still not quite gotten the hang of CKII! It's just different enough from the EU series that it really throws me for a loop, heh!

Is there an EUIV to Victoria II converter? It would be fun to take your Wendish Empire all the way into HoI3 :3

Haha, well I heard tales of transferring saves from CK2>EU3>Vic2, and apparently EU4 has a tool dedicated just for CK2 save file transferring! And I'm sure with time, fans will find a way to integrate EU4 into the loop.

With CK2 I feel I have to make more strategic choices with more than just battles of soldiers, but battles of diplomacy... including marriage proposals. Although, I've only played CK2 and EU3, and never have actually reached the end of a game before my save file explodes, or Russia happens. But I still hope to one day play as the Inca and survive past the Spanish invasion! Only then will I consider myself worthy of venturing into the world of Victoria II and beyond!

Oh... maximum digression from the topic, whoops. :P

You can do it! Pax Inca!

these is a new cpu coming out(well i know it's coming out for tablets, so laptops too?), it'll drop all the current range prices.

If you're talking about the Haswell version of the i5/i7, it's been out. AMD's new generation comes out Q4 2013/Q1 2014

Be there or be square!

You play euIV?! Sqeeee! Anyway though, xoticpc.com or originpc.com have great customer service and generally a good selection. My fiancee got a seventeen inch msi job for xoticpc but I forget the specifics. I'm not so much a fan of such big laptops though, and tend to recommend fifteen inch models.

-Atma

Yeah, I'm an EU nerd for life :P

I'll check those websites for sure. (Good lord, that 17 incher must be huge!)

Yeah, I've been playing since Victoria got me hooked and EU3 drove it home. I never did get into EU2, though, felt too much on rails and iffy in comparison to the newer Clausewitz engine games... but yeah, EUIV is turning out to be a blast. I don't really have the same complaints with it that most people do -- though perhaps lucky nations could be tuned a bit better so as not to give whichever of the big names you're not playing 6/6/6 monarchs almost EVERY TIME. o.o

Good luck!
-Atma

Asus G75VX-T4206H - that should manage whatever you wanna do with it, from Gaming to even video editing!
If you want it to fly off in terms of speed, exchange the hard drive for an Samsung pro series SSD ;3

Awesome! I'll check it out!

look at all your friends...

I had good luck with HP and bad luck with Toshiba which I have now. Every now and again it has epileptic fits and freezes for about three seconds with a loud buzzing sound.

Mac - definitely if you can afford it.

V.

I never imagine I'd receive such an overload of advice XD

Hadn't even considered a Mac! Good point! Plus my employer seems to be gradually moving toward them over PC's... I should probably figure out how to use Apple products to stay ahead of the curve.

with the Mac, you can load both Apple products and windows. My boss has both loaded in his so he can use both.

V.

Lenovo
Solid quality laptops with decent prices
Though their customer service is a little lacking they make a great laptop

The Y series is the gaming laptops with dual hard drives one solid state and the other a typical hard drive with HD screens on them
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptop.....-series/y510p/
the normal one is under 1,000$
Get it and buy a larger solid state hard drive (MSATA type) and cram more memory into it for the ideal laptop

Your can even get a secondary graphics card in them for SLI fun

http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptop.....01C9:0000ECB1:

Looks like great features for a <$1,000 price point, for sure! Would I have to buy the model with the SSD to be able to replace it with a larger one, or is the SSD slot available on all models there? Also, out of curiosity, do you know how the battery life is from that 6 cell lithium?

Alas, I am completely inept when it comes to operating Macs XP I should learn one of these days! Windows does definitely have it's share of issues...

Eh... I'm guessing I'm probably the only one that will make the recommendation, but Alienware systems are actually fairly reasonable anymore. I know they sell some pretty decent models for about $1799-ish, but couldn't specify what and all (it's been ages since I've bought a computer, but my current system is an Alienware M15x.)

Anyway, for about $2500 back in 2010:

Intel Core i7 Q740 (quad core, each core running at 1.73GHz)
4GB DDR3 RAM
500GB HDD, 7200RPM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850
15'' HD monitor (1920 x 1080)
Windows 7 64 Home Premium
Blu-Ray drive (read only)/DVD and CD burner

Mind you, that was 2010, it was pretty powerful at the time for a notebook. I actually honestly had some problems with the stock Blu-Ray drive, and bought a Sony Optiarc drive from Newegg and installed it myself. I've also since upgraded it to its max memory of 8GB.

I honestly find the case to be one of the most durable things I've ever seen with a laptop, though I realize the design is not to everyone's taste. (I also admittedly really wanted the lights in the keyboard and such.) Speakers are decent, too, by the way.

Anyway, I guess not so much a recommendation as it is to tell you that I've had no regrets choosing an Alienware, and this system is approaching on 3 years old, and can still run most modern games on normal settings. It also tends not to get too hot or anything, though I keep mine on a desk and use an external keyboard since the desk is uncomfortably high to be trying to type on.

Anyway, I'm certain my reply will be met with some criticism about "you bought a fancy glowing paperweight" or something, but as stated, I've had no issues with it (aside from the aforementioned Blu-Ray drive, which I admit was after the warranty had ended, and the upgrade consisted of taking the entire machine apart, but it wasn't a difficult procedure, keeping in mind that I do hardware support for a living.) I also will admit that a portion of the price is paying for the branding, but it's also noteworthy that the base install has NO crapware on it. It literally comes as a clean OS with all of your drivers and the programs for your various hardware installed... and I had them preload Steam and WoW since that was free.)

Hehe guess i'll poke you then.

I personally couldn't recommend alienware for anyone, high end laptops are being offered by just about every manufacturer and the vast majority are cheaper. Most have at least equal specs and some have better.

Alienware used to have some of the best laptops around, of course at a premium price. But they usually offered features that other laptop manufactures didn't have. The highest definition screens combined with the latest graphics cards. Unfortunately since it's acquisition by Dell there has been a noticeable watering down of the technologically advanced components that they add in. Yes they update the laptops, but that is basically all they do now, falling into a rut of "just update them" without adding in new experimental features. Essentially, every other manufacture now has the same lineup that they do but the other manufactures are more willing to experiment and add in different things.

My favorite laptop over several decades of having various brands would be the lenovo I currently have (Lenovo Y580). Mainly because of the dual hard drive. A Solid State /Traditional 1TB hard drive (A feature only included on the highest priced, 17 inch+ only Dell (2,239$).. comes on the 800$ lenovo) combined with the high end graphics card and HD screen. The ability to later on add in a second graphics card (removing the blueray drive) turning the laptop into an SLI graphics combo is what really takes the cake. Doesn't hurt that it's half aluminum either.

Oh, the lenovo also has a lite-up keyboard like alienware. Honestly, I didn't think I would like the lite up keyboard but I have found it to be quite handy at night.
The speakers are the best i've heard on a laptop so far, but my last two laptops were Asus's.. so *shrug*

(That's good to know! A light up keyboard would be a big plus - I have to keep lights out at night a lot too ^^;)

While I do agree they aren't the same as they were now that Dell owns them, they still make a machine that /looks/ how I want it to. I'm gonna guess that the keyboard lights cannot be changed in color on your Lenovo, not that it's a vital feature or anything, just kinda cool.

I honestly don't mind Dell on the whole, I've personally had no problems with them, though my sister did because of incompetent IT support in India. (Like 3 calls she made to them, they did nothing to help her except have her do a factory restore. I called them once, stated what I had diagnosed the issue as, told them exactly how much shit they gave my sister, and they transferred me to someone who actually did resolve the issue. For the record, it was a bad driver on the factory image that they didn't have the fixed version of on their website. >.>)

I've honestly had a lot more trouble with HP as far as support (A previous help desk/hardware tech job involved pretty much negotiating with them to get a failed RAID controller replaced. Awful, awful hardware and support.)

Anyway, I realize that the Alienware is not the best, doesn't have all of the bells and whistles that it could, and all that. If I had gone with the M17x or M18x, they did have the dual HDD option available, as well as a full-sized keyboard with the number pad, but I ended up not going for that.

Also, a big part of why I went with the Alienware, and this is important... my family has a line of credit with them, and we can buy anything we want from them for 0% interest for a year. I probably could have pulled some strings and gotten something similar with another manufacturer, but we've got that standing, they had what I wanted, so that was that. :P

I will also admit that, at the time, I worked with this tool that had a Sager laptop, wouldn't shut up about it, either... and he really pissed me off because he was seen as the best thing ever (he honestly did a half assed job, was a naive twat, and eventually was instrumental in me losing my job. Mind you it wasn't like he knew he was part of the reason, but when he kept transferring calls for me to our COO that had a similar name to me, it really makes it look like I'm doing a poor job and they're demanding a supervisor...)

Uh, anyway... point is, when the time comes to get another laptop... I would likely get another Alienware, to be honest. But I'll see what's available at the time, you know?

Yes the keyboard lights color is fixed.

Well since you have a relationship with them I would suggest trying to purchase future items from them through their business side. If you can swing that with them anyways, you'd probably have to make a business account with them to do it though.

The business support is vastly superior to the consumer support (having purchased several hundred servers through them over the years for work).

Hah, I remember when Alienware was all the rage! They always did look really cool. Good to hear they're still in the game, even though the playing field's widened so dramatically. I'll be sure not to count them out- though I've gotten so many suggestions on this thread I'm not sure how I'll be able to look closely at each one, hah XD Thanks for the input!

No problem. :3

It seems the general opinion of them isn't as high as it once was, but as you can see in the comments above, I honestly like what I got for the money.

... and part of the price seems to be that they don't subsidize the cost of the hardware by installing adware on the machine to start. (Those $300 laptops you get at Best Buy almost always have 40,000 free trials of this or that on there, that actually is paid for by the companies that make the software, and then HP or whatever will take a small amount off the price.)

So that's something to keep in mind as well. Though I think some of the companies are seriously doing the "no crapware" thing without actually charging more. Not sure how they do it, though.