What Kind of Laptop To Buy. (Performance vs. Practicality)

[codingNewB]

Hello

My name is Brad. I am starting my first upper grade year for software engineering and I don't know what kind of laptop to buy. I am a partial gamer and want something that will still be effective for school. I was thinking about an MSI or an Asus, with no more than a 16 inch screen, because they seemed to get good ratings. I was thinking of something with an i7 core processor and a descent graffics card with atleast 2 x 320gb hard drives. Also any suggestion on where to buy with good prices and good customer service? I have been looking on Tiger Direct and New Egg (downfall is both websites don't allow custom build). I also was looking on Xotic PC which does allow custom building but are about $100 - $200 more. Please help!!

[chrishea]

I got my Asus laptop (2.1 ghz dual core 64 bit with Win 7, 4 gig memory 500 gb drive, 16" screen) for under $600. That's a pretty good price for a pretty good machine. You can certainly pay more for less. It isn't made to be a high performance machine (and I don't do much gaming) but it runs very well (especially compared to my previous HP running Vista). If you can find something off the shelf then you have a much better chance of getting a deal. You might still be better off buying something adequate and then replacing the video card (if it's possible). Desktops are pretty easy to customize. Laptops aren't really intended for that even though it may be possible on some machines.

[codingNewB]

I got my Asus laptop (2.1 ghz dual core 64 bit with Win 7, 4 gig memory 500 gb drive, 16" screen) for under $600. That's a pretty good price for a pretty good machine. You can certainly pay more for less. It isn't made to be a high performance machine (and I don't do much gaming) but it runs very well (especially compared to my previous HP running Vista). If you can find something off the shelf then you have a much better chance of getting a deal. You might still be better off buying something adequate and then replacing the video card (if it's possible). Desktops are pretty easy to customize. Laptops aren't really intended for that even though it may be possible on some machines.

Thanks, appreciate the insight. I will probably end up eating atleast another $500 - $800 for something that can hold its own with the new games out there. Been looking into MSI and it seems that there 660 series keeps very cool under high performance (around 60-70 degrees from what I read). And the Asus, Which I'm digging the stealth look, runs really hot (around 90 degrees at high performance). But I was reading a blog stating that Asus was in the process of fixing the issue. So I might just wait to see how the Asus performs with its new ventiliation. They are both great machines and seem to perform about the same.

[rotchobrand]

Finding laptops with the price range of $100-200 is a hard one, but if I will choose for performance vs. practicality, I will select the performance, since performance of the laptop affects everything, so if performance is good despite that its heavy in the pocket but its still worth it at the end.