Thread: Laptop Specs

Hey Guys!

It's been time since I logged in here now. I'll be travelling to the US next week and I am looking to purchase a good laptop while I'll be there.

Like my friends here know, I'm pretty much a noob at everything .
I got stuck, so I'd thought what better place than here to ask for opinion!
I just googled some laptops these were my results :

I am looking for laptop in the range of <=$999



The Dell Online Store: Build Your System


HP Pavilion dv6-7014nr Entertainment Notebook PC | HP® Official Store

One big question, which company should I prefer? Dell or HP?

These are the specs that I'd be looking for (Though I'd love blu-Ray capability as well!)

STEM	Inspiron 15R Notebook (Inspiron 7520)
PROCESSOR	3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3612QM processor (6M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)
OPERATING SYSTEM	Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64Bit, English
MEMORY	8GB Dual Channel DDR3 1600MHz
HARD DRIVE	750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive
VIDEO CARD	AMD Radeon™ HD 7730M 2GB
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE	8X Tray Load CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
SYSTEM COLOR	Stealth Black Anodized Aluminum
DISPLAY	15.6" Full High Definition (1080p) LED Display
BATTERY OPTIONS	48 WHr 6-cell Lithium Ion Battery
WIRELESS CARDS	Intel® Centrino® Wireless 2230, 2x2 bgn + Bluetooth
SOUND	Waves MaxxAudio 4 + Skullcandy Speakers
NETWORK CARD	Integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet card
KEYBOARD	Dell Backlit Keyboard with Multi-touch Touchpad, English-Int'l
POWER CORD	Power cord, 125V, 3.2 Feet, US
ADOBE & ENTERTAINMENT	Adobe Elements 9.0 Photoshop and Premiere Bundle
DATASAFE	DataSafe 2.0 Online Backup 2GB for 1 year
WIRELESS DRIVER	SRV Software for 2230 WIFI Wireless Card
SHIPPING MATERIAL	Shipping Material, Direct
ADDITIONAL SOFTWARE	Additional Software
OPTICAL DRIVE SOFTWARE	No Optical Device Software Included
WIDI	Wireless Display Application & Driver

The above specs are of Inspiron 15R Special Edition which is currently priced at $999.

Can you people please look up some laptops with a similar price range or at discounted rates at some other places.
I'm not good at searching things!
I'd be grateful!
Long Live T-I!

Check slickdeals.net often. There are tons of laptop deals that show up on there. Here's a search for laptops. There don't seem to be any high end laptops on sale atm but they do show up especially Dell outlet and lenovo outlet coupons.

@AlloyedTorque

Yeah, I do need that extra 'meat' man.
I've been preparing for my graduation exams and have been out of gaming circuit for atleast 6 months now. Finally, the time has come when I buy something awesome.

I had a great budget if you look at it a year back, by now the stupid Dollar-Rupee ratio has risen up massively, limiting my options! :(

And Ultrabooks are out of the question. I currently have one, and I don't like it.

I do all of my laptop shopping on Newegg.com. Every summer for the past 3 or 4 years I've been recommending laptops to friends (mostly college students and their parents) for various uses, so I've gotten pretty good at finding deals on truly good laptops. I don't know exactly when you'll be ready to buy, but sometimes deals stay up for a while, and sometimes they don't, so you might have to look for yourself to see if they've got something you want at a decent price. I'll list some examples of laptops that would be useful to you, under $1000 (as of today's listings, at least):

SAMSUNG McLaren NP550P5C-T01US Notebook
Has great specs for the price, but is lacking in screen resolution a bit (read my tips below). Video performance will be pretty good.

lenovo IdeaPad Y580 (20994EU) Notebook
This one's on sale for $1000 right now. It has amazing specs, and an amazing video card for a laptop. Unfortunately, the screen res is still only 1366x768. Some people can live with this and some cannot. It's up to you, really.

DELL Inspiron 15R Special Edition (i15Rse-5000BK) Notebook
Another one with great specs for $1000. And this one has a screen resolution of 1920x1080 (1080p).

ASUS N56VZ-ES71 Notebook
I'm a huge fan of Asus, and this computer looks great. The only drawback, once again, is the screen resolution.

Anyway, these are just some examples. There are tons more with their own pros/cons. Prices are always changing, so you should be sure to have a search through the site sometime when you're really ready to buy. If you like some of the choices you find, feel free to post them here and I, or someone else, should be able to tell you if you're making good decisions or not!

Some other tips I have for you:

• Stay away from Acer. They often have decent looking specs at rock-bottom prices. Might sound like a deal, but their laptops tend to have problems, and people will often end up buying another laptop within a year or two.

• Both HP and Dell make reliable laptops these days, so either will be a good bet for you. Just remember to check the specs. If you have other brand questions, you should feel free to ask about other people's experiences with them here. Personally, I'm a fan of Asus, Samsung and Toshiba as well. Sony's good too, but I've seen them overcharge by hundreds of dollars for their Sony Vaio laptops.

• Since you're looking for something with the extra 'meat', be sure you look into the video card specs. Video card memory isn't as important to video card performace as it used to be. Rather, you'll want to look at the model number of the video card. You can look here PassMark Software - Video Card Model List and sort by rank. If the rank is 200 or lower (lower being better, in this case) that means it will run Diablo 3 on medium settings really smoothly, for example (that's what I've been basing my video performance references on because it was a hit game in the beginning of the summer ). Basically, I'd stay rank 200 and better for most gaming needs. Also, stay away from the integrated graphics (Intel HD 3000/4000). They won't perform as well as you'd like.

• Make sure you like the screen size that you'll be buying. For example, 17 inches makes for a great display, but it's usually not fun to carry around, if you tend to carry your laptop a lot. And you probably don't want anything under 13 inches if you're gaming. Anything between 13.1 and 16.4 inches is usually the 'sweet spot' for most people.

• Look at the maximum screen resolution of the laptop you're buying. Many are selling with a maximum resolution of 1366x768, which is okay, but if you can find a larger resolution, you'll be rather happy with it. It's not that 1366x768 is really bad, but most people prefer higher resolutions after they've used them. Higher resolutions are especially great for gaming and for watching videos on your laptop (especailly HD quality videos).

• There are certain parts you can and cannot upgrade on a laptop. For example, RAM is a super cheap upgrade right now. You can go from 4gb of RAM to 8gb of RAM for $20-40 (depending on your laptop's setup). So if you see a laptop with a low amount of RAM, but everything else is great, buy the laptop and upgrade the RAM yourself. It's a cheap and easy fix. Also, upgrading a hard drive can be inexpensive. However, keep in mind that with a laptop, whatever CPU and graphics card (GPU) you buy with the laptop, you're pretty much stuck with. You can change these things on a desktop computer, but not so much on a laptop.

• On a site like Newegg, you should definitely read the reviews for any laptops you think about purchasing if there are reviews (if there aren't reviews, you can ask google, or ask here if you have any hesitations). Basically, the reviews will be most helpful in telling you about any flaws of the laptop. People almost always write reviews when something goes wrong, and if you see multiple people saying their laptop spontaneously combusted or something like that, that's an obvious red flag.

There's a lot to be said about laptop shopping. These are just some of the things to keep in mind. I hope some of this is helpful. Happy laptop shopping, my friend!

I would strongly recommend against the Dell 15R Laptops and the Previous XPS Range, I've had my i5 15R, The other half has an i3 15R and BOTH of them have had a new motherboard, bezels, processors, batteries etc within 3-4 months of ownership.

Dell isn't what it used to be, Everything is very cheap and "Tacky" these days (I own 5 Dell Systems, 2 XPS Desktops, 1 AlienWare and 2x 15R Laptops). None of it is nearly as good build quality as the older Dimensions/OptiPlex systems. The motherboards are by Elite Group in the XPS Towers, Completely Rubish!