Just another laptop buying advice thread...

[nubreed000]

I need a laptop. This will be my first laptop purchase so I'm kinda going in blind. Anyways I'll get right to it. I need something that is:

-at least a 15 inch screen
-powerful enough to playback HD videos (this might be a redundant requirement. Not sure how powerful GPUs are in laptops nowadays.)
-illuminated keyboard that's comfortable to type on.
-under $1000, but preferably in the 500 to 600 range.
-also, this isn't a deal breaker but some decent gaming performance would be a nice bonus. If it's out of the price range then that's fine.
-a decent sized HD as well as good battery life and reliability are important too.

I get a 10 percent discount on Dell and HP products, so if there's anything decent from those companies then I'd prefer that route. However I want quality first so if I have to pay a little more to get something that's better then that's fine.

 

[Schadenfreude]

Since you're going in blind:

- Any new laptop will have a sufficient GPU to play high definition (720p<) videos.
- The challenge may be to find a FHD (1080p) display.
- If your budget is $1k, you'll have no problem finding a laptop w/ a discrete GPU

If your main concern is build quality, people usually fall under the following two camps:
a.)Thinkpads
or
b.)Apple

That's simplifying things a bit but that seems to be the general consensus. I've personally had very good experiences with Dell and Asus, but there seems to be plenty of accounts to the contrary (especially Dells).

You may have lost some great deals during black friday (d'oh!) but you may find some decent offers during cyber monday or whatever that is.

You should specify a bit more more though:
- What are you planning on doing with this laptop? Is this for travel, or is this a desktop replacement? Why are you looking for a 15" size specifically?
- What do you do on it? Do you do anything else that's hardware-intensive (3d modeling, video editing, etc.) other than gaming?
- What kind of games are you looking to paly? Facebook games or "hardcore" games?
- Any specific characteristics (ultrabook, blu-ray, metal chassis, hdmi out, SSD, etc.) that you're looking for?

 

[nubreed000]

You should specify a bit more more though:
- What are you planning on doing with this laptop? Is this for travel, or is this a desktop replacement? Why are you looking for a 15" size specifically?
- What do you do on it? Do you do anything else that's hardware-intensive (3d modeling, video editing, etc.) other than gaming?
- What kind of games are you looking to paly? Facebook games or "hardcore" games?
- Any specific characteristics (ultrabook, blu-ray, metal chassis, hdmi out, SSD, etc.) that you're looking for?

It's mainly a desktop replacement. I want a 15" screen because anything smaller than that is too small in my opinion.

I'll mostly be doing light stuff like email, facebook, MS Office-type stuff, but I may want to use it for music production down the line. I don't play too many video games but once in a while I'd like to fire up something like Mass Effect, Call of Duty, Fallout, etc.

Other characteristics like an illuminated keyboard, a comfortable mousepad (I really like Apple's pad, but an Apple laptop is out of the question. Too expensive, and I don't like OSX), and good battery life are important. Windows 7 would be ideal, but I feel like I'm gonna miss the boat on that one as MS is pushing Windows 8 pretty hard.

 

[nubreed000]

So I'm thinking of getting an Ideapad Y500.

How big of a difference will a 6mb cache make versus 3mb on the CPU? Will it make a difference in music production or DJing?