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Please recommend a laptop for college and some light gaming

ibex333

ibex333

Diamond Member
I need a laptop that will cost BELOW $500 and be able to do these things:

1)Run Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (I am learning Visual Basic, and may possibly get into C )
2)Run Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS4 (I understand performance might not be great at this price, but all I need is "descent")
3)Run Linux/Unix and allow me to practice with networking commands. (I am studying to become a Network Engineer) I am assuming any laptop will allow me to do that.
4)If possible, I'd like to have some kind of a gfx card so I can play older games from 5-7 years ago or so such as Elder Scrolls: Morrowind. (THIS IS NOT REQUIRED)
5)Battery Life must be at least 5 hours, and that's REAL 5 hours, not advertised 5 hours. I am willing to sacrifice processing/graphics power as long as I have good battery run time.

Thanks.
 
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you mean "decent" (acceptable quality) not "descent" (change position downwards).

your requirements are utterly impossible. 500$ is just not enough for what you want. Lower your expectations or increase your budget.

the 5 hour battery life is a big one, for such battery life you will need to either get a CULV/atom with CRAP (TM) performance which cannot do anything you asked, or you will have to get a high end CULV at ~1500+$ (aka, a CULV i7). (actually all of your requirements are rather big... the gfx one is also a big issue for example... and you should get 4GB of ram and decent CPU)

I recommend you get an older CULV core2duo based (probably gonna be called celeron or pentium) machine for ~500$ for the best balance of battery life and performance and price.
 
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CULV is the way to go - either AMD's newer (low clock speed) offerings or Intel SU series. I recommend at least a dual core, but finding that for under $500 might be tough.

You can find larger (15-17"), cheap, dual core systems with Intel integrated graphics (not good for gaming) around $500, but their quality usually sucks. I recommend the CULV laptops because the ASUS UL series and Acer Timeline series is a huge leap ahead of those crappy cheap HP / Compaq / Gateway / etc. systems in quality and especially in battery life.
 
CurseTheSky said:
You can find larger (15-17"), cheap, dual core systems with Intel integrated graphics (not good for gaming) around $500, but their quality usually sucks. I recommend the CULV laptops because the ASUS UL series and Acer Timeline series is a huge leap ahead of those crappy cheap HP / Compaq / Gateway / etc. systems in quality and especially in battery life.
Click to expand...

good choices and suggestions, but they are going to cost more than 500$.
I second the asus UL series if you manage to convince yourself to increase your budget...

the nvidia optimus allows you to enjoy both gaming (discreet gfx) and good battery. But that means paying even more and you are already over budget.
 
Are you OK with buying refurbished w/1 year OEM warranty? If so, there is a seller on ebay who has a bunch of refurbished HP Elitebook 2530Ps that would come close to meeting your criteria. The go for about $540 shipped; with 8% Bing cashback the total comes out to just under $500. I can vouch that these look and work just like new, and the 6-cell battery gets close to 6 hours of "real-life" use, particularly if you undervolt the CPU.

I agree with the other posters that you are not going to find what you want for $500, at least not new. The 2530P has a powerful enough CPU for what you want to do and good enough graphics to run older games like Morrowind; more importantly, you get benefits of a high-end business notebook (i.e. build quality, trackpoint, fingerprint reader, ambient light sensor, keyboard light, and almost full-size keyboard with minimal weirdness with respect to key arrangement).

The notebook does come sans optical drive (you do have the option though), but that is easy enough to get around. You can actually fit a 2.5" SATA + 1.8" SATA HDD into this machine, which may be useful if you want to switch between different OSs.
 
If you can wait until summer, the Core i3 CULV line should be out by then. That is what you want. Will probably run ~$600-700 though.
 
i'd check the dell outlet for an 11z with the dual core cpu and 6 cell battery. i'm not sure how close to 500 you'll get, but it should be nearly there. it runs older games, and should run the programs you want fairly well. my wife's gets 5-6 hours of battery depending on what she's doing. it does have a battery hump tho, but it always helps the system run cooler by allowing air under it. it has the 4500mhd intel graphics. i've tried a bit of gaming on it and it was okay (things like torchlight. i still owe another thread a benchmark on enemy territory.), nothing to write home about, but not horrible either.

i think new we paid closer to 700 for her system, but in the outlet without the gps and wimax card you should be able to get it close to 500. it's a capable little system, surprisingly even.

there is an 11z (not mine) for sale in the forums.
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2024954
 
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I had similar requirements (although I never intended the machine to be a primary) You should probably give up much gaming and just grab one of the CULV dual cores. In order to get better graphics than the intel 4500mhd you have to go low end AMD (which just don't seem to have as great a battery life) or spend more money.

Look at frys.com though, I saw some cheap units there. The battery life requirement may be the hardest...it wasn't quite as important to me.
 
I learned a bit of Visual Basic in Grade 12 programming.

I don't know too much about Photoshop.

My 10v with 2GB of RAM runs Ubuntu 9.10.

I get about 5.5 hours of battery power in Windows 7 and just under 6.5 hours of battery power in Windows XP.

If you just want to do "light" gaming, and you're honest about sacrificing power to gain battery life, go with a Mini 10v. As far as I'm concerned, it's powereful enough to do the stuff I was learning to do over 10 years ago (with the exception of Photoshop), and light gaming, to me, means you like to throw in a Diablo II, or Starcraft, or, and, yes it works, Half-Life disc, every now and then for a LAN throwdown.

At any rate, excpet with the Photoshop necessity, I think some form of Mini would suit you.

[edit]Edit for grammar phonetically spelled words, lol[/edit]
 
You're looking for any CULV laptop. Get the dual core one and call it a day. If possible, look for 7200rpm hds.
 
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