Yet another buying a laptop thread

[ikachu]

My daughter jumped off the bed and landed on my crappy E2-1800 based HP laptop that I use mostly for playing hearthstone and broke the screen.

I guess I'll be getting a replacement as a Christmas present... budget is < $1000, preferably significantly less than that.

Use is mostly light gaming... Hearthstone, LoL, maybe a couple of random things in my Steam backlog, worst case would be WoW maybe if I ever find time to play it. Don't really want a touchscreen, but 1080P would be good. Need an SSD; I have a 128GB Crucial in my existing laptop I could use, although I'd prefer 256GB+. If I have to replace the stock drive in the laptop I buy, it'd cost me part of my budget.

I think 17" might be too big, I'd prefer 15" but willing to consider 17 if I have to. Don't care too much about battery life, but it'd be nice if the laptop didn't sound like a jet taking off and get hot enough to melt platinum.

I know WoW is pretty cpu dependent, so I guess I should probably get an i5 or i7. Do you think integrated graphics are good enough or should I get one w/ a discrete GPU?

What brands are good now? Is it worth paying a little more to get a business-focused laptop vs. a consumer one? Should I try to get a black friday / cyber monday deal on a random laptop that meets my needs? Or try to find a laptop I like and focus on buying that one?

I live like 45mins to an hour away from the Boston (well, Cambridge) Microcenter; how are their in-store laptop deals? Is it worth paying Mass sales tax on one vs. buying one here in NH where I wouldn't have to pay sales tax?

 

[TheStu]

If it's just the screen that's broken, have you considered repairing it? laptopscreens.com, they're legit.

 

[ikachu]

Hm that's definitely a possibility although that laptop is so slow it's kind of cramping my style...

 

[TheStu]

Hm that's definitely a possibility although that laptop is so slow it's kind of cramping my style...

I can definitely understand that.

 

[xgsound]

If you think about getting a screen you should use an auxiliary monitor to see if everything else works first.

Those DVD/ HDD caddies work very well to transfer old HDD data to a new laptop as long as it comes with a DVD. Example http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1

Jim

 

[sm625]

It sounds like a good option for you would be an off lease laptop from dell financial services. They just had a deal where you could get an i5-3320M with nvidia quadro 5200M for $440. Talk about an insanely powerful $400 laptop! Unfortunately that deal expired. But if you keep an eye out, they always have 25-40% deals on and off. And search for 5200M on the DFS website.

 

[ikachu]

That Dell deal sounds pretty good, I will keep an eye out. I have a Latitude E6430 at work that is pretty well made, although I think it is just Intel HD4000 graphics.

I looked at something like the Lenovo Y50 but it seems like a lot of people have complained about the screen. Are there any comparable laptops to that but w/ a decent screen?

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Not to jump in and jack the thread - but I have a similar situation. I am looking for a new laptop, but all I seem to see (even for Black Friday deals) are $300 - $600 rigs that are ALL based on on-CPU video. Is it essential to have an external videocard these days or can we survive without it these days when it comes to laptops?