Hey all, I’m looking for a new laptop to replace my current PC. Due to university I will need something a bit less loud and something that I can take with me around the house and to friend’s houses. I am looking for a laptop. As big of a screen as possible... minimum 15 inches I would also like to use the laptop for casual gaming (call of duty) For the laptop, I don’t care about weight or battery life... just want something fast I will also be using this laptop for creating games and coding. So id rather a fast processor than graphics. Some features I would like with the laptop although not needed: Big screen with good resolution (1920 by 1080 preferred) Blu-ray drive (does not need to write) Fast processor Lots of RAM Graphics for casual gaming That’s about it! And now the hard part... As cheap as possible..... Thanks in advance! Anthony
If you want a full HD screen, and a blu-ray drive, I think you'll most likely end up with a Sony Vaio. You should look into those, even though they're not really cheap.
It's worth asking - what is your actual budget? For £850, I picked up a Dell Studio 17: 17", 1600x900 screen Core i5-520 (2 core, 4 thread, 2.4GHz speed, Turbo Boost up to 2.93GHz) Mobility Radeon HD 5650 500GB HDD 95Whr battery (lasts 6 hours on light use) 4 years' next-day warranty 4GB DDR3 DVD-RW drive (Blu-Ray was an option) Having said that, I did haggle my pants off on the phone to get it down to that much. A similar system, as priced up on Dell's site now, is £1100. Using some form of educational discount would knock that right down to a grand. The other option, of course, is to build a mini-ITX desktop, buy a 17-19" screen and a big backpack. Probably set you back less for much more power. For some ideas on components and a build, sleepygamer and I wrote a blog-post on powerful mini-ITX machines here. Might give you some ideas.
Take a look at pcspecialist.co.uk 15.6'' 1920x1080 screen Core i5 540 (2.53GHz) - can go up to a i7 640M (2.8GHz) for another £120 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 - can go up to 8GB for another £100 Radeon HD5650 500GB HDD - choices are 250-750GB, price varies Blu-ray drive (read only, writes DVDs) - can be dropped to lower the price by about £90 Windows 7 x64 3 year warranty - can scale back to a less comprehensive 3-year warranty to save about £70 £849 inc. VAT and delivery to UK mainland (or about £1050 with all the upgrades mentioned above) spec your own here: http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/enigmaII/ My mate has the previous version (C2D and HD4650) and it's great; well made, quiet and capable of smooth native-res GTA IV, Resident Evil 5 etc... this one is even more powerful than that. they also do a larger screen version; the 18.4'' Viper II has a resolution of 1680x945 (not bad when you consider most 22'' desktop monitors are 1680x1050) and the Radeon HD5165 for £1170. All other specs are the same (as the £1050 enigma). You'd probably be better off with the 15.6'' and a £100 monitor though, as you'd save £20 and have better graphics... not to mention a higher resolution laptop screen despite the smaller size AND a larger screen when you were at your desk than any laptop could give you. Actually you'd have TWO screens. p.s. you can also spec an SSD, though you'd probably need to rely on external drives for the bulk of your storage then. Not a problem if you're desk-bound anyway though most of the time.
Something like this might fit the bill: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=LT-025-MS&groupid=959&catid=1828&subcat= MSI GX660(R) CPU Intel Core™ i5-450M Processor OS Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium Chipset Intel PM55 Memory 6GB DDR3 1066 MHz LCD Size 15.6" FHD 1920*1080 TFT-LCD Display (LED Backlight) Graphics ATi Mobility Radeon HD 5870 Graphics VRAM GDDR5 1GB HDD 2x500GB in RAID 0 SATA Optical Drive Super-Multi DVDRW Audio 2 Theater Class Speakers +1 Subwoofer - HD Webcam - Card Reader XD/SD/MMC/MS - LAN 10/100/1000 - Wireless LAN 802.11 b/g/n - Bluetooth V2.0EDR - D-Sub (VGA) - HDMI - 2x USB 2.0 port - 2x USB 3.0 port - eSATA - 120W AC Adapter - 9 cell Battery You can also get a better specced (but higher priced) version from Mesh Computers which IIRC has a blu ray drive.
