Help me shop for laptop.

[kaese]

So I have this godzilla of a laptop that I use to do everything with, including play TF2. It's 17" and weighs about a ton. I'm getting tired of lugging it to classes every day and it has a pretty crap battery life (2hrs on lowest perf. setting).
I'm looking for suggestions for a laptop with a smaller screen, maybe something 13" or less. It doesn't need to have superb specs, a massive memory, yada yada; it just needs to be reliable (ie. does not break after one year), have good battery life, and is lightweight. I probably just going to use it to store notes, take notes, and browse the internet. I don't really have a price limit but if I probably wouldn't drop more than $500 on it (unless it can be good enough to replace my current one, of which I will be the judge)

There are too many laptops out there, someone please point me in a direction.

(and now you know what I will be using this laptop for, should I get a tablet instead?)

[Didzo]

A netbook wouldn't be a bad choice... Something like this should be more than enough for note taking, web browsing, video watching, and so forth. Just don't expect to play any games on it because of the processor.

If you want to go crazy, I'd recommend an Alienware m11x. 11.6in screen, but it can play any game you want at high settings. It has a good battery life (6 hours or so) when you aren't playing games. Gaming life is ~2 hours.

I don't have any experience with tablets, but I think a laptop would be a better way to use your money.

[kaese]

Yea, I'm thinking I might want to just replace my current laptop with a new one so netbooks/tablets will be out of the question at the moment. The Alienware lappy looks great except for the lack of a CD/DVD drive which makes it inconvenient for me pop in a movie on-the-go and such.
I browsed for a few minutes today and found an Acer laptop that seemed nice and a Lenovo Thinkpad(ThinkPad Edge E220 w/ i7 processor).
My price cap is now at $1000.
The search for more options continues!

[Didzo]

Yea, I'm thinking I might want to just replace my current laptop with a new one so netbooks/tablets will be out of the question at the moment. The Alienware lappy looks great except for the lack of a CD/DVD drive which makes it inconvenient for me pop in a movie on-the-go and such.

You can get a slim external CD/DVD drive for $40 online (and that's if you don't buy it on sale), so I wouldn't consider that a big drawback.

If you want to replace your current laptop completely, I suggest finding something with a dedicated graphics processor so you can play some games on it.

[Vlambo]

Yea, I'm thinking I might want to just replace my current laptop with a new one so netbooks/tablets will be out of the question at the moment. The Alienware lappy looks great except for the lack of a CD/DVD drive which makes it inconvenient for me pop in a movie on-the-go and such.
I browsed for a few minutes today and found an Acer laptop that seemed nice and a Lenovo Thinkpad(ThinkPad Edge E220 w/ i7 processor).
My price cap is now at $1000.
The search for more options continues!

How can I put this when it comes to Acer.

The Office- Michael Scott No God No

[CaffeinePowered]

Asus or bust, that is my advice

[Kirby]

Asus or bust, that is my advice

Asus is the shit.

[KorJax]

You can't have your cake and eat it too

High Performance
Good Battery Life
Cheap Price

Pick two

If you want a sub-13" or so laptop and don't want to spend $500, you pretty much are going to be sticking with Netbooks for what you want to do. You can still game on them, but don't expect to do Source Engine well.

If you want to play games, you're SOL on the $500 range, when you also want to have a good battery and small size. Laptops that can play games will almost always have terrible battery life and will be large. Sure there are exceptions, but they certainly won't be priced lower than $500

I'd suggest the Asus Transformer, which goes for $500 with the keyboard combo, simply because it does what you want plus is kind of awesome by also being a tablet that plays Android games. 16 hours of battery life too, while being small AND light. Sure its not windows, but once you get used it, normal laptops just seem boring afterwards. Not to mention it does stuff like video like a dream. And whenever you want to play serious games or something, just use your normal laptop at home or when you aren't at school.

[kaese]

You can't have your cake and eat it too

High Performance
Good Battery Life
Cheap Price

Pick two

If you want a sub-13" or so laptop and don't want to spend $500, you pretty much are going to be sticking with Netbooks for what you want to do. You can still game on them, but don't expect to do Source Engine well.

If you want to play games, you're SOL on the $500 range, when you also want to have a good battery and small size. Laptops that can play games will almost always have terrible battery life and will be large. Sure there are exceptions, but they certainly won't be priced lower than $500

I'd suggest the Asus Transformer, which goes for $500 with the keyboard combo, simply because it does what you want plus is kind of awesome by also being a tablet that plays Android games. 16 hours of battery life too, while being small AND light. Sure its not windows, but once you get used it, normal laptops just seem boring afterwards. Not to mention it does stuff like video like a dream. And whenever you want to play serious games or something, just use your normal laptop at home or when you aren't at school.

I'm willing to pay up to $1000 at the moment so I believe that increases my choices a bit, eh?

I'm more concerned about:
high performance
small screen size

After looking around a bit, I discovered that all new laptops have much better battery lives than my current one on power-saving setting so it's no longer a major concern.

The Asus transformer you mentioned actually sounds like something I was initially looking for so I will keep it in mind.

Edit: It turns out that my school gets member discounts from Dell so the Alienware 11x would actually be $734 for me. Very tempting.

[Didzo]

Edit: It turns out that my school gets member discounts from Dell so the Alienware 11x would actually be $734 for me. Very tempting.

Do it.

[Kirby]

[quote author=Käse link=topic=5943.msg223583#msg223583 date=1316574434]
Edit: It turns out that my school gets member discounts from Dell so the Alienware 11x would actually be $734 for me. Very tempting.

Do it.


[/quote]


I'm curious as to how it performs, Dell has the processors listed as the "M" variants but have the advertising toting them being Quad core CPU's, whereas the M versions (corresponding with the small cache sizes) they have listed are only dual core CPU's.

That might be something you want to consider, especially with such low clock rates... Most games recommend a 2.8Ghz+ dual core or a quad core now, and something tells me that thing won't act like a quad core, I don't care if it is a Sandy Bridge or not.  :-X

[Didzo]

[quote author=Didzo link=topic=5943.msg223591#msg223591 date=1316579566]
[quote author=Käse link=topic=5943.msg223583#msg223583 date=1316574434]
Edit: It turns out that my school gets member discounts from Dell so the Alienware 11x would actually be $734 for me. Very tempting.

Do it.


[/quote]


I'm curious as to how it performs, Dell has the processors listed as the "M" variants but have the advertising toting them being Quad core CPU's, whereas the M versions (corresponding with the small cache sizes) they have listed are only dual core CPU's.

That might be something you want to consider, especially with such low clock rates... Most games recommend a 2.8Ghz+ dual core or a quad core now, and something tells me that thing won't act like a quad core, I don't care if it is a Sandy Bridge or not.  :-X
[/quote]

I have the previous generation 1.20GHz Intel Core i7 640UM and I haven't noticed any issues playing games, but I wouldn't expect the performance to be completely seamless if compared to a desktop CPU. I know that the CPUs in the m11xs have some sort of boost feature (not sure about the rest of the Intel family) which increases their clock rates as needed. And I'm sure that the new Sandy Bridge processor in the M11x r3 should improve on both power consumption and performance under stress.

All i can really say though is that I'm happy with it for what it does. Looks cool, feels solid, battery lasts a while, lets me both take notes and play games away from my desktop. I like the soft touch aluminum case and how you can make the lighting as garish or unobtrusive as you like. Drawbacks are the glossy screen, weight when compared to similar sized machines (it's heavier than the size would suggest), and small screen size. It makes it easy to use in a lecture hall, but I'd have an external monitor of some sort if I used it as a primary machine. That's just my preference though... I'm used to having at least 2 screens available for my windows.

[kaese]

So that previous price I quoted was for the M11x model with the i3 processor.
But I can get the M11x w/i7 640UM (+bluetooth add-on lulz) for $819 so I think I'll buy this one instead.