Looking to buy my son, who is graduating high school, a new laptop.  He wants to be able to play Diablo 3 but he wants it also to be portable, thus with a good battery life.

Any recommendations?

These are the recommended system requirements for d3: 

• Windows® Vista/7 (latest service packs)
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

I think your second option might be a better solution.

Portability and battery life are the 2 things that you really give up if you want a laptop that plays games well.

Kinda nice to keep the gaming and study seperate as well.

Originally posted by Badaboom

Or maybe I should build him a home PC and buy a cheap netbook for school.

Price range is approx $1500.

There you go.  You've got it figured out.  Rather than a $1500 gaming laptop, you can both a $1000 gaming desktop with much better gaming performance than the gaming laptop, and a $500 laptop that is far more portable than the gaming laptop would have been.

For a budget laptop, you could try a Llano system that will actually run most (but not all!) games at moderate settings, like this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834215371

Or you could take a step down and get an E-450 based system, possibly in a smaller form factor.  AMD's APUs are good enough on the budget end that there's no real sense in getting anything else.

Amazon tends to have better prices on their laptops than New Egg, but I can't find anything on Amazon's site, as their search function is broken, so you're on your own there.

If you'd like me to link parts for a $1000 gaming desktop, I could.  Do you need to include new peripherals (monitor, keyboard, speakers, mouse, surge protector) in that budget?

Was thinking of getting him an Alienware M11x.  Seems pretty decent...the only thing is it doesn't have an optical drive.

Originally posted by Badaboom

Was thinking of getting him an Alienware M11x.  Seems pretty decent...the only thing is it doesn't have an optical drive.

It also lacks a processor suitable for gaming.  And the video card is barely faster than integrated graphics.  The point of the Alienware M11x is the form factor:  it's a really small laptop that can kind of handle most but not all games--and not much better than the laptop I linked above for half the price.

If you want something that can plausibly be called a gaming laptop, those are 15" and up.  And everything on the market is going to be very obsolete very, very soon.  Ivy Bridge is coming on April 29, Trinity on May 15, Southern Islands as soon as OEMs want to use it (probably at the Ivy Bridge launch), and Kepler as soon as Nvidia can get chips ready.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Badaboom

Was thinking of getting him an Alienware M11x.  Seems pretty decent...the only thing is it doesn't have an optical drive.

It also lacks a processor suitable for gaming.  And the video card is barely faster than integrated graphics.  The point of the Alienware M11x is the form factor:  it's a really small laptop that can kind of handle most but not all games--and not much better than the laptop I linked above for half the price.

If you want something that can plausibly be called a gaming laptop, those are 15" and up.  And everything on the market is going to be very obsolete very, very soon.  Ivy Bridge is coming on April 29, Trinity on May 15, Southern Islands as soon as OEMs want to use it (probably at the Ivy Bridge launch), and Kepler as soon as Nvidia can get chips ready.

From what I just read the leaked performance gains for the Ivy Bridge doesn't seem like much of a performance increase for a laptop that would most likely have a dedicated graphics option anyways.

Appreciate your input.  My knowlege of laptops is pretty low atm.  

There are alot of options out there that fit into what your looking for.  The market tends to favor the criteria that falls under good battery life and portable then it does just gaming and heres why.  Currently, laptops made just for gaming are sorta a bad buy, there very expensive for what you get and most the time there components besides there graphics cards in them are pritty much standard with the rest of the market, yet you still end up paying an arm and a leg for them.  No, what your after, there are a lot of good options out there you can soak your self into and decide what you think will best suit your needs or in your case your child. 

You dont want to buy something that isnt going to give you what you want, and if your giving it to a recently graduated student, then most likely there going to want to be able to take the laptop out and about and not be embarrassed by the way the thing looks so getting a gaudy looking laptop made just for gaming probably would be on the backburner unless its insisted.  You want three things in your situation when buying; bang for buck, power, and reliability(build quality, legit componenets, nice keyboard).  Finding all those things in one laptop can be a chore, but given the market and what your looking for its not hard to find.

Iv been suggesting the new Lenovo Ideapad Y480 to everyone, its very mobile given its 14 inch screen, has a very powerfull Nvidia Geforce GT 650m GDDR5 video memory graphics card in it, one of the best keyboards in the market with backlighting and its very stylish laptop that would look good where ever you take it. Its also going to come with the Ivy Bridge processors, its going to be available at the end of this month, april, and it should start at 999.00$ so its great bang for your buck.  Getting something brand spanken new is cool if you have the money up front, its much better then paying top doller for something that has been out for a year or two and not knowing it.  Here is link to it, if you look below it says coming soon, but you can still click on it and read about it http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/ideapad/y-series/.  I own last years model of this series, and I game on it every day, its by far leaps and bounds better then anything on the market. I own other gaming laptops to, but I really love my Y460 ideapad, you can see how it games on my youtube channel if you like at http://www.youtube.com/notebookplayer, everything on that channel was taken off my ideapad.  You would be a silly fool to not at least check out the new Y480 if you were in the market for a cool gaming laptop that is portable currently.  Its one of a kind, very revolutionary, no laptop has ever packed so much power into a 14 inch laptop, its very exciting stuff being a laptop enthusiast.   The battery life is standard for the current market which is about 5 hours, if you want something with better battery life read next paragraph.

The Acer Aspire timeline Ultra M3 is more of what your looking for, it has a 8-9 hour battery life, a powerfull Nvidia Geforce GT 640m graphics chip, SSD, and is 15.6 inches but its so thin, its very portable, sold as a gaming laptop.  Here is the best review of it on the net, "acer timeline ultra M3 review", on the best laptop review website on the net "notebookcheck.net".  Its going to release from what Iv seen "Q2 of 2012", so it should be soon.  Its a real winner, and very innovative, its basically the cheap mans version of the Razer Blade which starts at almost 3k.  The Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 should start at the same price as the Y480, at around 999.00$.

Then we move onto the clevo laptop, it starts at around the same price as both the acer and lenovo, but its currently for sale, its a clevo barebones unit, so resellers sell it, malibal is one of my favorites, here is that "Malibal Lotus P150EM" , this is strickly sold as a gaming laptop unlike the acer and lenovo as there sold more as multimedia/gaming laptops.  Its very beautifull, powerfull and great bang for the buck.  Xoticpc also sells it as do a number of other resellers, sager as well but it costs more at sager.

Those were my top 3 picks currently meeting all my criteria for a great laptop for anyone.  There are plety of other laptop manufactures selling decent laptops, none that I would say are outstandingly great buys currently.   Iv been gaming on laptops since 2003, Im an enthusisast and keep up on market trends and new technoligy, but most of all the best bang for the buck.  About the m11x, its sold as a gaming laptop, other wise it wouldnt be an alienware, it wouldnt be in the alienware line of laptop, it would be in the buisness section or home section.  The m11x is a gaming laptop, and does it well, its had multiple revisions and the kinks that were in it have been fixed.  The Nvidia Geforce GT 540m graphics card in it is very powerfull, and will run Diablo 3 all week long and twice on sunday, no that card can run anything currently very well given the lower resolutions on the m11x, and for a good year to come.  Even though the processor is a ULV, that dosnt make it bad for gaming, its made for battery life in mind but dont get fooled, its a gaming laptop and thats why its called alienware m11x and not Dell 6600E  or some other non gaming name. 

I would definitely recommend getting an m11x, although for first time buyers getting an alienware isnt really the ideal situation.  It is strickly sold as a gaming laptop, sometimes its nice to have something that has multiple uses especially for someone doing homework in college wink wink.  I would stay as close as possible to the three digit mark as I could  if I had cash to burn on a new laptop at the moment unless you have researched alot and know what your getting your self into. 

Theres a ton of crap out there not worth your time or money, finding something inbetween them is tough and at  best a crap shot.   Its a good idea to ask enthusisasts what they think is currently cool buys and whats worth the money if you can.  You can page me on my youtube channel if you have a question about something you found or skype me, my name is jefferybaks(nickname)

Originally posted by Badaboom

Looking to buy my son, who is graduating high school, a new laptop.  He wants to be able to play Diablo 3 but he wants it also to be portable, thus with a good battery life.

Any recommendations?

 

These are the recommended system requirements for d3: 

 

• Windows® Vista/7 (latest service packs)
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

Or maybe I should build him a home PC and buy a cheap netbook for school.

Price range is approx $1500.

I just bought a laptop from cyberPowerPC dedicated to portable PC gaming.

Windows 7 64bit

i7 2890 (or something like that)

NVidia GTX 570

8GB MEM

2 internal HDD (320GB / 1TB) - you can get SSD too but I opted against it.

Cost me 1300 all up. 

Plays every PC MMO I threw at it at max settings including TERA.  Well, except EQ2 which chugged on the highest settings.  Something is off about that client though :-)

I guarentee my build will play D3 flawlessly

Only downside is it takes a few weeks to ship.  Purchased on 1/31 and recieved on 2/14.

Other than that... pure awesomeness.  

Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Badaboom

Was thinking of getting him an Alienware M11x.  Seems pretty decent...the only thing is it doesn't have an optical drive.

It also lacks a processor suitable for gaming.  And the video card is barely faster than integrated graphics.  The point of the Alienware M11x is the form factor:  it's a really small laptop that can kind of handle most but not all games--and not much better than the laptop I linked above for half the price.

If you want something that can plausibly be called a gaming laptop, those are 15" and up.  And everything on the market is going to be very obsolete very, very soon.  Ivy Bridge is coming on April 29, Trinity on May 15, Southern Islands as soon as OEMs want to use it (probably at the Ivy Bridge launch), and Kepler as soon as Nvidia can get chips ready.

From what I just read the leaked performance gains for the Ivy Bridge doesn't seem like much of a performance increase for a laptop that would most likely have a dedicated graphics option anyways.

Appreciate your input.  My knowlege of laptops is pretty low atm.  

There are a bunch of problems with the M11x.  The processor is capped at a 17 W TDP, because that's what the form factor can take.  The real Sandy Bridge chips that are for gaming laptops allow 45 W.  So that means you get much, much lower performance than you would even with an old generation processor.  Ivy Bridge will get you a higher clock speed, better IPC (that is, better performance at the same clock speed), and may or may not use less power while doing it.

Trinity is a processor, too, and AMD is making big claims about it.  Apparently it's going to be a lot better than Llano, though we don't know if it will be good enough to be competitive with Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge on the processor side.  A Trinity laptop running integrated graphics would likely give you better performance than the Alienware M11x you could buy today--better on both the processor and graphics sides.

And if you're going to get a discrete video card in the laptop, then everything you can buy today is pretty much obsolete already.  AMD has their Cape Verde and Pitcairn GPUs ready to go, and they're vastly better than anything you can get in a laptop today.  You can buy them in desktops right now, but they haven't officially released for laptops just yet, because OEMs aren't going to refresh their lineup for a new laptop that they'll replace in a month when Ivy Bridge and Trinity launch.

Nvidia's GK106 and GK107 chips will also be a lot better than anything you can buy in laptops today.  GK107 is ready, but it's unclear whether Nvidia has sufficient volume yet to prevent something like this from happening:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007709&IsNodeId=1&Description=GTX%20680&name=Desktop%20Graphics%20Cards&Order=BESTMATCH

GK106 is not ready yet, but Nvidia will get it out as soon as they can.

-----

If you're getting a lower end laptop and don't care that much about gaming performance, then it makes more sense to buy something now.  Trinity will be a lot better than Llano, but probably also a lot more expensive.  And it's surely not going to be on clearance on launch day, either.  Brazos is set to get a refresh soon, but the die shrink to 28 nm won't come until around the end of the year.

Originally posted by darkhalf357x

Originally posted by Badaboom

Looking to buy my son, who is graduating high school, a new laptop.  He wants to be able to play Diablo 3 but he wants it also to be portable, thus with a good battery life.

Any recommendations?

 

These are the recommended system requirements for d3: 

 

• Windows® Vista/7 (latest service packs)
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

Or maybe I should build him a home PC and buy a cheap netbook for school.

Price range is approx $1500.

I just bought a laptop from cyberPowerPC dedicated to portable PC gaming.

Windows 7 64bit

i7 2890 (or something like that)

NVidia GTX 570

8GB MEM

2 internal HDD (320GB / 1TB) - you can get SSD too but I opted against it.

Cost me 1300 all up. 

Plays every PC MMO I threw at it at max settings including TERA.  Well, except EQ2 which chugged on the highest settings.  Something is off about that client though :-)

I guarentee my build will play D3 flawlessly

Only downside is it takes a few weeks to ship.  Purchased on 1/31 and recieved on 2/14.

Other than that... pure awesomeness.  

 

If you place an order for that today, then it will be painfully obsolete by the time you have it in your hands.  Well, other than that you completely botched the specs, listing a processor that doesn't exist and a desktop video card.

Originally posted by eycel

There are alot of options out there that fit into what your looking for.  The market tends to favor the criteria that falls under good battery life and portable then it does just gaming and heres why.  Currently, laptops made just for gaming are sorta a bad buy, there very expensive for what you get and most the time there components besides there graphics cards in them are pritty much standard with the rest of the market, yet you still end up paying an arm and a leg for them.  No, what your after, there are a lot of good options out there you can soak your self into and decide what you think will best suit your needs or in your case your child. 

I hear you.

Was just pricing out a dell xps 17.  Deal on to save 500, so with the microsoft software and blue ray I can get it for $1500.  

Originally posted by Badaboom

Originally posted by eycel

There are alot of options out there that fit into what your looking for.  The market tends to favor the criteria that falls under good battery life and portable then it does just gaming and heres why.  Currently, laptops made just for gaming are sorta a bad buy, there very expensive for what you get and most the time there components besides there graphics cards in them are pritty much standard with the rest of the market, yet you still end up paying an arm and a leg for them.  No, what your after, there are a lot of good options out there you can soak your self into and decide what you think will best suit your needs or in your case your child. 

I hear you.

 

Was just pricing out a dell xps 17.  Deal on to save 500, so with the microsoft software and blue ray I can get it for $1500.  

 

XPS 17 XPS 17 Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64-Bit, English Processor 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM processor (2.40 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 3.50 GHz) Memory 8GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 Memory Keyboard Backlit Keyboard - English LCD 17.3" FHD (1080p) with 2.0MP HD Webcam Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 555M 3GB graphics with Optimus Hard Drive 750GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive Color Elemental Silver Aluminum Integrated Network Adapter Integrated 10/100/1000 Network Card Adobe Reader Adobe® Acrobat® Reader CD ROM/DVD ROM Tray Load Blu-ray Disc BD-Combo (Reads BD and Writes to DVD/CD) Sound JBL 2.1 Speakers with Waves Maxx Audio 3 Wireless Plus Bluetooth Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 1000 Office Productivity Software (Pre-Installed) Microsoft® Office Home and Student 2010 Anti-Virus/Security Suite (Pre-installed) McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months Battery 90 WHr 9-cell Lithium Ion Primary Battery Hardware Support Services 1 Year Premium Protection Package - America's Best Standard Protection Protection DataSafe 2.0 Online Backup 2GB for 1 year Mobile Broadband No Mobile Broad Band Selected

TOTAL:   $1,518.99

I'm reading though and it appeares to only have a three hour battery even though it is a 9cell.

No, no, no.  You're looking at entirely the wrong class of product.  If it's supposed to run games well, you don't want a low end GPU in it.

Dell always has nominal sales on.  Their business model is basically to take a product you could get for $1200 elsewhere, say it's nominally worth $2000, but today they'll sell it to you for $1500.  They don't expect anyone to actually pay $2000, because their "sale" will never end, and no one else will charge $2000 for a comparable product.  Well, maybe Apple will, if you want to argue that Macs are comparable to PCs.

Actually, if gaming performance is the issue, you'll be able to get something that completely destroys that within 2 weeks for under $1000.  Not just a little faster, but a lot faster.

Or under $700 today if you're willing to look at desktops.

He graduates May 25th so I'm kinda under the gun to get this done.  Why couldn't the new tech have come out a few months ago?!  

The good thing is my work will pay for 25% of the computer so I'm leaning towards just the laptop option.  Looking at the Lenovo ideapad now.

Any ideas for something to buy right now Quizz?

Originally posted by Badaboom

He graduates May 25th so I'm kinda under the gun to get this done.  Why couldn't the new tech have come out a few months ago?!  

The good thing is my work will pay for 25% of the computer so I'm leaning towards just the laptop option.  Looking at the Lenovo ideapad now.

Any ideas for something to buy right now Quizz?

You can get a gaming desktop plus a cheap laptop now.  Does your work only pay for 25% of one computer, or only 25% of a laptop, or what?  Because desktops are so far superior to laptops in the same price range that it's pretty unlikely that you'd come out ahead by going with just a laptop unless your son needs a gaming laptop in particular.  Even if the option is a $1500 laptop today versus a $400 laptop plus a $700 (excluding peripherals) desktop, you'd get better gaming performance (in the desktop) and more portability (in the laptop) from the combination.

Higher end gaming laptops only make sense for people who need to take a computer someplace and play games on it away from home.  For example, people who spend much of their life living out of hotels, such as truck drivers or business travelers.

-----

If you want to buy a gaming laptop right now, then by the time you have it in your hands, it would be so thoroughly obsolete as to be ridiculous.  This isn't just a new generation of parts coming.  It's a new generation of processors and video cards at the same time, and a very big deal on both.

As compared to the Fermi cards you're looking at, Southern Islands offers about 70% more performance in the same power envelope.  Seriously, 70%.  That's about three years worth of progress, all at once, and all you have to do is wait another 11 days.  It's not just wild rumors, either; you can buy them in desktops today, and AMD even just cut prices on one bin of Cape Verde, so they've got a lot of chips ready.  As compared to Northern Islands (the AMD cards you can get today), it's more like 40%.  Gaming laptops don't have long lifespans to begin with.  But buying something with 2-3 years worth of obsolescence on it the day you get it shortens the useful lifespan of the part considerably.

AMD is claiming that Trinity can get about the same performance in 17 W that Llano does in 35 W.  Doubling the wattage won't double the performance, but it might mean 50% more performance than Llano in the same power envelope.  Ivy Bridge is a full node die shrink, and while rumors indicate that it might not be as good as Intel had hoped, it will surely be a major improvement over Sandy Bridge.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by Badaboom

He graduates May 25th so I'm kinda under the gun to get this done.  Why couldn't the new tech have come out a few months ago?!  

The good thing is my work will pay for 25% of the computer so I'm leaning towards just the laptop option.  Looking at the Lenovo ideapad now.

Any ideas for something to buy right now Quizz?

You can get a gaming desktop plus a cheap laptop now.  Does your work only pay for 25% of one computer, or only 25% of a laptop, or what?  Because desktops are so far superior to laptops in the same price range that it's pretty unlikely that you'd come out ahead by going with just a laptop unless your son needs a gaming laptop in particular.  Even if the option is a $1500 laptop today versus a $400 laptop plus a $700 (excluding peripherals) desktop, you'd get better gaming performance (in the desktop) and more portability (in the laptop) from the combination.

Higher end gaming laptops only make sense for people who need to take a computer someplace and play games on it away from home.  For example, people who spend much of their life living out of hotels, such as truck drivers or business travelers.

-----

If you want to buy a gaming laptop right now, then by the time you have it in your hands, it would be so thoroughly obsolete as to be ridiculous.  This isn't just a new generation of parts coming.  It's a new generation of processors and video cards at the same time, and a very big deal on both.

As compared to the Fermi cards you're looking at, Southern Islands offers about 70% more performance in the same power envelope.  Seriously, 70%.  That's about three years worth of progress, all at once, and all you have to do is wait another 11 days.  It's not just wild rumors, either; you can buy them in desktops today, and AMD even just cut prices on one bin of Cape Verde, so they've got a lot of chips ready.  As compared to Northern Islands (the AMD cards you can get today), it's more like 40%.  Gaming laptops don't have long lifespans to begin with.  But buying something with 2-3 years worth of obsolescence on it the day you get it shortens the useful lifespan of the part considerably.

AMD is claiming that Trinity can get about the same performance in 17 W that Llano does in 35 W.  Doubling the wattage won't double the performance, but it might mean 50% more performance than Llano in the same power envelope.  Ivy Bridge is a full node die shrink, and while rumors indicate that it might not be as good as Intel had hoped, it will surely be a major improvement over Sandy Bridge.

I will take your advice and wait a few weeks.  The 25% is a one time discount for one item only and after talking it over with him he definitely just wants a lap top.

Originally posted by Badaboom

I will take your advice and wait a few weeks.  The 25% is a one time discount for one item only and after talking it over with him he definitely just wants a lap top.

 

Make sure that he understands the drawbacks of gaming laptops, then.  A lot of people seem to have the idea that it's just like a gaming desktop, except portable, and that's wildly wrong.

As compared to a gaming desktop of the same price, a gaming laptop will:

1)  Be a lot slower, likely with less than half of the graphical performance,

2)  Be a lot less reliable, that is, more likely to break,

3)  Be a lot harder to fix if it does break (perhaps the difference between waiting a couple of days for a replacement desktop part versus shipping a laptop away and waiting a few weeks to get it back),

4)  Have much worse ergonomics, so it's not the sort of thing you want to sit and use all day,

5)  Be far more prone to overheating problems,

6)  Have a much smaller monitor, to the degree that it may be awkward to use,

7)  Have little or no worse upgrade path, so that if you need something better later, rather than just replacing one part, you'll have to replace everything,

8)  Much harder to get a sensible hardware configuration (as opposed to what OEMs have figured out that they can convince clueless people to buy), and

9)  Have far worse peripherals unless you buy external stuff (keyboard, mouse, speakers) yourself, which makes it a lot less portable.

In exchange for giving up all of that, you get something that is more portable.  But not really all that portable.  Because gaming laptops are big and heavy.  Unless you want something smaller that can't run games very well, which is also an option.

If your son is going to take the laptop with him and play games in a variety of places (he'll need to have a desk and an electrical outlet available), then maybe the gaming laptop makes sense.  But if he's only going to play demanding games in his apartment or dorm room or whatever, then a gaming laptop over $1000 makes no sense at all.

Unfortunately, sometimes the only way to really understand why you shouldn't do something is to try it and see what happens.

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by darkhalf357x

Originally posted by Badaboom

Looking to buy my son, who is graduating high school, a new laptop.  He wants to be able to play Diablo 3 but he wants it also to be portable, thus with a good battery life.

Any recommendations?

 

These are the recommended system requirements for d3: 

 

• Windows® Vista/7 (latest service packs)
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

Or maybe I should build him a home PC and buy a cheap netbook for school.

Price range is approx $1500.

I just bought a laptop from cyberPowerPC dedicated to portable PC gaming.

Windows 7 64bit

i7 2890 (or something like that)

NVidia GTX 570

8GB MEM

2 internal HDD (320GB / 1TB) - you can get SSD too but I opted against it.

Cost me 1300 all up. 

Plays every PC MMO I threw at it at max settings including TERA.  Well, except EQ2 which chugged on the highest settings.  Something is off about that client though :-)

I guarentee my build will play D3 flawlessly

Only downside is it takes a few weeks to ship.  Purchased on 1/31 and recieved on 2/14.

Other than that... pure awesomeness.  

 

If you place an order for that today, then it will be painfully obsolete by the time you have it in your hands.  Well, other than that you completely botched the specs, listing a processor that doesn't exist and a desktop video card.

I told you I placed it in January. Not today.  And I also mentioned I dont remember which i7 number it was because I dont memorize the information.  I can take a picture if you want. Specs work just as expected - it plays every MMO I throw at it without issue.  Obviously since I know I have an NVidia, the card is a GTX 570M.  But I would assume people could figure that out.

In terms of it being outdated, The cost justifies 3 year depreciation... which means I would just replace this (low-priced) latop with another one.

So Im not seeing what exactly is obsolete.

The xps 17 has alot of nice multimedia options, its definitely what you call a multifunctioning laptop but yea the battery life on it is not going to be very good, it would be more of a desktop replacement, stuck to your desk. 

I guarantee you the new Ideapad would be a very positive buy, sometimes you buy stuff and you have buyers remorse cause you wernt sure if the product you got was what you were looking for, I can tell you from getting my Ideapad that its bar none the best laptop Iv ever bought.  Its a very legit laptop made by a very legit company, I speak very highly of them because I love myn so much.  Its very rugged to, you can throw it around all day and it still holds togather very well.  The battery life is about standerd,  you can push 5-6 hours out of it if you use super energy saver and do light tasks.  It should be releasing late april like I said so youl have time if its something your looking into.  You can buy a second battery, there farily small, for 60 dollers from lenovo if you need extra, here is that link "Lenovo batteries"(just type in your model to the left or use there drop downs).

  Iv had my ideapad Y series for almost year and half and it still performs like the first day I got it.  One really nice feature of the ideapad series is onekey, theres a button on the laptop that you press and it can restore your laptop to factory settings without the hassle of reformating or anything.  Iv used that feature a few times when things go wrong on the net and your computer starts acting out of place or if you install alot of software like I do and it causes conflicts in the registry, all you do is hit the onekey button, click restore to factory, and 5 minutes later you have the same laptop that came to you on day 1.

Theres one perfect laptop for everyones needs, the problem is finding it.  Some people want extremely cheap, others pure gaming, some buisness only, some just battery life, some sleek stylish looks, some multimedia, theres a ton of different categories when your looking to buy a laptop.  Most people posting here on mmorpg are looking for a little of all them wrapped into one and even though there is alot of options availalbe there really is only a niche  market to find a laptop that falls under the majority of those things. 

If your buying the laptop for some one else you want to be doubly causious and not go out of bounds thinking your getting something that looks good, you want something that actually is good cause you cant swollow a bad buy if your not buying it for your self, the person your buying for does as well.

Buying a shit laptop sux, im here to sweep the crap into the garbage and find the good stuff.

Originally posted by Badaboom
Well I convinced my son to get a portable laptop and I don't need to worry about it being gaming capable so I will probably shoot for an ultra book, but will wait two weeks.

Egad.  Please no.

The basic idea of an "ultrabook" is that you sacrifice everything else to make it thinner.  That's the worst thing you can possibly get on a price/performance basis.  An ultrabook will offer low processor performance, the worst graphical performance on the market (trailing far behind AMD's idea of a netbook, even), few connectivity options, and a high price tag.  Everything else that you might care about gets traded away for the sake of making the shell a few millimeters thinner than it would otherwise be.

Basically, what happened is that Intel saw Apple selling MacBook Airs to Apple fanboys who care more about the form factor than performance.  Intel thought that PC laptop manufacturers should make the same thing, and said, here's the specs for ultrabooks that you laptop manufacturers should build.  Laptop manufacturers were like, umm, we're not going to build them because no one will want one.  So Intel decided to pay laptop manufacturers $300 million to release a few ultrabooks and see if anyone would buy them.  That's the only reason why the products exist at all.

The problem is that Intel graphics are awful in pretty much every way imaginable.  If you're trying to cram the processor and graphics into a 17 W TDP and the graphics need a good chunk of that to not do much, you've got a problem.  AMD can make graphics that actually work without needing a ton of power (as can Nvidia, but they don't have an x86 license), and Trinity will hit the same 17 W TDP with graphics that actually work, in case your son gets ideas about browsing flash-heavy web pages, watching videos, or even light gaming.

That said, if portability is the main concern, I'd just as soon get a Brazos system.  It's cheap, it's low power, and it's fast enough that everything will work except for some games.  If you're willing to spend more than $500 or so, then yank out the hard drive and put a good SSD in there instead.  You can also get an E-450 based system in pretty much any form factor you want, ranging from 11" up to at least 15" and possibly 17".  For the 11" ones, you can get the weight down to just over 3 pounds, too.