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A little help finding a suitable laptop
InAmberClad
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hello all,
I was going to post this in the G&T section but there seems to be more traffic here and I'm hurrying somewhat. Apologies if it's not the ideal place!
It's my wife's birthday next month and she has decided that she wants to finally get a new laptop. The one she is currently using is an ancient asus eee pc which is running windows XP, takes ten minutes to boot and can just about manage to play solitaire...if you're lucky.
I'm finding myself in a bit of a bind however because I have a pretty limited budget to work with here and she has some pretty specific requests so I figured I would defer to the hive mind and see what people thought.
She wants a new laptop so she can watch movies from our media server and play the games she normally plays on my desktop. She plays point and click adventures, puzzle games like peggle and time management games like cake mania. So nothing particularly stressful. Having looked through my steam library at the things she's played the most demanding titles are things like The Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead, Dreamfall Chapters, Sherlock Holmes - Crimes and Punishments. It seems that generally these titles seem to have pretty low minimum system requirements... and she doesn't care at all about graphics quality so would happily play on low settings. Wolf Among Us suggests a 2GHz Pentium 4 but says not it needs a 512mb graphics card and isn't recommended for Intel integrated HD graphics.
Sounds simple enough, but I only have £400 to throw at this and I'm struggling to navigate the conversion tables when it comes to comparing integrated graphics with discrete options etc.
A further spanner in the works is that she is very taken with the idea of a "transformer" or "2 in 1" laptop. She doesn't have a tablet but likes to borrow mine, so the idea of being able to either detatch the keyboard or fold it behind to sit on the couch and browse the web or play diner dash or whatever is quite appealing to her.
So the full brief is as follows :
As it stands... the best I can come up with is a Lenovo Yoga 500, running an A8 processor with 2GB Radeon R5 M330 graphics, 8gb RAM.
If it wasn't for the gaming this laptop would seem ideal (I know the reviews are rough there but I've seen plenty of decent ones elsewhere) but I'm not savvy enough about the differences between laptop parts and desktop parts to know if this would be able to handle the kind of games she wants to play.
I'd be really grateful for any thoughts anyone has, particularly whether or not the laptop above would be suitable, or any possible alternatives you might be able to suggest. As I'm UK based I understand it makes it harder for most people to suggest things, but still... any help would be great, even if it's just processors to look for, or to avoid etc!
I was going to post this in the G&T section but there seems to be more traffic here and I'm hurrying somewhat. Apologies if it's not the ideal place!
It's my wife's birthday next month and she has decided that she wants to finally get a new laptop. The one she is currently using is an ancient asus eee pc which is running windows XP, takes ten minutes to boot and can just about manage to play solitaire...if you're lucky.
I'm finding myself in a bit of a bind however because I have a pretty limited budget to work with here and she has some pretty specific requests so I figured I would defer to the hive mind and see what people thought.
She wants a new laptop so she can watch movies from our media server and play the games she normally plays on my desktop. She plays point and click adventures, puzzle games like peggle and time management games like cake mania. So nothing particularly stressful. Having looked through my steam library at the things she's played the most demanding titles are things like The Wolf Among Us, Walking Dead, Dreamfall Chapters, Sherlock Holmes - Crimes and Punishments. It seems that generally these titles seem to have pretty low minimum system requirements... and she doesn't care at all about graphics quality so would happily play on low settings. Wolf Among Us suggests a 2GHz Pentium 4 but says not it needs a 512mb graphics card and isn't recommended for Intel integrated HD graphics.
Sounds simple enough, but I only have £400 to throw at this and I'm struggling to navigate the conversion tables when it comes to comparing integrated graphics with discrete options etc.
A further spanner in the works is that she is very taken with the idea of a "transformer" or "2 in 1" laptop. She doesn't have a tablet but likes to borrow mine, so the idea of being able to either detatch the keyboard or fold it behind to sit on the couch and browse the web or play diner dash or whatever is quite appealing to her.
So the full brief is as follows :
- OS : Windows (she's not tech savvy at all but obviously over the years has a functional understanding of Windows, I don't want to get involved in ChromeOS or ubuntu or similar)
- Specs : I'm not fussed about Intel vs AMD... just bang for buck. Integrated graphics is fine if they are capable of playing the above titles. 4GB of RAM would be excellent, 8 would be better. Optical drive isn't necessary. HDD Capacity ideally over 250GB to allow storage for games etc. She would really like a touch screen if possible (assuming it works properly... not if it's a tacky add on that you have to press so hard the screen distorts!)
- Resolution : She does a lot of surveys online and they tend to need a certain amount of screen space otherwise you spend ages scrolling down just to click "next". Her current laptop is 1024*600 and drives her nuts. Mine is 1366*768 and is mostly fine in this respect but bigger will always equal better.
- Screen size : Her exisiting screen is 10", mine is 15.5" and she struggles with it a little. I think anything up to that 15.5" would be fine, but ideally no bigger than 14"
- Bonus points if it converts (whether by detatching the keyboard or folding it) into a tablet mode.
As it stands... the best I can come up with is a Lenovo Yoga 500, running an A8 processor with 2GB Radeon R5 M330 graphics, 8gb RAM.
If it wasn't for the gaming this laptop would seem ideal (I know the reviews are rough there but I've seen plenty of decent ones elsewhere) but I'm not savvy enough about the differences between laptop parts and desktop parts to know if this would be able to handle the kind of games she wants to play.
I'd be really grateful for any thoughts anyone has, particularly whether or not the laptop above would be suitable, or any possible alternatives you might be able to suggest. As I'm UK based I understand it makes it harder for most people to suggest things, but still... any help would be great, even if it's just processors to look for, or to avoid etc!
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I ran a few used business class laptops to get through college, including a fairly intensive game design course. You can easily find a 2-3 year old machine just coming off lease for $200-300 that will be vastly faster and better built than anything you'll find new for the same price.
Also, if you really like the convertible/tablet idea, the Surface Pro 2 is running around that much for a used or refurbished unit. It's not the latest and greatest anymore but should happily crunch through everything you've described.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
mRahmani - I don't think so on this occasion unfortunately. I saw some pretty sweet deals on refurbs when I was shopping but I think in the case of a computer it's probably going to turn her off. We haven't had the best luck with "built in obsolescence" as it were. Almost everything we ever buy from the TV to the refrigerator seems to die about a week after the warranty expires so I think in this case she would rather have something from new. Not to mention the fact that we just bought our youngest a used Xbox 360 and had to go through 3 machines before we found one that A) Worked and
I'm curious though... where did you get yours from? I certainly wouldn't want to be buying something like this from eBay or craigslist or whatever, but when you mentioned leases I wonder if you bought yours from a company rather than a private sale?
the single biggest thing you can do for a laptop's speed is put an SSD in it, and those are hard to find for under 900US
if you dont have an SSD, then what CPU you have is way less relevant
I host a podcast about movies.
Actually, mine have all been eBay/Craiglist finds. I mostly lean toward eBay, because there's a fair number of reputable sellers that just buy up used corporate laptops and resell them for pretty cheap, usually offering 30 day warranties or so. But I'm also comfortable tearing down a laptop to replace components if needed.
I totally understand the concern about used machines dying quickly, most consumer-grade laptops are built like shit and fall apart after a year or so. Corporate/business laptops are usually built to a higher standard though, and as a bonus are built with serviceability in mind. 3 year warranties are common, and if you buy a recent enough one it's not unusual enough to find some of the factory warranty still in effect on them. They also (in my purely anecdotal experience) tend to be treated a little better, with many spending their entire lives basically plugged into a dock or at most being carried from conference room to conference room. Dell Latitude/Precision, HP Elitebook, and IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad are usually the go-to machines for this stuff.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.