Need a Laptop

symbolsor

My girlfriend needs a new laptop to work with.

We have an EEE but it's just not cutting it for what she uses it for, mainly Photoshop and the Adobe suite. She does a lot of work outside of home, otherwise she could just use the one here. Ah well. It would be super awesome if she could play Modern Warfare 2 with me, that's a pretty big thing she wants to do. Graphics don't have to be turned up, we're not expecting it to look as good as the desktop counterpart, just playable. We scoped Best Buy then thought there might be better deals online.

Can you guys help me? Honestly, any fullsize laptop would be better than our little EEE that could (screen is TOO SMALL for Photoshop). Our budget is pretty low for a laptop as I understand it: $700(USD)

TLDR: My girlfriend needs a laptop for school (Adobe products), she wants to play games with me too. $700 budget.

gneGne

Im not sure if Modern Warfare 2 plays relatively well on a nvidia 9400m? Otherwise I would definately look at the Dell Studio 14z!

lowlylowlycook

Well for checking on mobile GPUs this list is pretty essential.

symbolsor

lowlylowlycook wrote: »

Well for checking on mobile GPUs this list is pretty essential.

Ah ha! Thanks Lowly, that was just what I was looking for.

krapst78

If you're willing to push your budget to a little over $800, then you should check out the ASUS UL80vt. Anandtech did a review on it recently and seemed pretty impressed with it.

What you get is a laptop that can run all day on a single charge, it won't weigh you down, and it comes with pretty much every feature you would actually need. Many 14" and smaller laptops (like the Dell Studio 14z for example) omit optical drives in order to keep size down. ASUS keeps the optical drive, adds a discrete graphics card with the ability to switch to integrated graphics, gives you an overclocked ULV processor, and a large 84Wh battery. The result is a package that's extremely easy to like.

Their biggest complaint was the quality of the LCD, which still outperformed the one on the Dell Studio 14z. The ASUS also comes with a discrete Nvidia G210M which outperformed the Geforce 9400M by over 50% and should allow you to run Modern Warfare 2. If your girlfriend doesn't need the optical drive and can wait until December then ASUS should release the UL30vt which removes the optical drive and should come in under $800.

I'd also recommend the notebook I recently purchased which is the Acer Timeline 3810tzg but I don't think they sell this model outside of Asia. It's basically Acer's 13 inch Thin and Light 3810tz model with the added ATI 4330 discrete graphics (which is comparable to Nvidia's G110m) at around $750 USD. This notebook runs Modern Warfare 2 pretty smoothly at lower resolutions. My only complaint on this notebook is the low contrast and horrible viewing angles on the LCD.

You might also consider checking out HP's Dm3 line. You can probably configure it for less than $750 and get discrete graphics with the ATI 4330 or the Nvidia G105M.

lowlylowlycook

Well the tricky thing is that doing a lot of photoshop work probably indicates a fairly large/high rez monitor, but in that case it will be hard to get a GPU that could play newer games at native resolution.

symbolsor

If your girlfriend doesn't need the optical drive and can wait until December then ASUS should release the UL30vt which removes the optical drive and should come in under $800.

We'd probably get the one with the optical drive, she misses it too much using the EEE (even though we've only needed it maybe four times o_O.)

Well the tricky thing is that doing a lot of photoshop work probably indicates a fairly large/high rez monitor, but in that case it will be hard to get a GPU that could play newer games at native resolution.

Yeah, MW2 definitely takes a back seat to school work. That being said, Photoshop has some pretty good full screen modes going on for low-resolutions. Anything higher than 1024x768 should suffice. CS4 also has some CUDA-like technology, would that even be noticeable with a laptop card or is it not even worth turning on?

I've been looking over that list and think this is a great deal:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834114719

I'm thinking we could even get Maya running on it for some light modeling.

krapst78

The problem with that notebook is the size, weight, battery life, the heat (when playing games), and fan noise it's going to generate. I had a 15.6 inch Toshiba with the same approximate weight (6.5lb) and trust me it's a royal pain in the ass to lug that thing around. When you add in the power adapter brick (which is basically a necessity given the power and limited battery life of that monster) and having to always be near an outlet, the portability factor will drop significantly. I gave up on travelling with it after the first week.

The 13 and 14 inch Thin and Light notebooks I linked above have the same resolution as that 16 inch behemoth, have double or even triple the battery life, and are considerably more portable. If you really want to go for the big notebook, ask your girlfriend if she's basically willing to travel around with an extra college level textbook.

symbolsor

Alrighty, I just asked her if she cared about weight, size, etc. Sounds all good, as long as it isn't louder than the heater we have (really loud!) She doesn't mind the weight or battery life, she usually stays plugged in with the EEE anyway.

So now it comes down to that sweet Asus you linked and the newegg one I posted. I really like Asus but haven't had very much of anything Toshiba. The specs tell me to lean toward the Toshiba but is it quality made?

Frem

The last Toshiba laptop I had was pretty solid. It felt better built than the Dell I'm now using. I have seen a few cheapish flimsy laptops from them also, though.