Brother needs a new laptop

g-unit1111

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I thought he wanted a desktop but he really needs a laptop.


1. What is your budget? Between $500 - $600, $600 absolute maximum

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? 14" minimum, 15.6" preferable

3. What screen resolution do you want? 1920 x 1080

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Something in between, touch screen would be nice but is not necessary

5. How much battery life do you need? 3+ hours

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)? No. No gaming will be done on this machine.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? Some light audio production, heavy web usage and MS Office

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? 750GB HD minimum, 1TB preferable

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Any USA based site - Newegg, Tiger, NCIX, willing to include direct from manufacturer

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? 3+ years

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ? Standard DVD-RW

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
Preferred brands - Lenovo, Toshiba, Sony, Asus, HP, Gigabyte, Samsung, MSI
Brands not preferred - Dell (had dead pixel on one), Acer (heard bad things about screens and resolution), etc)

13. What country do you live in? USA
 
The closest I could find are the following two Sonys both are the same model. The white one is $550, the black one is $600. The hard drive is only 500GB, but at least it is upgradable in the future or a portable HDD can be connected to it for additional storage.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834126015
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834126014

I am actually surprised a 15.6" laptop with a 1920x1080 screen exists in this price range. They generally start at $700 - $800. 17.3" laptops with 1920x1080 screens are more common in your brother's price range.
 

g-unit1111

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Yeah I paid $950 for mine and I had no idea you could get screens of that resolution for that price. But I also added an accidental damage protection plan to mine.
 
Well both have resolutions of 1366x768 so they are below the 1920x1080 requirement. Since the laptop is being used for work / productivity purposes I recommend against a laptop with such a low resolution screen.

I have a Lenovo Y470 with a 1366x768 resolution screen. While it is fine for playing games, I find it too restrictive to allow me to multitask effectively. I would rather buy the Sony I recommended or look for a laptop with 1600x900 resolution.