Looking for a college laptop (or other recommendation)

kamekpwns

Honorable
Jul 17, 2012
3
0
10,510
1. What is your budget?
Relative to the actual value, but under $1000 would make me happier

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
13"+

3. What screen resolution do you want?
1280 x 1024 minimum

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
Possible to be carried around campus, but it won't bother me if it's a bit of a brick

5. How much battery life do you need?
I almost always plug in, but at least 3 hours would be nice

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)?
Playing games will be very likely. I'd like to be able to run a game like Skyrim on high settings

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
I will be a Computer Science Major, so I'll need a decent CPU & RAM

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
500GB is more than enough, but I'm skeptical about SSDs so unless you have some awesome feedback, I'll stick with 7200RPM HDDs

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
reputable sites would be nice. A few I've been looking at are xoticpc, ibuypower, & newegg

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

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
DVD with read/write, I won't need Bluray cause I'm bringing my PS3

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.
Been looking at ASUS, but they're a little expensive and the G series is on the heavy side
Had bad experiences with toshiba in the past :(
Sony has been good and bad to me :l
My brother had a Dell that would overheat and shutdown all the time :(

13. What country do you live in?
United States

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I'm looking for any exemplary laptops or good advice for what I should get for going off to college. Also, I'll be 9 hours from home and stuck on an island with possibly little or no computer support (Prince Edward Island) So i need something reliable. Looking to buy before the end of August
 
Solution
For build quality and reliability it's going to be hard to beat the Sager/Clevo custom gaming notebooks.

Plastic vs 'metal' is more about style than it is about function, quality and reliability.

kamekpwns

Honorable
Jul 17, 2012
3
0
10,510
Well, before the end of August means that I need to have it as soon as September begins. Also, I'd rather not order last minute because shipping isn't always on time... But to spur some replies, I've looked also been looking at the Sager NP6175 as a possibility. I could order off of xoticpc as well, but I don't know what the sager build quality is like. It seems like it's just plastic...