Gaming/College Laptop For Brother

trogdor796

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Nov 26, 2009
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My brother will be starting college soon and wants a decently portable laptop that can also handle gaming.

1. What is your budget?
~$1000 max

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
15.6"

3. What screen resolution do you want?
Preferably 1080p, not absolutely required.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
In between, portable enough to put in a backpack and take to school a few times a week but also needs power so I realize it wont be the most portable.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Not extremely important, as an outlet will be handy 90% of the time. 4 hours would be good I guess.

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)?
Yes, my brother wants to game. He plays Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Shogun 2, and probably Guild Wars 2 when it releases. He would like to play these at high settings, but with a 1080p resolution and mobile gpu, he will be fine with turning settings down to medium in demanding titles such as BF3 multiplayer.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.)
He will browse the web, watch movies, and also be running virtual machines for school.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
Not a lot. 500GB or larger will do.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
lenovo.com

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
2-3 years.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
BluRay would be nice, but DVD will do. BluRay is preferred though.

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.
Anything but HP, because their laptops almost always have heat issues, and every HP laptop I've used and seen, along with other HP devices, has had problems.

13. What country do you live in?
USA

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I found this laptop for my brother for $1000.

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=457&Code=209945U&category_id=AC523278A4F13F27A84F5F5622D1AC7A#techspecs

It seems to meet all the requirements, and beat out other laptops in this price range when it comes to hardware. I've never had a first hand experience with Lenovo's though, so I am curious as to how good their cooling is, as well as their durability and general quality.

Also, it doesn't seem to specify if the keyboard is backlit or not. From the pictures, I'm guessing not, but still would like to know.

What it really comes down to is this: Is there a better laptop for ~$1000 that can match or beat these specs? If not, this is likely the laptop my brother is going to get. The only others I can thing of would be like a Sager or something from xoticpc.com, but I don't think they have one with an i7, 8GB Ram, 660m, BluRay, and 1080p screen for this price. Any thoughts?