SMW needs a new laptop, halp.

[SMWasder]

So, my laptop has bitten the proverbial dust. Given that my laptop was always an enormous crapheap and New Is Always Better, I'm not bothering getting the thing repaired and instead I'm looking at getting a nice shiny new machine. Given that I've only ever bought one laptop and that was five years ago, I thought it would be wise to turn to you lot.

I've got roughly £500 to sink on it, although I don't mind going a little over if needs be. I'd like something that can run games worth a damn- nothing crazy Crysis style, just something that can handle modern games at a reasonable speed at a reasonable quality. A heads up, I'm not especially tech-savvy. I know what things are, but I don't know what's considered good and I don't really know how much I should be paying for what (my expectations for £500 could be wildly high or low).

So, what do you folks recommend?

[RobipodSupreme]

I got an HP Presario recently (also knowing fudge all) and it seems to run things pretty well. And looks nice and stuff.
Pretty lightweight, comes in a whole 3 colours. Yeah, I know nothing.

[Invunarble]

If you ideally want to be able to run most games, don't invest in a laptop and get a desktop instead - or, if you're determined, make sure the laptop you get is capable of receiving most types of hardware upgrades (e.g. mainly GPU/RAM upgrades).

Oh, and I wouldn't recommend investing in HP products. They generally are shit - I can't speak out of experience for the laptop robipod bought, though.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

I got an HP Presario recently (also knowing fudge all) and it seems to run things pretty well. And looks nice and stuff.
Pretty lightweight, comes in a whole 3 colours. Yeah, I know nothing.

That's what I have. I have managed to play all games I've tried on it so far, up to and including stuff like the Crysis series (albeit not very well).

So yeah, that's pretty cool.

And yeah, if only it weren't HP. For some reason though I had a lot of trouble finding anything decent, since most of them clearly didn't have games in mind (billions of options with integrated graphics).

[SMWasder]

If you ideally want to be able to run most games, don't invest in a laptop and get a desktop instead - or, if you're determined, make sure the laptop you get is capable of receiving most types of hardware upgrades (e.g. mainly GPU/RAM upgrades).

I'd like a desktop, but it's just too inconvenient- I cart my laptop about a fair bit, not forgetting lounging around on the sofa.

Anyway, I'll have a looksie at one of these HPs. I do remember there being a fair few on the PC World site with dedicated graphics cards, but their site is dead at the moment so I can't check again. Either way I'm skint for the next few days until payday anyway so I've got time to mull it over.

[SMWasder]

Yeah, double post (all about double posts today) but I wanted to grab some attention because I need an opinion on this, although I suspect it won't make a lot of difference. Basically all the laptops with dedicated graphics cards in my price range have nigh exactly the same specs (8GB RAM, 1TB hard drives and AMD Radeon graphics cards) but I've got a choice between HP, Acer or Toshiba.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Acer stuck out at me first. Not really had experience with the latter two but I've seen people recommend Acer products more while searching online. I COULD BE HORRIBLY WRONG THOUGH - I am no expert and Acer could very well be shit.

HP isn't awful (as I said, my current laptop is HP and plays modern games at reasonable speed and quality), but good luck figuring out their bizarre support system if the PC goes kaput.

[Lord_Mountbatten]

Oh wait, I thought of ASUS, not Acer.

Kindy tells me Toshibas can take a beating if that helps

[MKindy]

All the Toshiba's I've known have been ridiculously durable. My friend was in Iraq for a couple years and took his Toshiba Qosmio with him, and it was basically filled with (and remains filled with to this day) sand by the time he got back, and it still runs decently, albeit noisily.

I had a Toshiba Satellite from like 2003 that at its worst developed a bit of a heat problem that required a fan base, but no other issues.

[wokka1]

I still own a Toshiba laptop that I bought back in 2001 or 2 timeframe, it was in a car wreck, had an airbag crash into the cover (outside of the screen) while my GF was watching a movie. It crushed the screen into her chest (bad bruising).

I had a friend of mine take the screen off, and hotwire the leads back in, so that the video output on it would still work, and it does, it still runs to this day, just needs a monitor on it.

P3-850mhz with 512meg of ram and a 20gb hard drive Oh, it also has the first mobile nvidia gpu ever developed. Bought it as a gaming laptop. I should dig up pictures of it.

Here is a pic pre-wreck. Friend of mine does air brushing and did this design for me.



And after the wreck

[RobipodSupreme]

So he should get one of them..?

[Invunarble]

Hah, that thing is ancient!

You guys should all totally buy one of those.

[wokka1]

Lol, no, just reinforcing the fact that Toshiba's are awesome.

[SMWasder]

It's probably what I'll go for- as I said, there's really not much in it spec-wise. Being the genius I am I went and lost my wallet last night so I can't actually buy one until my new card arrives :/.