I'm starting College soon, and I want to get a Laptop for school, and for personal use at home.
It must have the following things:
-blu-ray burner/player
-hdmi port
-LoJack Security
-at least 3Gb of Ram -minimum 200-250Gb Hard Drive
-CPU needs to be fast (at least a duo core), thinking close to 2.5Ghz or more. (needs to last many long years)
-it should have a good graphics card to run games such as Crysis on decent/high settings. (need good graphics cards to run upcoming games in the future)
-full hdresolution display minimum 1080p. (prefer 1200p)
-screen size atleast 16" (which is still a bit small for me)
My price range is around $2000, anything more than $2100-2200, is pushing out of my range, unless it is a REALLY good Laptop and worth the buy.
I'm not to worry about the gaming if the price is under my budget, but it MUST be capable of playing and burning blu-ray discs, since I don't see any other format coming out in the near future. Or should I not get into blu-ray and wait a bit till something comes out, and will I be able to upgrade later to a blu-ray burner? So to keep it short, I need a Laptop that is ready for the near and upcoming future.
My main question is should I custom built a Laptop with companies such as Dell, HP, Sony, Toshiba, LG, ect or is it cheaper to buy a cheap one from like Best Buy, or Future Shop and upgrade its parts?, (but uncertain where to buy those parts or how to install myself) or are they're any other good sites that let you build from scratch, and don't already have a set price already like sites like HP,Sony,Dell,ect.
i would chose either the dell XPS or HP laptops. customize them with the same specs and see which is cheaper.
but i dont know what kind of video card is good for a laptop. perhaps someone where can answer that. since video cards are important for playing HD videos.
you can also try ibuypower.com or look at newegg.com for non customizable laptops at newegg for nice prices.
edit:i looked at ibuypower.com laptops and none have blu-ray players. you can always try getting external ones as an option, too.
If I were you, I'd just buy a cheap laptop for word processing and the like, and then build a desktop. The stuff that you listed is not going to bode well with it being a laptop. It will have a very short battery life, it will be big and heavy, and it will cost you a small fortune (what you described goes up to about $4k).
Thanks for your help guys. I've decided to sacrifice the 1080presolution (as I will most likely watch movies on TV), and a high end graphics card(as I will most likely play most of my games on my PS3 and 360), so I'm going with one of Sony's Vaio's, new FW series,(VGN-FW190)
Here are the specs:
ATI Mobility Radeon? HD 3470
LCD 16.4" (XBRITE-ECO?) (1600x900)
WLAN (802.11a/b/g/n) with integrated Bluetooth® technology
250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive [5400 rpm]
Blu-ray Disc? Read and Write Drive
Extended Battery
Video Plus
Powder White
Microsoft® Windows Vista® Home Premium with Service Pack 1
3 GB DDR2-SDRAM (DDR2-800, 2GB+1GB)
Intel® Core 2? Duo Processor T9400 (2.53GHz)
1 Year Extended Sony Care Warranty
So the price comes out to $2,320.06 including shipping + tax. I still have a few questions about the customization options:
1. Is it worth it pay an extra $100 to upgrade the screen from XBRITE-ECO to XBRITE-HiColor?
2. Do I really need a bigger hard drive (for blu-ray burning/recording)? $50 to upgrade to 320Gb SATA [5400 rpm]
3. And is it worth it to upgrade the processor to 2.8Ghz for $300, or will 2.53Ghz, plus the graphics card, and 3GB ram do just fine for blu-ray playback/burning?
Please let me know whether or not I'm making a good investment. Thanks.
About the harddrive size. Well that's up to you and your priorities. See how much space you will be using. I'm guessing a Blu Ray movie is about 15-20GB?
