Oh I recall when I joined SeN I still had my previous laptop, how the time flies. But now I'm starting uni and I'm going to need something to work for me for 4 years, and I need it to be a pretty good deal.

Right now I'm looking at a Dell Inspiron 15



4GB RAM
Integrated Intel Graphics X4500HD
250GB HDD
15.6" screen
Core 2 Duo T6600 (2.20 GHz)

$644

Anyone know of a lappy that can beat this? Preferably under $650

Wow, laptops are this inexpensive these days?

Yes. Yes they are.

Well, as long as you don't expect to do much/any gaming that lappy looks perfect for you Syphon. Good price and all from what I can see, but I'm not much into laptops.

I'd check TigerDirect.com. They have some amazing deals on laptops. I have a co-worker who just bought a relatively inexpensive laptop from there that kicks most desktops' asses.

TigerDirect.ca*

(Syphon is Canadian)

I'm just curious though, how does the integrated graphics card stack up to a dedicated one? Like, my desktop has a Radeon X 1300 Pro, but only .5 GB of RAM. How would this stack up?

Integrated graphics barely stack up at all. That chipset is probably equal to the AGP Radeon 9000 LE I have upstairs, if that. And it runs WC3 at 5-10fps on the LOWEST settings.

None on there beat this Dell.

I never really liked anything from Dell. Mostly because I hated the fact that they used AMD.

http://explore.toshiba.com/laptops/satellite/A300
I got that. Special Edition.

$800.

This shouldn't have any influence on anything.

Here's my tips for laptop buying:

Graphics: Integrated is fine for most old games. If you want to play anything mildly graphics intensive, you want at least a mid tier card (*400 or greater, where * is anything, so a geforce 6600, while old, will do fine). Source games run particularly well on those.

Processor: Faster is always better, unless you care about battery life. There's not a whole lot to recommend here. Note that current processors are ridiculously fast. Unless you use some form of benchmark (or intensive game), there's little way to tell the difference between a 1.8 GHz dual core and a 3 GHz dual core.

Screen Size: 15" and higher is pretty ridiculous to carry around. I don't recommend it, and the larger screen size also dramatically decreases battery life.

Other crap: not very important, and very self explanatory.

On a side note: the Inspiron 15 is fine. I'd just size down the screen size. I had a 15" laptop for 3 years, plus a desktop. I gave that away, and now have a 9" netbook, which I've used more in one year than the 15", entirely due to the size/weight.

A mac.

Kill yourself.

I don't feel like paying $1,200 for a laptop I can get for $600, that is incompatible with everything I like to do, and makes me look like I love dick in and around my mouth.