Discuss a Laptop

[lobo]

i get a new laptop every 6 months or so. my theory on them is that they evolve too fast to invest heavily. i never spend over $600 on a new one because in 6 months it will be garbage anyway. also i tend to drop/spill/step on shit.

don't be fooled by a free 360. $1300 is WAY too much to drop on a machine that you can't upgrade, can't play new games on, and may quite possibly break/get stolen. the HP i'm currently on cost me like $540. it lets me chat, browse the web, stream, watch porn, HDMI to my TV, word process and download whatever i want just fine. i can't imagine trying to do anything more on a laptop. unless you need some sort of mobile graphics processing, it just screams waste of money to me. buy a desktop AND a laptop for $1300 instead and cover all your bases.

 

[Nirf]

snip

I already have a desktop. The thing is once you dip into $500 range, the laptops are either 15 inch monsters or netbooks. The big laptops are out of the question because they are just a huge pain to carry around. I have owned 15 inch, 6+ pound laptops in the past, and never again. The netbooks are out of the question because the keyboard and screen are too small to facilitate serious work (for me). In addition to that, one of my most heavily used programs is Matlab. So this is a bit of a niche I admit, but I need a decent processor/RAM, but only mediocre graphics.

The cost is high I agree, but it's not the difference from 1300 to 500. More like 800 to get a decent laptop that at least somewhat meets my requirements. The extra 500, well it's a combination of: 1) I'm tired of laptops having small things wrong with them that annoy me. I.e. there are $800 laptops that are good like the Portege, but has a poor screen which will piss me off when I work outdoors. 2) It's a gift so I was like meh whatever.

Besides, the free 360 basically takes 150 off the prices, so it's like 1150. Now 800 to 1150 is not such a huge gap, considering this has an SSD among other things.