Right, scouting out the Laptop market

  • Thread starter Thread starter Rykon Zero
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Pako
I am the IT manger and controller for a small $20 million company. In the past 5 years, I have put 17 different Lenovo Thinkpad's into operations. The battery has been the only part that has been replaced on any of them. The ones that have had their batteries replaced also use docking stations so their battery is constantly on charge all day which I attribute to the short life of those batteries. The other laptops are in the field. We are an agriculture company so the laptops are being subject to some pretty harsh environments.

It's not like the Panasonic Tuff Books, but they are, as I said, a commercial grade product even if they aren't as pretty as the HP's or some of the other glossy consumer lines of laptops out there.

Anyways, good luck on your purchase. It is always exciting and somewhat tiring looking for a new machine.

:cheers:
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DG_Silva
My other half got a Lenovo E450 laptop, and it's built like a brick s:censored:house. Not that heavy, but it doesn't creak or squeak like other laptops. I've actually managed to get 6.5 hours out of a single charge. Deeply impressive, very well specced for the price, I'd happily them and in fact I have reccomended to three other people who are more than happy with theirs.
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Well, that's quite a few people there. I'll definitely consider it, in fact, I'm going to say that when I get a laptop, Lenovo's on the top of my list. Though I think that when I overhaul my desktop, I'll be going for ASUS bits.

nick09
This laptop has an i5 and an GeForce GT 540M graphics with 1GB of dedicated memory.This laptop has an i7 and GeForce GT 550M graphics with 2GB of dedicated memory. The last laptop is a little above your $800 budget but the performance is possible for a little bit more money.
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Hmm, really depends. The world's not over if I can't play the stated video games, it'd just be a really big plus. I'm not sure just how good those are, I think my desktop right now has a worse graphics card, but it comes down to how much money I can save.
 
Make sure when you are searching for laptops, that the keyboard will be fine for you to use. Some laptops will have FLAT button keys. Which can be a challenge sometimes, to type rather quickly and efficiently.

RAM is also something to take into consideration. You may need to make sure that you have a good size RAM and at a relatively good speed. But this is more for gaming and heavy processing, so it wouldn't really be needed to be checked out that much.

Screen size is a must, most people are happy to stick with 15.6 inches as its widescreen and you can easily see film/dvd files relatively easily. Resolution also would need to be checked as well, 15.6 is normally about 1366x768 or some laptops may have an increased resolution to 14xx or 16xx. 16xx would be a bit titchy though? There are 14 and 13 inches screens around if you prefer it to be smaller. 17 inches are MASSIVE for a laptop, only really needed for people with bad eyesight (my opinion).

Weight. Are you going to be lugging it around all the time? Or just keeping it at home most of the time? If you get a small, lightweight laptop, that will increase the price a fair amount.

The style of the laptop can be a consideration as you will be looking at it a lot. It does depend if you don't mind paying a premium (Apple) or skimping on some performance.

With regards to screen, don't get a reflective screen. Or you'll be seeing yourself in it all the time in some light! Its rather annoying, until you can see someone else is standing behind you.... hee hee!
 
He won't need more than 4GB or 6GB if he is not doing tasks which need a large amount of memory such as audio editors, video editors, and etc. Even then those can run 4GB because I've run programs that use under 2GB.
 
From what I can tell, this one looks like a really good bet. It's got the A8 which is nice, and a few reviews said that it can play Skyrim and other relatively new games. The price is very right, and it's got an additional ram slot for when (or if) I want to upgrade. I did see someone complaining it had a shiny screen and that some of the ergonomics are a bit odd. They're better than an equivalent ASUS I saw, so I think it should be fine. What do you think?

EDIT: Oh yeah, it has a numpad too. How awesome!
 
I have the same AMD model as that. I've not played games on it yet, apart from Defense Grid. I can install GRID or Dirt2 and run it for you and report back on the benchmarks if you would like me to do that for you?

Actually, Skyrim? I don't have that, but I do have the following to test for you:

GTA4
Mass Effect (1+2)
Portal 2
Saints Row 2 (this is coded extremely badly, even my desktop doesn't play this very well at 3.2Ghz!)
Sup Com 1+2
Burnout Paradise

I'm keener to use Dirt 2 for comparison as it has its own benchmarking tool. But if you prefer another game to run and compare, let me know.
 
Hmm, no, those are great. GTA4 and Burnout Paradise are good ones. If you have any information on how Dirt 3 would run in comparison to Dirt 2, that's be great.

Thanks very much for your help.
 
Ah.... Dirt 3 I haven't got. I'm a bit stingy when it comes to prices for games!

I will download and test them out with the settings required.

So to clarify, Dirt 2, GTA 4 and Burnout would be more useful than the other ones?
 
Rykon Zero
From what I can tell, this one looks like a really good bet. It's got the A8 which is nice, and a few reviews said that it can play Skyrim and other relatively new games.
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Here is a review on that APU chip (look at the ones that are labeled "AMD A8-3500M(APU only, 6620G)", since those are the same as the laptop you linked to).
 
So, once again checking out Newegg just so I can get more antsy about returning home and buying my delicious new laptop, when I saw this little number.

Is that an integrated graphics card or is that an external version, because that's actually looking pretty nice to me right now.
 
It has a dedicated graphics card so it should be able to play most games fairly well.
 
Then that's something I'll definitely take into consideration, I'm more than willing to shell out some extra money for that.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to add something: As far as processors go, is the i5 a good one?
 
Well, I've been home for quite a while, and thanks to a few unforeseen advantages, I got my grubby little paws on this sexy beast.

So, rather than interesting new tech from AMD at a budget, I managed to arrange for an i7-powered dedicated graphics beast of a machine. Thanks for the input, didn't really need it, but it's always good to learn some things.
 

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