Looking to buying a good gaming/school laptop for < $700. (Shipping not included)

[McGooTheWise]

Looking to buying a good gaming/school laptop for < $700. (Shipping included)

I've been looking for about 20 minutes, so I'm not set on buying, but so far, this one meets up with my ideal laptop.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115857

I just wanted an expert opinion. I've always preferred Geforce to Radeon, mostly because I usually use a Geforce, but if Radeon is better for the price, I'll gladly take it. I get my christmas money on saturday, and I get $700 total. i was going to buy a windows phone, until I figured out that it costs $500, so rather than wasting money, I thought I'd get something useful.

Also, if you have a suggestion on something else I could buy instead, I'll take it. I really had my heart set on a Windows Phone for christmas, and now my heart is broken.

EDIT: I have to include shipping, because apparently my christmas money can't be embellished by $15...

 

[Doomination]

i5, nice

 

[McGooTheWise]

Yeah. This laptop is better than my desktop.

 

[VirusType2]

Google is planning on releasing a laptop that costs $99 and operates entirely in the cloud. You would purchase online applications (beyond the ChromeOS/browser itself) and games like you would apps on a smartphone.

 

[McGooTheWise]

would it run half-life, though?

 

[VirusType2]

I don't really know. It just caught my eye yesterday. Google has said that "We think this is the future. If not, we have failed." So, I'm pretty sure you will (eventually) find everything you need, including good games.

Just found out it's been postponed a little. So this is future tech.

Chrome OS news: http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=0&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=chrome+os&oq=Chrome

 

[VirusType2]

This is probably the most information on Chrome OS you'll find in one small article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704828104576021571135209978.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

[Bakurei]

When buying a laptop for gaming (unless you plan on spending like 2000$), remember that when people say they run the game with 100fps on everything max, they mean it runs max 10fps on everything lowest, usually around 5fps. I bought an Acer laptop long time ago and people were saying that "yea it will run bioshock smoothly", damn piece of shit wouldn't even run CS 1.6 nor Quake 2.

 

[Wanted Bob]

Bakurei speaks the truth. Any laptop thats REALLY meant for gaming is going to cost a fair amount of money. For less than $700 it may be hard to find a machine that will play modern games smoothly.

 

[McGooTheWise]

Well, the laptop I was eyeballing has the specs to prove it, and now is less than $700, so I might be getting it.

 

[Laivasse]

Well, the laptop I was eyeballing has the specs to prove it, and now is less than $700, so I might be getting it.

That GeForce GT 420m may not be as good as you think. Here is a detailed overview and here's a benchmark comparison where the card is listed at #75. On that site, the GT420m is listed as less of a performer than my laptop's 2 year old 9800m GT, which in turn has performance roughly comparable to a desktop 8600GT. The system you linked will probably play Source games fine, but what Bob says about modern games (even games from last year and the year before) still applies.

Also I'll add that a powerful gfx card is apt to make a laptop noisy, hot and maybe larger/thicker (depending on the screen size) - all undesirable things for a school laptop.