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College laptop options

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jmt391

Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Location
US
Hello all, I'm off to college in a few weeks and I need a laptop. I will be using it for work and games. I would like it to be easily portable and quiet, while not sacrificing too much on performance. I understand this will need to be a compromise - Anyway, here's what I've chosen. My budget is ~$1300

Asus G51VX-X1A
Asus G51VX-RX05

These have the GTX 2xx GPUs in them, and the first one can do 1080p. I've also looked at the Gateway FX series, but they weigh about 10lbs and are only equipped with a 9800M. I feel like the first Asus laptop is the best deal for the price
 
Easily portable and quiet, with a GTX 2xx GPU? You may have some trouble achieving all of those goals. Would you be content with a different GPU?

From Notebookcheck:
The current consumption of up to 75 Watts (of the whole board) allows the use of the card only in laptops with a strong cooling system. Therefore, the GTX 260M can be found only in heavy and big notebooks.
 
I recently purchased the Asus G51VX-RX05 and bang for the buck wise, it's a phenomenal machine.

The laptop itself is by no means light, I believe its about 8 lbs. I don't mind lugging around 10-15 lbs but if your looking for something light, look elsewhere. I was surprised at how quiet this laptop runs even while gaming, the NZXT cooler I have is much louder than the laptop itself.

Battery life is around 1.5 to 2 hours while browsing, I haven't bothered to game on the battery.

The system itself feels very nice, quality plastics all around with almost no keyboard flex and a sturdy top. Only gripe I have aesthetically is the mirror black finish that functions as a fingerprint magnet.

Performance wise, it hasn't given my any issues with any game yet. Though I would recommend a 7200 RPM drive for a performance boost. It also comes with a built in overclocking tool to push the chip to 2.9GHZ.

It's damn near unbeatable for $1150. I ended up paying $1350 Canadian and I'm very pleased.
 
How are you planning to use the laptop?

Are you just going to leave it in the dorm or are you going to bring it to lectures? If you are bringing it to lectures, I'd say forget about it.

1.5-2hrs battery life means you need to join the fight for the few seats with outlets (in libraries, at least in my school, it's hard enough to find a seat without an outlet already), and 8lb means you will need huge muscles to move it around, and will make your shoulders VERY sore (I got that with my 6lb laptop, and have switched to a 3lb since then), since you will likely need to walk around the campus quite a bit everyday. The big screen means it will feel very inbalanced on those "desklets" common in lecture halls. You probably won't really appreciate the importance of weight and battery life until you have experienced it yourself first hand... but it would be too late by then.
 
Well I was originally going to go the desktop + netbook route but I feel like it would be too hard to bring the desktop back and fourth when I leave and come back to school but a netbook would be useful to take around with me and I would game on my desktop. A laptop, however, would be nice to have for LANs and stuff like that.

I really don't know if I'll be bringing my laptop to class anyway because I'm a biochem major and will be doing a lot of equation work and the like. I am pretty sure I'd like to go the laptop route but now you guys are making me change my mind (again)
 
Sorry to make you change your mind! I use a desktop and a laptop, and it is a little bit awkward, but I think it's the right way to go if you want power for gaming AND lightweight/portability/battery life. I have a watercooled desktop and a nice Lenovo T61, but those together might be out of your price range.

You can always find laptops used - I see a lot of good deals on T61's on Craigslist, and they're a very solid laptop. You can find a netbook for ~$500, and you could build a small PC with the other $800. Poke around for something MicroATX, stick a Core 2 Duo in there, and a good graphics card, and it'll be faster than your laptop would've been.

Of course, I forgot to mention a monitor...

Another thought -- what about a laptop with a mobility 4670 in it? I really like mine, it runs all the games I want without the settings on eye-bleeding quality, and it's very low power. It might be able to give you that all-in-one compromise you're looking for. Unfortunately, I'm having trouble finding laptops that actually have that card. I guess the Dell Studio XPS 1640 has it, but it's sort of overpriced. Comes out to around $1500 with some upgrades and a two-year warranty.
Not-so-informative review of the Mobility Radeon 4000 series here: http://hothardware.com/Articles/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-4000-Series-Preview/
 
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If you still have general ed classes left (unless this is your first year in which case thats a given) you're going to want a lighter netbook. I'm an EE major and I still carried my laptop around with me to go to the library or work on projects and whatnot. At 8 lbs and less than two hours of battery life it was not easy for me.

Also, like you stated the first laptop you linked to has a GTX 260M. If its as quiet as you want it that thing is going to run HOT. Mines to the point where after half an hour I don't want it in my lap anymore. I'd say get the desktop and the netbook.

EDIT: This was before I built the computer in my sig so my laptop was my only computer.
 
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