Balanced Laptop for office/multimedia use

[RoutedScripter]

Hi

First of all I have no idea about laptops, but a lot about PCs, I'm not buying it so it's okay and I don't have 3 months to research, just 2 weeks, so I'm not going to drill into the depths of the tech industry there, I'm willing to research the web as always as much as I have time to, but I though it would be necessary to ask here for a good start as I went to 2 sites and didn't really had an idea about product lines, like asus and acer and I don't even know which one is the top maker now, i heard HP is not going well, Dell not either.

Also, i would also like to see some Hybrid HDDs(large cache) for laptops, i will take that 5400rpm out because that's just junk.

Thanks

 

[Thrackan]

I can tell you my own story as I've bought two different laptops recently:

I needed a desktop replacement for myself, which meant that whatever I bought had to compete with:
- Phenom II 720
- HD5770

I was willing to lose some performance, but not alot. So I ended up searching for GFX cards first (Notebookcheck ftw!) and restricted my selection of notebooks to those that had a Geforce 650M and working Optimus for the best combination of efficiency vs bang.

Second criterium was two hard drive bays so I could use my own SSD and still have some capacity.

Third was I wanted some size on the screen, so 17 inches was a must. In hindsight, I might have been happy with 15 inchers too, but 17 is a good desktop replacement size.

Last was money.

Acer's V3-771G model was about €100 cheaper than any other laptop fitting these criteria, so I ended up buying that.

Big warning: Acer Netherlands has the worst service I have ever encountered! Do some research for your own country!
Second big warning: Acer and HP are two manufacturers I know do not deliver a bracket for a second HDD if you order a system with space for 2 drives but with only 1 drive built in. Dell does!

Couple of months after that, I took the same criteria to get a lappy for the soon-to-be-Mrs, and I got her a Dell. Which is TONS better in build quality, sound, screen, ports placement, and at that time was €50 more than the Acer had cost me.

Acer: €799 (see system specs)
Dell: €849

Also, order before Jan 31st, after that Windows 8 prices will blow up.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Oh ... budget is 600-700 EUR, i forgot to mention.

Thanks for the win8 warning. Not planning to use win8 so that could prove costly.

 

[PLSG08]

Well with that tight budget you can Get a Decent laptop with an i5 and a decent tier 2 GPU with it.

although you can start with a Y480 or Z480 (I have the Z480) and it's pretty good, can deliver Far Cry 3 with High Setting at around 30 Fps and renders rather quick for its tier.

 

[de.das.dude]

get something with amd fusion. Fusion 4500 is good. you can even game on that.

^to above, he doesnt need an i5 for multimedia/office

 

[RoutedScripter]

Also one imporant question, can I swap HDDs freely under warranty ?

 

[Thrackan]

Also one imporant question, can I swap HDDs freely under warranty ?

Usually, yes. You don't want to remove recovery partitions without having a backup though.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Ended up with Acer Aspire V3 771G with full HD resolution, non-glossy LCD, i5 and 1GB of video ram for gt630, with 6GB RAM and win8, currently the HDD isn't sluggish already so it's a modified win8, with a start button at least currently, not sure if any old games can get on like COD2 (didn't try yet). Well it's for office and multimedia use but I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the ugly "green" HDD craps out and maybe then it'll be a whole reinstall with some good OS optimization.

The laptop it self is a godsend, and found it in a local mainstream shop it was like one in a million to find a perfect balance, every single thing matches, non-glossy and it was with full hd a rarity as most of those ballpark had 960p or something, but yeah the budget was increased to 800€, the actual user thoguht 15 inch was way too small, from the web I didn't thought it was that small, seeing it in reality and yeah indeed 17 was the way to go.

I looked around some other laptops, the whole visit was in less than 40 mins; but when I looked at the glossy screens it was so weird, it was like looking at glowing mirror, all of those screens looked so apple-esque and other smartphones which is why I was wondering why my eyes hurt of 30 mins of usage a few times i tried(borrowed).