Looking to buy a laptop

[supersuk]

[geForce]

What's wrong with your desktop? You said it was falling apart or something?

[nature boy]

so then you just need something for surfing, watching movies, and checking the forumz? that could be any computer, no need to spend more than $400.

[joel]

lenovo thinkpad is a great way to go, the big thing i think is whether you need discrete graphics. even if you don't, you may want it to be able to game (in case). the thinkpad only gives you an option of a nvidia quadro which is a workstation graphics card. great for if you are doing cad or image/video editing or other work related graphics intense output. not as great for games though. and as fynn quoted with the discrete card you are looking at prices 900+. but the build is sturdy, reliable, and higher production quality than your average consumer laptop.

if you are wanting ultra portability without sacrificing power, i'd go with a ultrabook. a handful of brands out there, and you can go top of the line processing power with pretty slim form factors. coupled with ssd, computing performance is pretty snappy. but again they don't really offer these machines with discrete graphics and they run you about 1000+.

if price is your main concern, you can land just about any consumer laptop with discrete graphics in about the 600-900 range, or 400-600 with onboard graphics. production quality will vary from make to make, but in general will be lower than most business lines. probably handle gaming from low to mid level. and have pretty short battery life.

you could probably do what nat suggested with a desktop\tablet combo too and price it out similarly.

right now the only desktop i have is my htpc and the only laptop i have is my work supplied laptop. and i get along with just those quite well.

[Duncan]

[supersuk]

[joel]

hdmi is available on some netbooks nowadays. hdmi is not standard on all consumer laptops but on a great deal of them. hdmi will be more rare on business model laptops.

that's a little powerful is a generic term. it's better if you give examples of applications you plan on running. are you running video compression? video editing? software development tools, are you going to run any server side applications, database management, or just office tools?

my guess is you want something with decent multimedia capabilities. if that's the case i would stay in the consumer laptop range, but expect that you aren't going to get great mileage out of battery life. especially if you are looking at screen sizes 15" and greater.

[nature boy]

[Wetundies]

watching movie while his hands are busy choking a chicken.

[supersuk]

[geForce]

[Wetundies]

too many stds on the desktop.

[nature boy]

how do you watch videos while listening to music? garble city man.

anyway, i still think a cheap laptop will do fine. but hey, it'll be your laptop. the lenovo one that joel suggested sounds pretty good to me.

[supersuk]

sale ends today... to buy or not to buy.......

i'll need a display port to hdmi cable.. that kinda sucks..

[nature boy]

i've seen hdmi adaptors for around $25 at best buy. they go all ways, sorta like you lol.