<p>I'm a senior this year, but since I will be starting college through a summer program in June, my mother has asked me to think of what laptop I'd want now so we can purchase soon. I am an undecided in my major, but I'd love to have a computer that could be fit to my needs regardless of what major I do choose in the end. Of course, I know that this decision also has to factor in what I'd use the laptop for. </p>
<p>I'm not much of a gamer, though every one in a while I boot up WoW, and I love movies. I write in my free time, and I also blog, so memory space and such is important to me, though not nearly as much since I can always carry an external hard drive. I do need speed. And battery life. My budget is not too shabby (I'd like to think) I have about $1,400 to spend, and would love to hear what you guys think. And, while we're at it, how easy would it be to transition from a PC to a Mac, if I were to buy one?</p>
<p>Help me, please?</p>
<p>1) How do watch movies? (dvd/streaming/blu-ray)
2) What do you mean by speed…
3) what interface (usb/firewire/esata/etc.) is your external hard drive?
4) is your external hard drive large enough for uses you expect)
5) how long of a battery life do you want?
6) What sort of graphics settings do you want (as a minimum) for WoW?</p>
<p>Well, for movies I usually stream online, like on Netflix. I also download them or play dvd. As for speed, I mean, I need something that won’t slow up because I opened more than three programs (as the PC I’m on does, being a family computer). I have a 1TB USB-input external hard drive, and so far it’s held up for the music, photos and documents I keep in it. I’d probably also use it as a backup storage, just in case.</p>
<p>Battery life would be good at 4+ hours. I would take this laptop to classes too, so I need to be unplugged. As for graphics, I wouldn’t mind having some high-grade ones, but I don’t really know how to differentiate the units and quality. Some explanation on this would help me so much!</p>
<p>Just note I hate suggesting apple products, so i’m not gonna bother. Not really worth switching over to OS X either if you’ve been using windows all your life.</p>
<p>Just note though, if you like one of these, look to see if they are sandy-bridge GPUs. If they are not, it is best to wait for a new design from a company.</p>
<p>So, here are some ranges to check out:
Asus: U-series
Lenovo: Thinkpad T-series
Sony: C/E/S-series</p>
<p>I can vouch for Asus, Lenovo thinkpad series is pretty much always the same in quality standards, and for the Sony laptops I really don’t know but it might be something to watch.
There is also quite a range of prices in there too, so you can be quite well under-budget or able to stretch your budget to buy a much better computer.</p>
<p>Standard voltage processors will handle any multitasking you may want. Look into the GPUs a small bit and get a sense of what they can do for what gaming you might have, and consider getting an SSD instead of a mechanical harddrive. The advantage is that performance-wise the ssd is much better than a mechanical hard drive (although at a cost of a higher price/gb storage), which you might be reasonably off using considering you already have a decent amount of external storage.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your help! I’ll be sure to check out the laptops you recommended, and read up on GPUs. </p>
<p>And I understand your point about not switching to Mac if I was too used to PC’s, because I went to the Apple Store today and was just utterly baffled by the display ones. It’s just too much, what with the side-switched controls and stuff. </p>
<p>Again, thank you so much for your help!</p>