<p>I will be attending Penn State next fall for electrical engineering. I need a little help with a laptop. The max budget that I have is around $2,500. I would like 8 gb of ram and the i7 processor. This computer needs to last a min of 4 years. My parents will be unable to buy me another one due to the fact that i will have two other brothers enter college a year and two years after I will be. I was looking at a thinkpad and some dells. Are these good chooses or are there other brands that I should be looking at. All information will be greatly appreciated because I am having a really hard time with this. I was told I must get the laptop selected by mid june. Thank you ahead of time.</p>
<p>If you want a high-quality and high-performance laptop, look into Lenovo Thinkpads, Sony Vaio F-series, HP Envy 14/15/17, and some of the Asus models. Dell isn’t known to have great build quality, and it’s uncertain whether one would last you four years. </p>
<p>The Thinkpads will cost you significantly more than the others I listed for higher specs, but the Vaio F-series and Envys (especially the new Envy 14 coming out in June) both have reasonable prices.</p>
<p>You should have no trouble finding a laptop that will last you 4 years with a budget of $2500</p>
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<p>It’s certainly true that $2500 worth of laptops should last more than 4 years. Spending all that money at once probably doesn’t maximize that probability.</p>
<p>I would split that into 2 laptops if i were you; unless you really need the power of a $2500 laptop.</p>
<p>I have a Sony Vaio F-series. It has an i7 processor, 6GB of ram, 500 GB HD and NVidia 330M graphics. It was way under your budget (~$1300) and I’m expecting it to last the next four years. Just look around for what you like, $2500 pretty much opens up opportunities for any laptop you want. If you’re looking into a smaller screen (mine’s is 17") the Vaio Z series are around 13" and pack an i7 and 8 GB of memory, and start around $1900. And stay away from Macs if you’re looking to be an engineer. I’ll also be at Penn State next fall, computer engineering.</p>
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<p>If you need the power of a $2500 laptop … get a $1200 desktop.</p>
<p>i second looking at the envy’s. envy 14 (june 27th) has some of the best specs i’ve seen on the market and for reasonable price. the envy 17 is another option and i suppose you’d be leaning towards that.</p>
<p>check this link out if i’ve piqued your interest:
[YouTube</a> - HP ENVY 14 and ENVY 17 hands-on](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNFQX1JYOU]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPNFQX1JYOU)</p>
<p>I cant spilt the amount and get two laptops. My parents will not be buying me another laptop later in college because they will both be entering college and wont be able to buy me another laptop. This is why they told me to get the best laptop around the price of $2500 this has to include a warranty.</p>
<p>Would a laptop+desktop be an option for you? With a moderate laptop and a powerful desktop, you still have that sort of power in your hands for much cheaper, while at the same time if for some reason you NEED to upgrade down the road you can simply swap a CPU out instead of selling+buying a new laptop.</p>
<p>building a powerful desktop comes out to a similarly configured laptop. I plan on purchasing an extra monitor to hook up to the laptop.</p>
<p>Odd; what sites are you looking at for parts? I generally can build a more powerful desktop for a few hundred dollars off.</p>
<p>I was looking at Dell they seemed to be very similarly price. What desktop and laptop would you recomend.</p>
<p>Oh, I was actually talking about a DIY yourself desktop. It’s surprisingly easy to build a desktop, and it’s much cheaper than going with a pre-built one.</p>
<p>Oh, I have no ideahow to do that</p>
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<p>Not really. Once you go past a certain points with desktops you stop getting much bang for your buck, so the price will tend to be the same as an equivalent laptop. But you don’t have to pay that much to get one that’s powerful. Example:</p>
<p>HPE-180t
Core i7-930
9 GB DDR3 RAM
1 TB HDD
Radeon HD4850
4 year warranty
$1370</p>
<p>I don’t think you’re going to get much more than that out of any laptop. Then you can throw in a $300 monitor (32" HDTV?), Microsoft Office ($60) and you’ll have ~$750 left for a solid laptop.</p>
<p>i got a Dell Studio XPS and its worked out quite nicely. smoothly runs CATIA, so i dont know what more you could want.</p>
<p>I don’t know what I was doing. I don’t think Id want a desktop anda laptop, just the laptop</p>
<p>I’m just afraid I’m going to pick a crappy computer that is not going to last more than a year. My family has bought anything other than macs for like the last eight years. So I don’t really know whatare good computers now. I really am looking for the best build quality, I’m so used to the aluminum body of a mac pro. That’s all</p>
<p>If you take good care of any computer, it will last you a long time.</p>