<p>Hi guys,</p>
<p>I was wondering if I could get a bit of advice. I'll be heading off to college next year and I'm confused as to which laptop to get.</p>
<p>-My budget is something like an absolute max of 800$. Under that would be great. -Undeclared major, but I'm thinking of pre-med + psychology.
-I don't game, but I draw a lot. I'll plug in a graphics tablet, photoshop a little, but mostly I use SAI Paint tool. I don't think it taxes a computer heavily though.
-14" vs 15", is there a big difference?
-looking for good screen resolution
-want decent battery life. </p>
<p>Also, when is the best month for laptop deals? August?</p>
<p>Thanks for any suggestions!</p>
<p>You’re right – your usage is very light, and as such, almost any new laptop on the market today will work for you.</p>
<p>However, I suggest you get a business-class laptop for better durability and battery life. For me, that usually means Dell Latitude E-series or Lenovo Thinkpad T-series/R-series. Coincidentally, they also give you options to upgrade screens to very high resolutions, albeit at a steep premium.</p>
<p>The i3 530M processor will be plenty fast, 2GB will be enough RAM, and 80GB will be enough hard drive space (you can and should get an external if you need more).</p>
<p>There really isn’t a best month for laptop deals, but my suggestion is - get it when it’s at least 40% off “list price.”</p>
<p>If you really want to push it, you can get an external monitor and hook it up to a netbook. You’ll keep your budget extremely low that way. That’ll work, except for the fact that you’ll have to deal with a tiny keyboard and screen when on the go.</p>
<p>2gb is enough ram but you should really go for 4gb. there’s also no point in specifically looking for a laptop with 4gb of ram; you can buy the 4gb of ram yourself and easily install it yourself.</p>
<p>Usually performance sacrifices weight and battery. So, with your budget you might have to sacrifice 1 of them (probably battery).</p>
<p>As with all PC’s, wait for the back-to-school deals and coupons.</p>
<p>Dell Studio 15: powerful, sturdy, HD screen option, 4-5 hr battery
Dell Inspiron 15: exact same as above except no HD screen option
Numerous HPs: can’t remember all of them but they come with 25% off coupons all the time
Acer: non-friendly numerical names which I can’t remember. Very cheap though. Usually 4 hr battery.
Asus ul50vt: beastly laptop. $800. Decent power, 12 hr battery, graphics card.</p>
<p>I think I’ll definitely be looking into an external hard drive. My dad actually suggests this cause I filled up the pc at home with so many drawings that as soon as I moved it to another hard drive for storage, the computer instantly ran noticeably faster. Any suggestions on what brand external hard drive?</p>
<p>Reading up on all the laptops suggested! Thanks!</p>
<p>@inthemorning: I’d prefer Western Digital, because I’ve dealt with their warranty service before and they’re top-notch in terms of customer service. If you get confused with all the connections (FireWire, USB, and E-SATA), if you’re using it for digital drawings I’d stick with USB. The reason being is that ALL computers have a USB port, while not all computers have FireWire or E-SATA. Additionally, pictures are generally small files that don’t really need the speed of E-SATA or FireWire.</p>
<p>An External I’d reccomend is:</p>
<p>[Newegg.com</a> - Western Digital Elements 1.5TB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDBAAU0015HBK-NESN](<a href=“Are you a human?”>Are you a human?)</p>
<p>Or a lower capacity version if 1.5TB is too much for you :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is not possible unless you were storing all your drawings in the same folder, and they were all being loaded at the same time to generate thumbnails. Simply moving it to a folder should suffice. I personally recommend Seagate with the hard drives – only had one fail on me, whereas I’ve dealt with a similar number of WDs but had so many fail that I can’t count them on my fingers. Yet, each series of hard drives are different. I actually suggest you go with the one that provides you with the best price per GB while looking nice on the outside.</p>
<p>Very helpful : )</p>
<p>@r31ncarnat3d
: ) Definitely going to go with USB and also definitely going to get a lower capacity hd haha. </p>
<p>@excelblue
I didn’t mention. XD The pc we have at home is about 9 years old, ahaha. And err, I’m not sure about the single folder. They were all in the same ‘my pictures’ folder but were sorted into about 25 other folders? I only left about 10 or so images unsorted. Should I just leave a few different folders on the desktop? Would that unclog it?
- I’ll look into Seagate as well.</p>
<p>Thank you both!</p>