Laptop for a *GAMING* Student

[Kikujir0]

So I'm starting uni now with a pretty demanding schedule as an engineer, and I hear basically everyone gets a laptop anyway these days. (I'm getting that vibe anyway haha)

Anyone know a good place to buy lappys, or a good site to order them off? I'm asking here first because I am often weary of buying hardware from retail like dick smith or harvey norman, and I'm not keen on apple. If anyone can find me a lappy that can run games decently, or is just pretty damn awesome in general to entertain me on a 3 hour daily commute feel free to let loose.

If I had to say a budget $1500 is probs about it.
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[thebigm]

You looking at a lightweight gaming laptop or don't mind carrying around a bit of bulk?

I've had my eye on the Asus UL30Vt (and Vj) models for a little while now, which are lightweight, but do decently in games, and have good battery life, however they're not available in Australia at the moment

[A13x]

Well, it's just outside your budget, and you might be able to find it cheaper elsewhere, but I got one of my workers to set up This at work today, and it's pretty damn awesome.

i7 920 CPU
4Gb DDR3
2x 320Gb drives in RAID
16" LED screen
1Gb ATI 5730M

$1799

Has a really nice trackpad and nice bells and whistles such as a slightly rubberised surface. Almost want one myself...

Alternatively, this isn't a bad deal

Core i5 430
4Gb DDR3
640Gb
15.6" LCD
1Gb ATI 5650

$1099

That said I'm not that big on Acers
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<3

[Jellyfish]

[mikezilla2]

im wondering tho isnt there longer lasting battery's you can buy or bulking it up and making it use more batterys ?

[Island_Wolf]

^Yeah, you can get extra cells batteries. The batteries will stick out of the laptop and imo, not really worth buying for. I've seen it used more often with business men than laptop gamers.


It's definitely possible to get a gaming PC for under $1500 really easily depending on what games you want to play.

When I was at uni, we play games on the laptop all the time as a loophole to the gaming ban. Gaming at uni is what made my uni life so great, I miss uni.

But as Jellyfish said, battery life will be a problem. You are better off for entertainment getting a separate MP3 player for commuting. I carry a Phat DS and Creative Zen/iPod Touch for commuting.

Gaming Uni student FTW!!!
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[JmiYeo]

Whenever I attempt to give opinions of laptop, the following are the general considerations which I will give.

Laptops are a bad investment to buy with full ownership. Can you deduct it for tax purposes? Some can deduct the full cost of the laptop for a single year. These people benefit from stuff like flexirent/lease as they can change and upgrade laptop every 1 or 2 years.

Laptop don't last long in general. 3 years is about the max you can use it for before everything starts to fail or become useless. Macbooks however does tend to last longer but OP isn't considering this.

Laptops are sunk cost. There is nothing you can get out of it after 3+ years other than being a brick somewhere in the corner. So it's best to spend on what you actually WILL use and benefit.

Why max 3 years? Laptop technologies these days are like desktops, they are stagnant. What is introduced in new laptop models are features and imo, features don't last long and hold less of a value as for most features because you probably won't need or aren't using it enough for the price you pay.

Example is the CPU. All the CPUs are so closed to each other in terms of performance, and the difference between them are so minute that a user will not notice the difference at all.

Note: 3 years is just a general figure. From my experience, the life cycle of laptop normally last for 3 years. Repairs made for laptop that is 3+ years will cost the same as getting a replacement. Laptops that last 3+ years will tend to fade in performance and unlike desktops, you don't normally upgrade laptop parts nor it is cost effective to do so.

[Island_Wolf]

^Laptop may benefit uni students though. Desktop isn't practical for carrying around and in my own university experience, I have trouble having copies of my codes in more than one device, therefore I only work on my laptop. I am on my 5 years old laptop, still going strong , this laptop was also my desktop replacement so I use it every day for 5+ hours.

Since I can't speak for engineering as I have done comp sci, maybe you could just wait to see if you do need a laptop before getting one? Usually you don't do much in your first few weeks of uni.

I've noticed that the more years spent in tertiary education, the more likely a person will get a laptop. Possibly because they have the same idea as me as in to get uni work all in the one thing? That is just me because I've tried usb, I lose them very often though :S
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[JmiYeo]

My bad with my bad structure of my post.

Depending on the purpose, laptop can be beneficial to Uni-Students. That is if its use for emails, file storage, accessing portals, basic intranet connection, doing word assignments, making presentation etc. Those are simple tasks with very low h/w requirements. I myself have a 9yr old powerbook, and that is still going strong and still fit the purpose which I bought it for.

The reasoning behind my post before, is because the OP seems to me to be unsure about how laptop is going to benefit him. The post rings out to me that he just wants to get one as everyone seems to do the same. What added much attention is that he wants it to be gaming and media capable.

With that type of need, he might be spending on alot which he won't even need it for Uni.

[Kikujir0]

Your posts were all helpful and made me realise yeah I probably will just have it run the bare basics that I need, in the end I will probably only use it as work related since my desk top is beast anyway, the fact that they don't last long when watching movies or playing games is the real clincher for me.

I guess the old fashioned way of reading and talking to people will suit me in my daily travels.
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[JmiYeo]

I would say take Island_Wof suggestion in mind. Take a look at how your course structure is like and really, a simple laptop can do wonders.

You may not really find it is comfortable to view movies or play games on the laptop during your commute as well, but it will aid you when you have to touch up your presentation or proof-read your assignment during your long travel.

Those $1500 you got, you can easily spend on a basic laptop and an entertainment device like err PSP (Me Sony fanboi), which you can game and watch movies for 3hrs plus.

[Infested Jibbs]

lol gaming student, way to oxymoron.
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[Kikujir0]

hey, students game, in more ways than one, a student cannot learn yet entertain themselves at the sametime?
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[grim-one]

If your uni is anything like mine was, you'll be walking for a mile in between classes. So if you really want to cart a laptop around uni, make sure it's light: 1 - 2 kgs and the less the better. A 3+ kg laptop gets painful quickly.
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[3mt]

I'd recommend you get a netbook with a decent sized keyboard/screen for taking notes during lectures. Some netbooks have a claimed battery life of 8 hrs, and while I haven't tested them out, I'd reckon they'd last you a whole day at uni just taking notes on Word.
They're powerful enough for you to do work processing and surf the net and play many of the older games. Also, they're fairly light, small and have a longer battery life compared to their heavyweight counterparts.

Then you can spend the remaining money on some entertainment goodies, maybe even a desktop gaming rig for around $500
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[haydosrulz]

I got a laptop for school/gaming a few weeks ago for about $1300
http://www.jbhifionline.com.au/computers-laptops/laptops/hp-dv6-2120tx-pavilion-15-notebook/481609
It is probably a little big but it has worked fine for me. So far i haven't used it much at school but i am aware that the battery lasts for more than 3hrs when i am not gaming. If you wanna really go around gaming, and have a light laptop, i would just go with a netbook and a psp as the above have said. Oh and i would just use jb cos they always have a lot of laptops
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[Jellyfish]

[Zhou]

This is pretty much what I've been eyeing off for the past two weeks. Online computers give free delivery and from what I've read on whirlpool, are pretty reputable dealers.

i5, 4gb ram, 500gb hdd, 5470, bt/wfi etc. From what I've been able to gather weight with battery is about 2.2kg. So not too bad.

But yeah, other than that the ul30 as mentioned by thebigm, is a pretty good model for uni kids, but probably not that great for gaming...also none of the slimlines I've seen apart from the acer 5810 have dvd drives..

may or may not be a problem for you.
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[chickenplucka]

I just ordered one of these ready for commencement of uni:

HP Envy 15"
Intel® Core™ i7-720QM processor
1.60 GHz, 6 MB L2 Cache, 1333 MHz FSB
640 GB 7200 rpm
External SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
15.6" Diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Widescreen Display
1366 x 768
ATI Mobility Radeonâ„¢ HD 4830 with 1024 MB dedicated Graphics
Night vision Webcam with IR LED for illumination
Beats sound system
HP Clickpad supporting Multi-Touch gestures with On/Off button
2.35 kg
6-cell Lithium-Ion Polymer (52.9 Whr)
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