Good Laptop for College student?

NoGoodNamesLeft · 16 Jul 2012

Hi guys,
My brother is going to be off to college in a month or so and he's looking for a laptop for school. His price range is under $1000. Keep in mind, he might not ALWAYS use it for school related things. (Videos, small games, etc.) He want's something smaller, not a huge screen or anything, portable, but quick.

What do ye guys think about this one?
HP - 15.6" Pavilion Laptop - 8GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Natural Silver - m6-1045dx

Feel free to suggest or comment on anything.
Thanks a lot guys!

Trucidation · 16 Jul 2012

Hard drive is no go, 5400 rpm. I've heard there are ones that perform "better" than 7200 rpm drives but I've yet to actually see them.

Personally, I'd have specific parts in mind, THEN find a laptop that has them, rather than going by price. Just to check with you guys though, since I don't live in the USA and aren't familiar with your prices, $1000 isn't a budget laptop, right? With that in mind:

- CPU looks okay, but last I checked was several months ago.
- Graphics card, eww, Intel? Nope.

Frankly, I just look at those two first. Everything else you can more or less fudge, like 4GB RAM instead of 8 (RAM is cheap I suppose, but if you're looking to shave $, 4 is sufficient).

-
When buying a new laptop, what I usually do is head over to notebookcheck.net to look at the current graphics card standings:
Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - Notebookcheck.net Tech

And the current CPU list:
Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist - Notebookcheck.net Tech

Either list generally links each item to a review that also links to several machines that use said item. So if you like, say, processor X, clicking on it will lead you to a review of that processor as well as further links to manufacturers that produce machines which use that processor. Quite useful.

I'm pretty sure there should be plenty of choices for your requirements - under $1k, not large screen - that don't force you to skimp out on a decent CPU/GFX combination. The HP you linked to isn't terrible, but I'm sure you could do better.

FuturDreamz · 16 Jul 2012

I think the main thing is to go and see what He can find. No use telling you the perfect laptop only to find out you can;t get it where you are.

the Intel HD 4000 graphics should be able to handle what you say his needs are.

All I can say is to make sure the hardware's first impressions is good (feel sturdy, has decent selection of ports, etc), then look online to see how that specific model fares in terms of reliability, battery, etc.

Oh, and make sure you try out the keyboard and trackpad, especially the latter. The nicest laptop can be ruined by a piss poor trackpad.

After that I'm pretty much in the same boat, but I'm waiting until September or so.