Why rule out the best products on the market?

Because they're overpriced and don't run the current generation of games.

I had a mac for two and a half years and I didn't find the experience enjoyable.

and what tolstoy said

Try starting here, Santa:

http://www.newegg.com/Laptops-Notebooks/SubCategory/ID-32

@SC

Get a Lenovo, if you can afford it. They have excellent build quality, little bloatware, amazing customer support, and they look beautiful. I've had many Lenovos and recommended them to at least a half dozen people. I've never had any complaints.

If Lenovo is a bit out of your price range, your next best bet is Asus.

If you give me an idea what you'd like to do with it (travel, gaming, etc), I can recommend specific models.

The biggest key to laptop or desktop longevity is to buy as much memory (RAM) as you can afford. Everything else is secondary.

Incorrect. You need a good CPU and GPU. RAM can easily be added to a laptop afterwards.

SC, what exactly do the current generation of games encompass, because my Lenovo can run BF3 (albeit at 30 fps on low settings).

+1 to a Lenovo. Also, they have excellent keyboards, and the IdeaPad series from Lenovo have really good discrete graphics cards that will be capable of playing games on the market.

Especially for these games, you need a good GPU to get quality frame rates as games are becoming more GPU-intensive...the last thing you want is a GPU bottleneck with a quad-core processor and Intel integrated HD 4000 Graphics :P

Don't tell me I'm incorrect. The differences in CPU's nowadays are negligible. For me, as a professional software engineer (ie I know wtf I am talking about), the screen resolution is very important, but I didn't mention that to him because he's a casual user.

I can second the Lenovo recommendation, even though they're better known for productivity than gaming. Their quality is very good for the money. RAM can easily be upgraded, so don't worry about that, but graphic processing and a powerful CPU are really what you want.

Especially for laptops, Mapu, there is a strong difference between an i3 dual-core processor and an i7 quad core processor. The i3 won't be able to handle games efficiently due to a lack of cores and also a slower clock speed.

I've had mixed experiences with my Lenovo (idea pad Y510).

Granted, it's pretty old now but it's had fan issues for a while. The computer regularly overheats and will shutdown if I'm multitasking much on it. The fan has gotten so bad now that I often can't watch TV shows on it because I can't hear it over the racket going on in my laptop.

I'm not sure if that's really an indictment of the laptop or my laptop maintenance.

Well, since we're throwing around titles, I have an MS in Electrical Engineering.

Buying as much RAM as you can afford is over simplistic and bad advice.

Most Laptops come with integrated GPUs, which are devastating if you want to play any games. That is more important than RAM. RAM also won't help you when you buy a cheap CPU with a shit Cache, which are always offered on laptops and people often buy mistakenly.

Again, RAM is important, but you can buy more at *any* time and replace it yourself or hire someone else to do it for little money. Have you ever trying to add a discrete GPU to a laptop Mobo with onboard graphics?

Lenovo customer service is pretty responsive, especially since their call center is in Georgia. Did you call into service to have it repaired Yonni?

@Yonni

How old is your Lenovo?

Feel free to get one of those tablet-slash-laptops and tell me how they are… I'd like to experiment with that sometime but it's always nice if someone else will waste their time and money for my own benefit because it means I don't have to. :)

And if you aren't getting a Mac, you should get something that runs Linux. That's all I know.

@Abge, you can only add a discrete GPU to a laptop by going through the mobo right? Or I guess you can buy an external GPU, but those are really expensive. I'm more of a desktop guy...

You only need 4 GB of RAM. But that's really standard across the board for laptops. Of course, 8 GB is advisable as you'll have more room for playing your games/multitasking.

bo -1

He said he wants to run games. Linux is nice, but not always the solution.

Linux is terrible for gaming. Companies are only now trying to adapt to Linux because of its increased popularity, but for right now, just go with Win7 (or 8 if you prefer).

@acmac

Yes, my point was it can't be done.

I would recommend 8GB, especially since Win8 seems to finally allocate RAM correctly.

Nah, I just keep saying that I'm going to buy a new laptop. We're well trained to expect obsolescence every few years.

I did call them once when I accidently pushed the monitor too far back and cracked the case. They were very helpful and replaced it for next to nothing (or free? can't remember). The replacement had a few misaligned keys that stuck (but who the hell uses F10 anyway?) but I've got to give them credit for their responsiveness.

I guess someone took the "doesn't have to be optimum quality" as a completely useless line. Games aren't the best part of a computer. They should last a lot longer than 3 1/2 years whether you game on it or not.

lol

Linux has 2 gaming settings: Works after hours of BS or doesn't work after hours of BS. There is no middle ground.

My first Lenovo is over 6 years old and it still works mostly fine.

abge knows his shit. RAM is important, but the best you can say is that it is the easiest and often most effective CHEAP upgrade you can make.

@SC

Could you list a couple games you'd like to play, to help us better understand what you're looking for?

Well I'm not a huge FPS person, and If I want to shoot stuff up I'll just get a consol (another thread entirely). For computer gaming I mostly do grand strategy or tactics based games (looking at XCOM right now and Rome II total war down the road also really like Pandora games.) That being said, now that I actually work and live in an active environment, my time for gaming has plummeted.

But overall here are my priorities.

1. Travel friendly (size isn't too huge, not to heavy, long battery life)
2. Not too expensive.
3. Gaming capable (able to at least run the games I mention above, even if not well)
4. Durable (I want this thing to last me at least 3 years and not fall apart and require customer service ever 6 months like my dell, although I like Dells)

If those are all possible