Buying a laptop..Advice wanted :)

Indestructable

Hi,
I am going off to college in the next 2 weeks and I am in desperate need of a new laptop. I'd expect it to be used for watching videos, light gaming, internet, keeping in touch with family and college work. It won't be leaving my house.

I have a budget of around 500 euro. Your advice on laptops and where to buy them would be greatly appreciated.
Links would be awesome!!

Thanks

marco_polo

What sort of games will you be playing?

These are some decent 15" laptops with intergrated intel graphics which would be of for older of fairly undemanding games.

Acer 5750

Samsung RV520

Asus K53

Lennovo G570 / Z570

This is a good 17"

HP Pavillion G7

If you need a dedicated graphics card for better gaming performance then you will probably have to look at previous generation i3 (like the i3-370/380, not much difference in performance TBH the main advantage of the newer chips is lower power, and better integrated graphics, which doesn't matter so much if you are getting a dedicated card), or else up the budget bu 50 -100 euros.

Tyrant^

Asus 17.3" X73SV-TY088V-NL - i5 2410/4GB/500GB

Excellent value right there, has a very decent nvidia 540m graphics card. Bigger screen than you require but is that a bad thing ? 2nd generation i5 processor, 4GB DDR3, 500GB Hard drive
But €80 over budget... took me awhile to find this I think its priced wrong...

Some benchmarks for the 540m graphics card
Benchmarks

Crysis 2 on Ultra settings - 8 frames per second ! whoa...
Cod MW2 - high settings - 50 FPS
SC2 - high settings - 40 FPS

Some comparisons :
Asus, smaller screen, slightly bigger HD, inferior 520m graphics card, price is the same €580

MSI , slightly bigger HD, inferior 520m graphics, €800

Toshiba, smaller screen, bigger HD, more RAM (8GB, overkill), intel graphics (crap), €660

Acer, everything is worse... , €610

Indestructable

Thanks for your replies. I won't be going mad into the gaming on it, mainly on basic settings and nothing to heavy.
I am loving the one on Komplett.ie. Looks great.
Thanks again!

Tyrant^

Indestructable wrote: »

Thanks for your replies. I won't be going mad into the gaming on it, mainly on basic settings and nothing to heavy.
I am loving the one on Komplett.ie. Looks great.
Thanks again!

I ordered one... the 17" screen is big and can be abit awkward. Ok if your not looking for something mobile. The the laptop itself is not that heavy. Good sized keyboard it even has a numpad ! Keyboard is american layout though.
Plays Left 4 Dead silky smooth.