Buying a Laptop. :D

Soooo. I'm looking for some advice. I just need a laptop that can run SC2 on recommended. Any recommendations as to brand?
I'm looking for around a price range of 500 - 900

Thanks guys.

I recommend ASUS and Lenovo, good quality, good battery life. Especially the Thinkpad series from Lenovo, because Lenovo bought the IBM PC manufacturer department, and IBM Thinkpads are like... the best laptops ever, for business applications anyways, though they are pretty costly.

ASUS laptops are good all round, design, specs, value, performance, battery life, cost.

Acer/Gateway/E-Machines (3 brands, but they are all really the same company, Acer) laptops are cheap, but they are cheap in material too (my friend's Acer died in less than 2 years, the northbridge fried), and have average battery life. HP/Compaq (again, they are the same company, HP - Hewlett Packard) laptops are decent in design and are fairly inexpensive, but their battery life is only average. Toshiba laptops are decent as well.

I don't know what's considered cheap in America, nor do I know what kind of hardware is needed for SC2, but I'll give a couple of recommendations that I see from Newegg.com:

This looks pretty good
So does this
$950, but great for the price point IMO

Hope this helps a bit.

Ooh thanks for the advice.

I'm actually from Canada. I'm thinking of a Sony Viao atm. i5 processor Nvidia 310 graphics which is pretty much all I need for SC2.

From what I've heard, Sony Vaios are prestigious and don't have very good value. An Nvidia GeForce 310M is rather a weak GPU (though a big step up from the Intel integrated crap), and from what I've seen from SC2, you'll want a decent GPU to play it on high detail (maybe a 340M, if it exists).

Here's a benchmark of the 310M
Here's the 320M, as you can see, it is a lot better than the 310M
The GT 335M is even better, it is a dedicated card

The ATI Radeon HD 5730 is much better than the above cards

But since you live in Canada, it makes my life easier at recommending laptops.

Hey look, a similar laptop to the $950 USD one
Since Newegg.com doesn't ship to Canada, it's $1080

If you really can't step out of the price range then...

I guess this is decent

Though, I wouldn't settle for any less than a GT 330 (the ATI equivalent is roughly a Radeon HD 4650) if I wanted a gaming laptop.

The graphics card is good but the i3 is kind of a setback.

at the moment I'll only be using it to play SC2 so it's not that much of a gaming laptop per say. Yeah I've heard that about Sony too. But every laptop pretty much uses the same chip manufacturers now anyways. :X

yeah I can't step out of that price range unless I starve next year. :X First year of uni. :3

The i3 isn't as much a setback as Intel wants you to believe. The difference is like 5% or something between it and a Core i5 in real world applications, the GPU is far more important. In fact, most the time, the CPU will be at the minimum multiplier due to EIST anyways.

Here is the Core i5 450M, one of the most commonly found i5's
And this is the Core i3 350M, one of the most commonly found i3's and the one that is in the ASUS

Ah thanks for all the help.

Anyone know what are the must needed downloads? such as directx etc etc.

Usually, nothing.
They tend to come shipped with all the software needed.
Though, you will have to install your own firewall and antivirus unless you want to be stuck with that 60 day Norton/McAfee trial.

I like this badboy right here. http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?poid=478185 its $1399 USD

Intel® Core™ i7-740QM Processor
Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium
4GB DDR3 memory
500GB hard drive
1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® 360M
Blu-ray Disc™ and DVD SuperMulti drive
LED backlit keyboard
1680x945 native resolution
Bluetooth®
802.11n wireless
10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet
HDMI output
Integrated webcam
harman/kardon® stereo speakers

(Simplified Specs)

Amazon has it for 100 dollars cheaper. ^^

(I just wish it would show me the optical drive side of the laptop)

My parents wont let me get an Alienware ><, To be honest... I dont know how trustworthy their laptops are now that Dell bought them out.

Ooh thanks for the advice.

I'm actually from Canada. I'm thinking of a Sony Viao atm. i5 processor Nvidia 310 graphics which is pretty much all I need for SC2.

Every time I think of Vaio I think about this thread. Moot point since you want to use it for SC2 and not Maplestory, but still something to consider.