Looking to buy laptop...

wearybuyer

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Hi! Sorry if there are a billion posts just like this, but it seems like the best place to try...

I'm looking to get a laptop as a desktop replacement, but hopefully still have a degree of portability (bedroom to living room to neighbor's house, etc.).

I do a bit of video editing and photo work; nothing crazy professional, but I do like using Adobe After Effects to green screen things and edit video, and I use Photoshop CS2 (oi, I know I need to upgrade) on a daily basis.

I'm a casual gamer; I play WoW on an occasional basis when the urge strikes. Something that could handle potential cool games in the future would be nice, but I'm not the kind of guy that's trying to play Crysis on max settings (or whatever the current benchmark game of choice is).

If possible, I'd love to stay in the 15-17" range.

I'd love to stay under $1,200-$1,400 if possible, but I don't know what's typical. I've been doing Google searches for reviews and discussions on various laptops I come across, but I just don't know what's what.

Ultimately, I'm hoping for something that I can use to video blog, the occasional special effects video project ("hey, look, I learned how to rotoscope"), fairly heavy use of photoshop, and play games without my computer wanting to blow up.

Not to make the search any more difficult, but if there's a chance that there are businesses (be it Best Buy or the Apple store, etc.) with display units, I like being able to play around with it first. I'm too nervous about ordering things online without having first had a chance to see it...

Anyone happen to know of a possible dream machine out there? I know my budget and pickiness probably makes that difficult, but if anyone knew where to find something awesome, I figured it'd be here.

Thanks in advance! And if not, thanks for reading anyway.
 
Have you considered purchasing a Macbook Pro? They fit the description of what you're looking for perfectly.
 
Wow, thanks for the speedy responses :) Definitely have some options to check out...

Rohan - my concern with the Apple stuff I've seen (for my price range at least) is the shared video memory. I don't know about refurbished, but the new 15" medium-tier (with 256 dedicated) is $2K. If money weren't a concern though, I think I'd be interested in checking out a mac! Or am I wrong in thinking that dedicated video is a good thing for editing/gaming? Any thoughts are much appreciated.


Not to make the search any more difficult, but if there's a chance that there are businesses (be it Best Buy or the Apple store, etc.) with display units, I like being able to play around with it first. I'm too nervous about ordering things online without having first had a chance to see it...
(Added this to the first post.)
 
um not gunna lie, but if u go to a store to buy, you'd probably get raked over the coals with price. but what i like to do is to find a computer online i really want, find a store like best buy or w/e that has the same one, an check it out there, then buy online from the other place ;) lol
 
You need one of these: HP - Pavilion Laptop dv7-1275dx

It has plenty of memory, a large drive, fast CPU and a very nice graphics card capable of handling many of today's games at playable rates.

This one looks pretty sweet.

While looking around at reviews of that HP, I found stuff about this Gateway as well:

http://www.gateway.com/systems/product/529668231.php

Gateway® P-7805u FX Edition


Any thoughts on that vs. the HP?

um not gunna lie, but if u go to a store to buy, you'd probably get raked over the coals with price. but what i like to do is to find a computer online i really want, find a store like best buy or w/e that has the same one, an check it out there, then buy online from the other place ;) lol


Oh totally, that's exactly what I meant :) I don't necessarily want to -buy- from the store, but I do like getting to mess around with a product before I get it, so a display unit would be sweet (if possible).
 
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