Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Grimlocke]

Keep in mind: 'Not skimping on' does not mean 'get the most expensive one'. It means 'don't get the cheapest one'.

And honestly, that goes for all them components, except maybe memory which is fairly interchangeable in most cases.

[wierd]

That's why I pointed out a 600 to 800$ laptop at the 400 price point that is factory refurb discounted.  The video is the only really skimpy thing, and even that won't be "terrible", like you would get in a 200$ Chromebook. Just mediocre.

[kilakan]

From personal experience I'd recommend against a HP laptop for gaming.  My friends and me have gone through a fair number of laptops over the years, and it seems every single HP one has a cooling system problem.  It's the sort of issue that doesn't matter initially but will kill the laptop after a year or two.

[nenjin]

Refurbs are sketchy, IMO. Never had one go without problems for more than 2 years.

[BigD145]

HP and Dell are garbage. Alienware, aka Dell, will burn themselves out rather quickly. The hardware just doesn't last.

[wierd]

Laptops are not durable goods. The battery chemistry alone will suffer degradation after 3 years, even in storage.

They are built for mass manufacture, and have planned end of life as part of their design objectives.

The few lines specializing in durability do not target performance. Panasonic tough books are a good example.

Laptops are not made to be durable, certainly not high performance ones.

[BigD145]

You get a power cable just like you'd get with any desktop computer. I've had cooling systems fail after the battery died but before anything else failed and that was 5 years after purchase and several dozen case openings plus some soldering to the mainboard to expand USB ports. New cooling and I could get a 15+ year old durable computer running. That's a bit extreme buuuuuuuut...

Yes, the expensive shitty ones are not meant to last. A computer that burns itself out in 6-12 months is unacceptable. When your battery lasts longer than your power supply or heat sink, that too is unacceptable. When your electronics self destruct the day after the 1 year warranty runs out, that's unacceptable. Not all companies do that. Buy the one with the longer shelf life, unless you like reconfiguring your computer to your use and have disposable income in the quadruple digits.