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[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Current laptop has its charging capabilities completely screwed up in a way that would cost a fair amount of money to fix, and as its specs are quite outdated (1.8 kHz dual core), I'm now in the market for a new laptop.  Got a roughly $700 price range to work with.  Be nice if I could salvage the RAM from the old laptop to put in the new (Samsung 4GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600S-09-11-F3) to make the new even better, but not a deal breaker if it can't be added.  As for OS, would prefer Windows 7, but if I can get the old laptop's hdd converted to a external hard drive that I can boot from on occasion, then OS wouldn't matter as I can replace it with a Linux distribution.

Lot to ask for others to do searching for me, but I don't really know where to search, and even if I did, my only option is a phone.  Not the best platform to be searching stuff on.  This post took me roughly half an hour, for example.

[TheBiggerFish]

Microcenter is a good store.  I don't know if they'll have what you want, though.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Microcenter is a good store.  I don't know if they'll have what you want, though.

Actually managed to spot this one.  May not be the best deal possible, but it looks to be a pretty good one.  Picked up a one year warranty on it as well as a just in case measure.  Did put it a little above the desired price range, but still, it's an over $1400 laptop for about $700.

[Toxicshadow]

Get a thinkpad. They don't have that ridiculous edgy ""gamer"" look, and they still tend to have good specs. They're very well built laptops. I plan to get a refurbished business one (which are usually much cheaper and in good condition) and use it for gnu/linux to do development stuff.

[BigD145]

RAM typically moves too quickly to just move it from computer to computer. Lenovo does tend to offer Linux as an option but usually in their AMD lines. Thinkpads are quite good IF you never play games. They are designed around business usage. ASUS is the best of the bottom line but support drops off inside the first year of release of a model. Toshiba has some good offerings. Stay away from pretty much every other company.

[martinuzz]

My experience with ASUS laptops is good. The medium to sub-high spec laptops (say 750-1000 euro price range) are very durable. My previous one lasted 8 years, and would possibly still work if I hadn't accidentally cracked the screen and spilled a second cup of coffee over it. My current one is nearly 6 years old now, with no issues (knocks on wood). Can't comment on battery life though, since I always have mine plugged into the wall. No idea about the expensive RoG laptops ASUS makes, they're beyond my price range.

Also, if you're not really looking for gaming, ASUS has a line, I think it's called Zen-something, that leaves out the NVidia 3d card (it does have Intel integrated graphics though).

EDIT: I can't comment on either the laptop's keyboard or touchpad either, because the first thing I do with a laptop is buy a keyboard and mouse to go with it 

[Mesa]

Get a thinkpad. They don't have that ridiculous edgy ""gamer"" look, and they still tend to have good specs. They're very well built laptops. I plan to get a refurbished business one (which are usually much cheaper and in good condition) and use it for gnu/linux to do development stuff.

Seconding this.
I've got a secondhand Thinkpad X1 (not Yoga, not Carbon, just...X1. Makes it hard to find proper info about it, admittedly.), and it's pretty decent, barring the apparently dreadful battery life in this particular model and in its particular condition. Not a dealbreaker for me personally as I don't spend a lot of time away from a power outlet anyway, but YMMV.

Also seconding slapping Linux onto it. Unless you need something that's only on Windows, or want to do at least semi-serious gaming (...on a laptop without a discrete GPU though?), Thinkpads have some of the best Linux support you can realistically get as far as laptops go.

[wierd]

Anything that can run on integrated intel graphics (in a mobile processor) can be pretty much run without hiccup on linux + WINE these days.  Hell, WINE can run a lot of stuff these days. The major issue with running a game in linux is the dreadful DRM (and its expectation to do windows kernel mode stuff!!) that is often baked into games.  Given the weaksauce graphics, you are pretty much stuck with older games that would even be sensible to try-- so anything from GOG (which has that DRM shit ripped out, legitimately) will likely "Just work."

I have a small handful of titles that I play on my ultra weaksauce chromebook (Running GalliumOS, a fork of Ubuntu for chromebooks) from GOG that work just fine. Gaming on Linux is not that terrible, really, if you can ditch the DRM and copy protection bullshit. (Steam for windows works fine in Wine, and works as expected-- If you want an alternative to GOG's stand alone DRM-Free game packages.)

Even with a really rockin system, Linux is still reasonable at modern titles too, as long as they follow API spec for DirectX and pals. (It's when there is "undocumented shit" like what the DRM uses that there are problems.)

[heydude6]

No idea about the expensive RoG laptops ASUS makes, they're beyond my price range.

Ooh, I own one! I can comment!

So, I bought mine on a Black Friday sale for $1500 USD (the reason why it was so cheap was due to the fact that it was a previous generation model). As you can probably guess, I haven't owned it for too long so I can't comment on it's life-span, but I can talk about the general experience of owning it.

As a gaming PC, it's great. It has a 1080p monitor, runs most AAA games on high-ultra at 60fps (not 120 unfortunately, unless it's an old game). Load times are fast (except for Rainbow six siege for some reason) and it has over a terabyte of hardrives space. Has 32 GB of ram (Honestly, it's way too much. I wish they reduced it to 16GB and made the computer itself cheaper).

As a laptop for work, it has several flaws. The biggest one is it's size, this thing is so bulky and massive that there is no way you will casually carry it around in a bag. The portability is best used for bringing it to a friend's house for LAN parties or for bringing it somewhere where you are staying overnight (not good for University). Hard to find laptop bags large enough for it.

Another flaw is it's look. Unfortunately it has that "edgy gamer look" toxic shadow mentioned so it may not be the best for a professional environment. The fan is on the back which is great for cooling(back is less likely to be blocked by an obstruction) but it makes it look like a pimp car. Also, sound system is not great unfortunately, there are many post-processing filters (that are easy to turn off thankfully) and every time you plug in headphones, you have to click on a confirmation menu to get them to start working. This cannot be turned off to my knowledge.

Finally, bloatware. These things are filled with a ton of bloatware that you definitely want to dedicate time to cleaning out but it shouldn't take longer than an hour. I have not succeeded in removing all of it yet, but I removed most of it.

Anyway, that's me gushing about a laptop you can't afford, sorry about that. Martinuzz brought it up so I wanted to share my perspective. If you want more advice, there was a conversation in the "Generic computer advice" thread all about laptops sometime in December. Lot's of great advice there.

Ps: One last thing, make sure the laptop you buy does not have windows single language edition on it. It sucks and you'll have to repurchase a proper copy of windows if you accidentally get a laptop with it installed.

[BigD145]

I own a Lenovo y700. Works pretty well. I've run ARK, GTA 5, and Space Engineers on it but certainly not at max settings. It's fairly heavy but can fit in a backpack without too much issue. Battery life is 2-3 hours while using everything it has to offer. The charge plug is solid. I have dropped it on hard tile two times, bending some metal, and it continues to run fine. I should probably take it apart and rebend those bits back into place...