Due to a fine motor skill deficiency (nothing big, I'm happy to report- my handwriting's not that pretty and I'm a klutz but that's about it), I've been writing my school assignments on some variety of electronic device since sixth grade at the age of nine. At first it was an Alphasmart, which was sort of a mini-laptop that could only do word processing and had an amazingly shitty screen. In ninth grade I updated to a really old laptop which took ten minutes to boot, so it was quickly replaced by a netbook. The netbook did what it needed to do- writing my papers and playing some not very computer-intensive games- pretty well. I had two of the same model (man, I was hard on my gadgets) before my parents got me a $450 Toshiba PSC08U-06P038 model, which is what I'm typing this on.
It's been a faithful laptop, surviving one time where the hinges got shot to hell (my fault- I take better care of it now). In the past few weeks, though, it's started to decay. In September, for example, it could play Dwarf Fortress fine. Now FPS is extremely jumpy, and the game's unplayable. iTunes takes a while to find songs. Chrome crashes every couple of hours. Luckily I don't have any word processing that I need to do, since I'm not at school and don't have a job, but it's starting to get kind of obnoxious. My estimate is that it might last another few months before finally succumbing to something.
Luckily, fate has provided. As I believe I've mentioned, in just over a week I'm flying to Brazil to spend the rest of an aborted gap year, and I'll not be taking my laptop with me. Firstly, it'll get in the way of my social life (or could), my family will have a computer I can use, and- this was the condition I set out to my mother when she suggested this- I'll be getting an external before I go so I can save all my games, anime and music.
When I come back, I'll be starting college at the University of Oklahoma. In a successful bid to attract National Merit Scholars, OU has provided them with a very generous scholarship package, and I will therefore be one of over six hundred. Among the many, many benefits of this scholarship package is a $1500 laptop allowance.
So, basically, this laptop is dying, but at just the right time since I'll be kissing goodbye to it this week. This means that I need to start looking at laptops. Since the allowance is just for laptops, there's no point in spending a penny less than $1500. On the other hand, I can only subsidize something slightly better up to the tune of, let's say, an extra $250. So whatever I buy should be at or above $1500 and certainly less than $1750.
What do I need? Well, any laptop worth its salt will be able to write my papers, so as long as I can install OpenOffice on it. Otherwise:
-I am a gamer, but I am not a graphics snob. I'm unlikely to be playing anything more advanced than 2008-2009, so the card should play games that came out then. A good graphics card is of course useful, but it can get away with being one or two notches below top-of-the-line.
-On the other hand, a good processor is paramount. Mostly for Dwarf Fortress, although a good processor pays off all sorts of places.
-It needs to have a relatively spacious hard drive. My current is 285 gigs big, but my new laptop should have AT MINIMUM five hundred gigs available and ideally a terabyte. I can't see myself using more than one terabyte, but it's always good to have.
-It must have a numpad for gaming.
-It doesn't need to be made of steel, because I've learned a thing or two about taking care of laptops (carry it in a sleeve!), but it shouldn't fall apart at the drop of a hat because Accidents Happen.
-It should not be butt-ugly (but doesn't need to look any better than average either), it can get away with being a little bit heavy but can't be a brick, and it needs to be fairly long-lived.
So I'm looking for suggestions. I have no brand loyalties. My Toshiba has served me well, but one of my meatspace friends who is more informed in these matters than I warns me that Toshibas generally have lifespan problems. I'm open to anything, really (though this is an all-purpose laptop, and I don't want a laptop that is Just for Gamers).
EDIT: Another, smaller question: the processor on this laptop is a Pentium Dual-Core CPU T4500. How much better would a 3rd generation Intel i7 be?
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Topic: Time for a new laptop. (Read 1148 times)