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Help with new laptop upgrade.

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Last response: March 11, 2012 1:53 PM in Systems

yogi6994

March 5, 2012 12:38:24 AM

Hello,
So I don't know of this is the right place to post this but I couldn't find another one related to this. Sorry if it is the wrong place.
I have been wanting to buy a MacBook pro, and today I was wondering, if I buy the stock model without more ram or different hdd, would it be better if I upgrade it myself? Would it be cheaper? If so, what brand of ram and hdd do you recommend?
Thanks in advance, I appreciate all of the help.

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phyco126

March 5, 2012 2:45:31 AM

If you want cheaper, get a regular laptop. More performance for less the cost of a mac. However, if you are dead set on getting a MacBook Pro, then get it with the least amount of RAM. You can always upgrade the RAM to the maximum that it will allow. As for HDD, yes you can upgrade that too. However, I'm not sure if prices are cheap enough on retail side to the point where you can save money on a HDD do-it-yourself upgrade since HDD prices are still high from all the flooding in Thailand last year.

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yogi6994

March 5, 2012 9:32:24 PM

What's a good reliable high performance laptop?

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phyco126

March 6, 2012 2:43:24 AM

You have your choices of Dell, Asus, MSI, HP, etc etc etc

I like Asus myself. Performance for price is pretty nice. However, you'll want to install a clean version of windows to rid the bloatware (but that is the same for basically any pre-built computer).

Question though, what exactly do you want to do with your laptop? Photoshop, video rendering, video editing, etc?

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yogi6994

March 6, 2012 12:49:24 PM

Video and photo editing, mild gaming. I've been looking at the dell latitude e6520.

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phyco126

March 9, 2012 11:47:15 PM

No reason to pay that kind of price for a Dell either. For much less you can get a quad core processor (which is what you want for Video and Photo-editing) and a dedicated GPU (for gaming).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168... <--- $1,200 for much better hardware than that dell or Apple. Unless that Dell comes with an IPS laptop screen....

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yogi6994

March 10, 2012 10:05:53 PM

Will the ASUS G53SX-NH71 be good for a computer science major? Or would i need the G73sw?

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phyco126

March 11, 2012 1:25:12 AM

The G73sw is slightly slower than the NH71, but does have a 1 TB HDD.

Keep in mind the G73sw is a massive laptop meant to be a desktop replacement. The NH71 is smaller and lighter with better specs all around (aside from the HDD being 500 GB instead of 1 TB). Still you, can always upgrade the HDD later. Personally, I would go for the NH71.

Edit: Oh, and the G73sw does have a blu-ray disk player, but do you really need one of those?

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yogi6994

March 11, 2012 3:15:59 AM

True I could just upgrade the hdd later, and it is a lot more portable. And I don't really need blu-ray so I might go with the NH71. How reliable and durable are asus laptops? I want something that will last me a while.

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phyco126

March 11, 2012 4:00:09 AM

That I cannot answer, but they seem pretty sturdy. With proper care I'm sure they would last a long while. My ex has an Asus, and she hasn't had any issues with it for sometime. Plenty of people have told me the same.