New laptop for college

I'm starting college in the fall, and I'm looking for a new laptop. When would be the best time to buy a new laptop? In the spring or in the fall? Anyway, here's what I'm looking for:

1. What is your budget?
Under $1500 or so

2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering?
I don't want a size that is too small, or too big. However, I hopefully will have a monitor to hook up to the laptop. This monitor will either be a 22" or 24". So this will contribute to the screen size.

3. What screen resolution do you want?
With the monitor that I will hopefully hook up, I want to run at least 1920x1200.

4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop?
I'm looking for at a desktop replacement which is not too hard to carry around, if that makes any sense.

5. How much battery life do you need?
Above average, if that is possible with the configuration that I'm looking at. But not too short.

6. Do you want to play games with your laptop? If so then please list the games that you want to with the settings that you want for these games. (Low,Medium or High)?
I hope to be able to play games on this laptop. I want to be able to play games such as Age of Empires III, Starcraft II, and World of Warcraft on medium-high settings. I want to have decent FPS while playing WoW.

7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo / Video editing,watching movies, Etc.)
I plan to have this laptop be my main media source, so I want it to be able to be powerful enough to watch movies in good clarity.

8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need?
A 500g hard drive should be big enough. 1TB would be fantastic, but that would make the price of the laptop quite a bit more expensive.

9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links.
None so far.

10. How long do you want to keep your laptop?
I want to keep this laptop though college, and hopefully for a while after.

11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer,Bluray ROM/Writer,Etc ?
I want a DVD ROM/Writer. I'm not especially interested in blu-ray.

12. Please tell us about the brands that you prefer to buy from them and the brands that you don't like and explain the reasons.
I don't want to own a Mac, as those are quite overpriced. I want to try to stay from Dell, as I haven't had much luck with them over the past few years. Their quality has gone downhill over the past decade. At least that is how I experienced them. Although if the laptops that are rated high and fit my specifications, I'd consider it. Don't put Dell completely out of the running quite yet.

13. What country do you live in?
I live in the United States.

14. Please tell us any additional information if needed.
I also will be doing some music composing on this laptop, and the programs and instruments I use will require a great amount of RAM and processing power. If I'm gaming, this will already be there, but I thought I'd put it out there just in case.


Any help with this would be great. Hopefully I provided enough information for you guys to make a good recommendation. If the price goes over by a little, it wouldn't be that much of a problem, but I hope to keep this as cheap as possible.

Thanks!

Welcome to the forums !
Have a look at Sager NP8130.
It's got a full HD display,second gen Core i CPUs along with GTX 460M and 2-3hrs of battery life
http://www.xoticpc.com/sager-np813 [...] -2973.html

You can help us out more, can't you? What is the maximum size and weight you're willing to tote around?

Does your budget also include the cost of an external monitor?

Typically, when we say size we mean the screen size of your laptop. It is understandable that that does not mean much to you as you have an external monitor, though you still may wish to consider that size.

As for performance, you will not get anything with decent performance that weighs less than 6 pounds. The Sager NP8130 that Maziar linked weighs 6.83lbs with the battery pack in, with dimensions of 14.80" (w) x 10.08" (d) x 1.38" ~ 1.69" (h). This is actually small and light for its performance. The equivilent ASUS model - the G53 - weighs in at 7.5lbs, with dimensions of 15"x11.42"x2.36". The whole "desktop replacement" concept is a laptop that is perhaps not the easiest to move about, having the performance power of a desktop computer.

The resolution that is displayed through your external screen is dependent on your external screen. Your graphics card should be able to output any resolution, but your screen needs to have enough pixels to take it.

I would say you cannot go wrong with any of the Sager models from Xotic PC. You just need to choose the one with the best performance-weight-price to suit you.
http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gami [...] 1_162.html

-Klosteral

"Sager gaming laptops are built like a tank" is the quote you'll get from Sager owners
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sa [...] ntrol.html

Well go for sager nothing beats it at that price point........