[Solved] Laptop for college and gaming ~$1000-1500

1. What is your budget? $1500 max, preferably around $1000.
2. What is the size of the notebook that you are considering? The biggest possible, 17.3"?
3. What screen resolution do you want? The biggest possible, 1920x1080?
4. Do you need a portable or desktop replacement laptop? Desktop replacement.
5. How much battery life do you need? As much as possible for such a power-hungry laptop.
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)? Yes. Starcraft II, World of Warcraft, and other similar games at the highest I possibly can.
7. What other tasks do you want to do with your laptop? (Photo/Video editing, Etc.) Maybe some Photoshop and other Adobe products. Multimedia laptop, watching movies, etc. Heavy web browsing.
8. How much storage (Hard Drive capacity) do you need? Doesn't really matter. As long as it's 7200RPM, lowest offered is fine.
9. If you are considering specific sites to buy from, please post their links. Not really. I love the looks of HP.
10. How long do you want to keep your laptop? Doesn't matter. Anything I buy will last me more than a year and that's all I care about.
11. What kind of Optical drive do you need? DVD ROM/Writer, Bluray ROM/Writer, Etc? Blu-rat drive would be nice, but otherwise just a DVD burner is fine.
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 love HP! They make amazing looking laptops!
13. What country do you live in? USA.
14. Please tell us any additional information if needed. See below.

I've been looking at the HP dv7tqe for quite a while now. Every once a while there is a 30% off coupon that makes it around $1000 for a really nice laptop. This coupon is available right now, so I'm kind of in a hurry if I decide to get this laptop as the coupon won't last long. Link

I've also been looking at the HP Envy 17, which offers the same coupon (currently, too). Link These won't last very long.

I should mention that the feel of the touchpad is important to me. A lot of the touchpads that I've felt on laptops are horrible and really bother me. Unfortunately, there's not really any way to discuss this, so I might just have to endure a bad pad.

Looks really matter to me, too. The "gamer-style" Alienware laptops look horrible. I want something that looks modern and sleek.

What's really important to me is a large screen, with a huge battery to support it for a long time. While also having the performance to play games and the RAM for that as well as heavy web browsing. The dv7tqe comes with a free 8GB RAM upgrade, which is as much as my desktop comes with, and is plenty. It also comes with 6770m (I believe) that should be plenty to play the games and play blu-ray movies. I would prefer 1080p resolution.

Please help me! Thanks in advance!!
Steffan

Any help?

So out of everything available right now, you would recommend the dv7tqe?

Other brands with competitive laptops, maybe? I've checked out HP, Dell, and Lenovo so far..

That ASUS laptop looks horrible.

Thanks for all the help, by the way!

I don't really like anything from MSI, either. They're ugly.

The custom builders like Sager aren't my style, either.

What do you think of the HP Envy 17?

Anything from Dell, and these two laptops from HP. I can't decide!

I think either the Dell XPS 17 & HP dv7tqe are pretty much interchangeable in features and performance. They're premium all around & home entertainment options.
You can safely go with which ever one is less expensive. Or which you like the best. Or which one wins a coin toss.

Your welcome.
Once you've had a chance to work with your laptop for a while - let us know how it's working out for you.