Looking for laptop with specific features

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Soldato
Joined
2 Dec 2006
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Hey guys, for some reason my laptop seems to have randomly died. I think I did something stupid while drunk. Either way I need a new one. It was a Dell studio 16 xps and I loved the thing so I'm looking for something similar with the following features:

-15" screen (or 15.4", what ever the true size is)
- Resolution of 1080p, can't stand low res 15" screens.
- Light weight
- Capable of running games, not maxing them out. My laptop used to run l4d2, m2tw just fine etc. Just for when I don't have a pc available.

Suggestions? My budget is open to reason but I'd like to make it not too expensive. My studio 16 xps was just a tad over £1000 and I really don't want to pay that again as my pc is more than capable gaming anyway.
 
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Seriously guys. I could really use some help :/. Dell seem to be one of the few offering it and they aren't good laptops and MSI laptops are very hard to get with specific spec as they don't have an msi dealer. Going to try contacting ocuk about it.
 
Do more research into it?

With a 1080p resolution and a 15inch screen, battery life won't be fantastic at all.

Size/weigh up your options and see what you get.

I'd rather have more battery life and say a xxxx x 768/900p resolution instead of shoody battery life and then huge resolution and screen.

Commuting?

University or College studies?

Depends on what it will be used for, as you have said already your main pc rig will be doing the majority of the gaming. So having this, i assume it will be for web browsing/music/films and stuff on the go, where battery life (in my own opinion) is more important.

My current laptop only has around 3 hour battery life on power saver mode, brightness lowered and just WiFi.

Its for taking to uni when i need to and plugging it in for a secondary workspace or when in the library and im doing an essay or extending my notes with some books.

If all of the above are what you are looking for.

Try a Macbook Air 13". However might be slightly out of your budget.

Possibly look at the Lenovo x121e or x220 models. They both have exceptional battery life for a windows netbook/notebook at around 7-9 hours i think. Decent screen real-estate and both aren't slouches when it comes to performance, however may not play top games on medium settings, but enough on low for you to be comfortable gaming.

If none of these are what you are looking for.

Camp on the Dell Outlet for a decent specced 14-16 inch laptop with 1080p resolution and dedicated nvidia 55m graphics card.

Just need to sit about, do some reading, and then grab your bargain as it arrives.

Good luck :)
 
Oh I can assure you I am doing my reading. About 5 hours solid of it now. I can deal with 3 hours, my previous laptop was 2 and a half hours but I'm looking at the new xps 15z and most people are quoting 6 hours and 20 minutes, some as high as 8 hours. Unfortunately it's going to be over £1000 but I guess for the specific spec I want I don't really have a choice.

I don't think I could ever not have a 1080p screen unfortunately. I've been running 1920x1200 on my pc and 1080p on my laptop now for well over 5 years. It's just too unnatural for me to loose the screen space and my eyes are good enough to not need to increase the size of things to read.

The gaming aspect of the laptop is not really important to me. It's nice to have but only as a backup for when I'm really bored without a pc. My laptop maybe gets gamed on about 1-2 weeks a year. It just happens that it seems impossible to get a 1080p laptop that can't handle games to some degree.

I keep finding my self reading about the mac equivilants and they are great pieces of kit but I can't help but feel royally ripped off by the prices for the spec I'd be looking for. The dell xps 15z is the only real competitor to the macbook pro and even then it only competes because it's so much cheaper. The build quality can't compare. However I'm not sure i'm really interested in the mac OS.

I am currently camping the outlet like you say but I reckon tomorrow I'm going to ring up and try and haggle a xps 15z with a few upgrades for under a grand. See what happens. I know people managed to get free £200 screen upgrades in the past from dell when ringing up.

Cheers for the help. I would love to hear of any other alternatives to the xps 15z but so far I've not found any. My dad uses a lenovo x220 but I have never really been a fan of it.

My only quibbles about the 15z are the price and apparently the keyboard and speakers could be improved, much like my studio 16 xps, which has pretty much perfect speakers and keyboard. Ah well. It is surprisingly heavy considering how thin it is too.

Thanks for the input.

:EDIT:

Thinking of waiting for the Samsung 7 series instead:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/samsung-series-7-700z-700z3a_Laptop_review
 
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xb8browney said:
Dell 15z is the only one I know of with 1080p and it's an extra addon.
Click to expand...

There are some others, but you have to pay well over £1K with the odd exception including the Clevo based systems. A lot of the top spec business systems offer 1080 but you tend to loose the gaming capability which was a requirement here as they offer integrated graphics or CAD based workstation graphics.

I would go 1366 and then use an external monitor. Precision productivity work on a 15" laptop that would require a 1080 screen is pretty hard going at the best of times anyway due to screen size. I am thinking of AutoCAD / Creative Suite etc where plugging into a 22"-24" external monitor is a much better way to go.
 
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Cheers for the email scrutinize, was very helpful. Yeah it does seem that no one does 1080p resolutions apart from custom laptops. Which I find so odd. I never had any trouble with size issues running two pages next to each other, maybe I have super vision and I never knew it :O.

I don't really do anything like autocad or photoshoping. I literally just can't stand the low resolution of most 15" screens. When I use other peoples laptops it feels horrible because I've just not used that lower resolution in such a long time now.

1600x900 is probably good enough though. The samsung series 7 looks incredible so I'm going to hold out to see what prices and specs it comes out with and then make my decision. From the looks of it you might be able to get an ssd in it for under a grand. If so, thats a killer price for what it offers. I love the idea of the frosted glass touch pad too, sounds very nice to use:

http://www.trustedreviews.com/samsung-series-7-700z-700z3a_Laptop_review

I've been put off the 15z due to it apparently having a terrible keyboard.
 
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