Buying a laptop

[SolicShooter]

So yeahhhh I'm heading to college this year and getting a laptop from my folks. Sadly I'm pretty hopeless when it comes to identifying what makes a laptop a good buy. My folks are too, although they pretend they aren't. My budget is around 1000 euro's and I'm looking for a laptop that can smoothly run games like League of Legends on average settings and do the easy stuff like making powerpoint presentations for school. So this topic is for any tips, recommendations, should I buy online or in store, assemble myself or readymade, buy from which brand, buy secondhand, buy international. Also anything I should look out specifically because it's a laptop. I've always been using a desktop so things like how long a battery would last are completely new to me. If you have no advice just post a computer horror story because those are always entertaining to read, especially after I have just fiddled around with mine for half a day over some stupid problem.

By the way this is the laptop my dad wants me to buy, any comments?: http://www.paradigit.nl/paradigit/pr...5/default.aspx

[Dystopiq]

It's good for school use but as far as gaming goes, you might not get respectable performance. I'm not familiar with prices in Europe but try to find a laptop with a dedicated graphics card. Like Asus G series, MSI.

[WillDaSnail]

1000 Euros eh? That should get you a very nice laptop suitable for your academic + gaming needs.

Look for:

- Great graphics/video card. (FYI: My current Toshiba Satellite laptop has a NVidia graphics card, which is pretty nice for gaming). This item will likely be a priority of yours since you do play LoL (and other games) often.
- Decent HDD capacity. IIRC, laptops nowadays have over 500 GB in HDD capacity nowadays.
- Great processors. Somewhat important for you due to the activities you do on your laptop. Quad core processors are likely the standard in laptop nowadays.
- 6-8GB RAM
- Good screen

Overall, try to get as many desired specs on your laptop for a bargain price. That's what I did for the laptop I'm currently using (4GB RAM DDR3, Intel Core 2 duo core processor, 400GB HDD, and NVidia GeForce GT 230M Graphics card all for $700 USD back in January 2009), and I was pleasantly satisfied with it. Shop around a lot, take a look at a lot of selections, and compare them. This laptop will last you for a good 4-5 years if you get one loaded with nice specs on it, so make this purchase count.

[SaptaZapta]

We have a stickied thread just for these questions.
Please use it: http://www.southperry.net/showthread.php?t=32201