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One of my employees is trying to buy a new laptop, for under $500. She does some photography but mainly she writes and blahblahinternet. So nothing to intense. She would like to be able to play games like Skyrim but knows she probably can't with a cheaper laptop.

I know next to nothing about PC Laptops, let alone cheaper ones. Anyone here have any suggestions? I've got her reading reviews on Amazon right now, since thats all I would do.

Espy said:

One of my employees is trying to buy a new laptop, for under $500. She does some photography but mainly she writes and blahblahinternet. So nothing to intense. She would like to be able to play games like Skyrim but knows she probably can't with a cheaper laptop.

I know next to nothing about PC Laptops, let alone cheaper ones. Anyone here have any suggestions? I've got her reading reviews on Amazon right now, since thats all I would do.

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With laptops, it's my opinion that you should either go inexpensive with good functionality, or go expensive with power, the in between doesn't seem as worth it. So her options would be best around $700+ for a gaming machine (more plus for powerful machine) or $200 for a chrome book.

Well, she's got a 500 dollar check from her folks to buy it with and I promise you, one way or the other she's gonna spend it all on a computer, so the only question is which one?

I would keep an eye out for refurbished ones on woot. Then, max out the RAM.

Or slickdeals
http://slickdeals.net/permadeal/896...768-4gb-ddr3-500gb-hdd-wifi-n-6cell-windows-8

HOWEVER, I don't know if it'll run the game. It's just an example, yo.

Yeah, I told her to look for refurbs as well, I figured that could save her some cash. That Lenovo looks interesting...

How much of this $500 does she need to spend on accessories? Does she have a bag to carry it in? Will she need a printer? Mouse, back-up drive, cables, etc.?

She has everything she needs. It's all for the computer.

Lenovo seems to make a pretty good laptop. These are all brown, but they're a pretty good deal. I would tryto talk her into spending a bit more on an i5 if she can.
http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...=EE41656D5F51E55161504F88E98FE321&action=init

Sadly thats all the money she has so it's what she can spend.

The Lenovo z585 is supposedly pretty decent. Looks like it should be able to play Skyrim at medium at ~30fps.

Nice!

I gotta say, I know Lenovo mostly from office environments, but the mid-range computer that I have now as my gaming rig is one of their desktop models and it's been great so far. Does everything I need it to, had a very low amount of OEM bloatware (and most of that wasn't really bloatware so much as it's system monitors and environment managers for the audio system and their screen-closeness manager that load into the sys tray every time I reboot), has an acceptable amount of case cooling, and it isn't even ugly.

Yer gonna have a hard time finding a laptop that can legitimately "game" for $500 or less. However, I would recommend cruising http://www.notebookcheck.net/ to get some idea about what's out there right now that's new (and what to look for as internals), and check places like overstock.com and buy.com rakuten.com for good deals on discontinued models (assuming she doesn't want to go the ebay/craigslist route). Personally, I would assume that any new laptop that is $500 or less is either really crappy or comes with Windows 8.

--Patrick

Well, it's what I assume and she does for the most part. She really doesn't need it to play games, she just would *like* it too.

It will serve her main purposes.

Man, you can get a gaming laptop for $700 now? I paid $1800 for mine about three years ago.

bhamv3 said:

Man, you can get a gaming laptop for $700 now? I paid $1800 for mine about three years ago.

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Yeah, about $700 for something that can pass as a gaming machine. It won't be running crysis at high or anything like that, though.