Desperately Needing Some Guidance

[Hickeyc31]

The past two weeks have been crazy. In my closet in a tightly sealed ice cream container is $2400.
What the HECK do I do with it? At first the original plan was to buy a nice laptop, maybe 1500 give or take a bit and use it for university. Take it class, take notes (I'm going into my first year by the way) and still make it a nice multimedia notebook so that I can watch movies, and do some minor gaming. In the end I'd have around $1000 to just throw around (figuratively) on accessories/maybe even a smaller LCD screen to play my 360 on. Then the idea came into my head, "Why don't you just go out and build your own PC that's a gaming machine?" And this idea has been floating in my head for the duration of the 2 weeks. I don't even know why I want a gaming beast because I don't really play a lot of games. I see Crysis footage and it makes me want to own a beastly machine, but then I think of how I could better spend the money. HELP!!! I'm torn between this. Seriously. (And thank you)

[Budfred]

If you are not into gaming, get a laptop... You are likely to find that your school requires you to have a laptop anyway, so that may be the best bet... While the experience of building a computer is a good one to have if you plan to work in computers, most of what you learn will be obsolete by the time you graduate...

You can get perfectly good multimedia laptops for much less than $1500... I suggest something closer to $1000 and use the rest of the money for the many expenses you will encounter in school... Assuming you are in the USA, the probability is that it will add up to well over $100,000 by the time you are done and you will regret wasting money if you do so now...

[Hickeyc31]

I live in Canada so my debt coming out won't be too bad. (I'm living at home while going to school also)
My next question is do you recommend any brands? Dell's 1720 after I upgrade it is 1700 before taxes. That's with 2GB Ram, 2.20ghz Dual Core, and only an 8600M GT (is that sufficient for some newer games?). Or is there another, more reliable brand (Acer, Asus, HP, etc.) that I should be buying from?

[Budfred]

Pretty much any laptop out there (with a few very expensive exceptions) will not be able to do well with some of the newest games... You need top line graphics for that as well as a lot of power and RAM... However, what you said initially is that you want it to: "Take it class, take notes (I'm going into my first year by the way) and still make it a nice multimedia notebook so that I can watch movies, and do some minor gaming." If that is all, a laptop under $1000 would be fine... Dell laptops are probably fine as long as you never have a problem with it... I might look at Lenovo, Toshiba or a store brand if I were looking for a laptop... However, hopefully some of those who use more laptops will stop by for more suggestions... I follow the prices, but don't really know as much about the quality...

[jlreich]

Toshiba, Acer, Lenovo are good brands.

Whatever brand you go with I suggest purchasing the best warranty/service plan you can get. You have the budget. Yes it is expensive, but you know if something goes wrong with it will be fixed promptly without expense to you. That's anything from a key popping off the KB to the motherboard having to be replaced. And getting accidental damage protection is great as well. You drop it they fix it. Spill something down the KB and fry everything, they fix it. ;)

[johnny_quest]

Why don't you just buy a cheapy no-frills laptop like a Acer celeron, they got them at circuit city for $349.00 after rebate. Forget the warranties and just buy two of 'em and a copy of xp :). That will be more than enough for wordpad, watching DVDs during class... and playing "minor" games... during class

Then spend the rest on building a real gaming machine you can enjoy at home...a DESKTOP

two toys are always better than one....

[jlreich]

Actually a cheap laptop like that will work just fine for school. Just keep all your important school stuff backed up somewhere safe off the computer. Which is of course a good idea regardless. ;)

EDIT- Since a cheap laptop will have vista and probably 512MB ram, you will want to pick up some more ram as soon as you get it. At least another 512, but better to just get 2x1GB.