One thing I did notice with the system link Greg provided w/ the Acer is the battery life is still just as bad at 3hrs. Everything else checked out to more of an upgrade from my system, but that one bullet point. I guess it's just something that's gonna happen.
I went with the most similar Toshiba laptop to the one you posted. Toshiba isn't known for battery longevity.
Heres a word of experience: frankly, Toshiba laptops suck.
They're not really any worse than any other major brand. Most laptops are made by a handful of manufacturers. The companies whose names are on the laptops don't actually produce them. So it comes down to the actual manufacturer (and price) for determining quality. Reliability numbers are pretty even across the board with two-year failure rates being within a couple of percentage points for all brands within the same price range.
Do enough research to confirm your own conclusions, but these things are designed to fail fairly quickly and Toshiba offers little to no support on fixing them.
That's flat-out wrong. No computer company deliberately designs their products to "fail fairly quickly" and all of them offer at least limited support for hardware defects. Most companies offer a one-year warranty on hardware; that's good, too, because the majority of hardware failures will happen in the first year. (The laptop I linked had a one-year parts and labor warranty.)
What's your opinion on Acer laptops? Getting one with windows 7 to replace my old compaq presario laptop that had xp.
Acer makes good laptops. Not great, but good. Their build quality is decent and their performance is usually in the middle of the pack, which is what you'd expect for a brand with average prices.
Generally speaking, if you're not
too concerned about battery life, you're probably better off getting a system custom-built by Dell or HP. They've been getting more competitive in battery life these days (especially Dell) but they're not quite as good as some of the options out there. On the plus side, they're often cheaper--especially if you find a nice coupon for Dell--and if you want to do something like upgrade the RAM, you're better off upgrading it at the factory; otherwise you have to set aside all the RAM that comes with the laptop in order to upgrade it at all--this is because they fill all the RAM slots (it's cheaper this way and the performance is better). (And you can sometimes choose 6GB in custom-built, which is what I'd probably recommend for you; cheaper than 8GB but you still get most of the benefit of upgrading past 4GB.) Not to mention you tend to get better support for general issues than you would get by buying from Best Buy or NewEgg.
Three things you should consider when choosing a laptop:
First, you're probably better off going for a 15" laptop. While a 17" does give you a bit more screen real estate, your selection is vastly more limited. As a result, prices aren't usually as competitive. You can definitely get more machine for your money with a 15" model.
Second, you don't need a dedicated graphics chip to do work in Photoshop or Illustrator. Graphics cards are only used for gaming*. If you don't plan to play many 3D games on your laptop, don't spend extra going for a dedicated graphics chip. Go for integrated graphics and spend the money you save on adding more RAM.
Third, most laptops under $1,000 come with pretty crappy screens.
All brands are guilty of this. They use TN panels, which are cheap to make but offer poor viewing angles (especially vertical) and often times poor color reproduction. This can have a direct impact on artwork. Unfortunately, to get a better screen, you have to pay for it, and usually not just a bit. (For example, Dell's new XPS 15 laptop has an RGB-LED option for $130; totally worth it because it's also much higher resolution, but it's anything but cheap--it brings the cost of the cheapest configuration to just shy of $1,000.)
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: if your primary use for this computer is going to be creating artwork, then you should probably plan to go for a higher-end laptop or spend the equivalent amount on a desktop and monitor. (A desktop will be *much* faster for the money and I can recommend
a phenomenal but relatively inexpensive 24" monitor for doing graphics work.)
* OK, this is an oversimplification of the truth. With
GPGPU libraries like CUDA, Stream, OpenCL, and DirectCompute, some programs can actually use graphics cards to improve performance of certain tasks like video encoding. And the latest version of Photoshop
can use CUDA for some of its filters and other operations, which does mean that an Nvidia-based dedicated graphics chip can in fact make a bit of a difference. But honestly, the time spent waiting for those actions is minimal for most workflows; if you're not doing any gaming, the speed difference isn't worth the price. Chances it'll save you under a minute of your time (measured in time spent waiting for actions to complete) in a several-hour session of design work in Photoshop.
Surely I've done more harm than good with this post when it comes to making up your mind, and for that I'm sorry. But this is one of those cases where the specific thing you're planning on using the computer for can really complicate matters and shoot prices upwards very quickly.
So here's my question to you:
What are you looking for, really?
- A cheaper laptop that can handle pretty much anything you throw at it but won't last for too long and isn't really well-suited for anything in particular? ($550-650)
- A good all-around laptop that will last for a few years and won't break much of a sweat doing most anything, but isn't necessarily ideal? ($750-850)
- A great laptop that has enough power to do whatever you want without feeling slow at anything, is perfectly suited to the task, and will last you several years? ($1000+)
Those are the three main categories of laptops these days. I definitely wouldn't recommend the first category if you're serious about doing graphics work on the laptop. The second category would be decent, but you'll have to make some compromises for the sake of cost. The third category is a lot more expensive but you get a heck of a lot more bang for your buck.
For what it's worth, if I was buying a laptop for the purpose you've stated, I would build myself one of these:
http://www.dell.com/us/p/xps-15/fsChoose any option but the first then choose the RGB-LED screen option ($130) and the 92 WHr battery ($40). With those options, the price goes up to $1,119. Other upgrades like a faster CPU or GPU would be nice but optional. (If your budget went up to the ~$1200 range, I'd upgrade the CPU to a Core i5-560M for another $90.)
Note that they also have a 17" model in that series, but it lacks the RGB-LED screen, which ironically means the larger screen would have a lower resolution than the 15". Go figure.
Now I'll be the first one to say that this is definitely well above the price of the first laptop you posted (though still well below the $1,699 price tag I criticized above), and I don't make the recommendation lightly. To say that having a nice screen for doing graphics work is a vast understatement (especially when you consider just how terrible the average screen is on a cheaper laptop). Such a choice also ensures excellent performance and battery life (rated for up to
nine hours with the 92 WHr battery with very light usage; closer to four or five hours of heavy graphics work or six hours of heavy web browsing) and is something that would last a long while.
When it comes to buying computers and computer parts for myself, my philosophy is this: If I'm going to spend a lot of money on something, I'd rather spend a fraction more to get something significantly better because you get more for the money you spend. Sure, it means you end up spending more, but the money you do spend goes farther.
