I'm not knowledgeable in the are of laptops at all.. I'm looking to buy a laptop at at a $400 dollar range. I know you can't get any goodies at all but what's the best $400 offers me?
Well, your standard fare laptop, for office work, web browsing and dvd burning, what else would you want to do with it?
Light gaming, like the sims 3, internet, e-mail, music downloads, watching movies, you know, the basics. No encoding, video editing, maybe just audio, like WavePad. Can you modify anything on a laptop? I think it's just RAM and HDD right? I was looking at this bad boy right here, seems to have everything you need. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115555 There is also this one that had blu ray,which caught my eye http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834147918 I'm not sure if these are good graphics cards. Any other recommendations?
The 9600M GT is a perfectly decent laptop card. The HD3200 isn't, really. That said, HP laptops are good, Acers, not so much. This is much better: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152087
My first pick has a bigger screen, DDR3, bigger hard drive, more vRAM, but a slightly slower cpu for around $50 more.. Also, the keyboard is fuller than the MSI laptop.
but it's also from a suspect brand and DDR3 memory has basically no effect on performance. You're basically just paying $50 for the privilege of a bigger HDD, which you can always replace yourself, or buy a comparatively massive external USB HDD for barely any more than $50.
It would be nice if there was a laptop with a great graphics card, good processor, but mediocre ram and hdd.. then upgrade yourself... that would be a big money saver.. By the way.. what's the battery life on the MSI laptop? Also, is it possible to upgrade to a better battery for that model?