[Question] Looking for a good, cheap, laptop that can do graphics.

Dave

Staff member
So I bought (for my entertainment company) a laptop to run the Feud board and stuff. I figured since the thing wasn't that graphic intensive it would work fine. I was wrong. Also, its hard drive space sucks.

So what I need is to find is a laptop that has a graphics card of some type that can run these things, and I'd like to keep the total price as low as possible. I'm looking right now at this one on eBay, but I am not sure if it's a good deal or not.

Help me, Obi Juan (the Mexican Jedi), you're my only hope!
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Reviews for that one tend to be pretty positive, with the caveat that the battery life is near nonexistant and it runs hot enough to fry an egg (which is to be expected of a gaming laptop, really), so as long as you have it on AC power and a cooling pad, it'll probably be pretty good.

Looking around on e-bay though, you can probably snag it for less than $700. Probably $500ish.
 

Dave

Staff member
Would you be willing to help me find something? I'm looking but I haven't found a place I trust yet. There's a couple used on Amazon, but the sellers have 0 ratings and there's just no way I'm trusting some dude in China.
 
What do you think of this bad boy?

Amazon product
Ghostery blocks amazon associates!

But if it's for work, see if they'll spring for one of those new fancy Surface Books with a graphics card. It's pretty much the opposite of "keeping costs down" but it's fancy, and "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM Microsoft."
 

Dave

Staff member
Amazon product

Let's see if it works this time. If not, it's an MSI Computer C CX61 2QC-1654US;9S7-16GD51-1654 15.6-Inch Laptop.

I went ahead and pulled the trigger. With Prime next day shipping I'll get this, a mouse, and a cooling pad for about $650. And I'll get it tomorrow.[DOUBLEPOST=1447082395,1447082383][/DOUBLEPOST]Stupid Ghostery.
 

Dave

Staff member
Got the laptop and spent most of last night getting it set up. I upgraded to Windows 10 and regretted that I didn't do a clean install. I'll probably do that tonight. This thing has a LOT of "extra" stuff on it that I just plain don't want. Why the hell would I need a "Korea Message Center", anyway?

It also comes with Norton (nope), a bunch of MSI things that are hardcoded into the registry (hey, you haven't registered yet! ARE YOU GOING TO DO THAT?!?), and XBox games.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
Got the laptop and spent most of last night getting it set up. I upgraded to Windows 10 and regretted that I didn't do a clean install. I'll probably do that tonight.
Don't have too much regret, I'm pretty sure that you needed to do that upgrade install before you could do the clean install.
 
You can wipe the apps and such from inside Windows 10 - my wife and I just got new computers and we set up my wife's old laptop for my son - I just wiped everything off of the laptop and it worked great.

Start > Settings > Update & security > Recovery
 
Due to unforeseen issues with the plumbing emergency yesterday, my sister declared the $185 she sent via paypal to now be my birthday and Xmas money. As my current laptop is now 5 years old, I decided it was time to get a new one. I got $180 in Best Buy gift cards via gyft, and headed out. I had been looking at an i3 Lenovo, but as it was not upgradeable past 4GB RAM, I gave it a pass. Same for the i7 Dell, as the skinny on the CPU and the laptop itself was not all that great. It came down to two Pavilions. A 15" AMD A10 or a 17" i5. With similar specs, the 15-AB121DX won out. $430, but only $275 out of pocket after tax and gift cards.

I need to uninstall McAfee and get Malwarebytes on this bad boy ASAP. Maybe while I have some downtime tonight.
 
Due to unforeseen issues with the plumbing emergency yesterday, my sister declared the $185 she sent via paypal to now be my birthday and Xmas money. As my current laptop is now 5 years old, I decided it was time to get a new one. I got $180 in Best Buy gift cards via gyft, and headed out. I had been looking at an i3 Lenovo, but as it was not upgradeable past 4GB RAM, I gave it a pass. Same for the i7 Dell, as the skinny on the CPU and the laptop itself was not all that great. It came down to two Pavilions. A 15" AMD A10 or a 17" i5. With similar specs, the 15-AB121DX won out. $430, but only $275 out of pocket after tax and gift cards.

I need to uninstall McAfee and get Malwarebytes on this bad boy ASAP. Maybe while I have some downtime tonight.
If you have access to it, I'd recommend just nuking the hard drive entirely. Go for a fresh win10 install (from a Microsoft ISO I mean), and then find the drivers for everything else from HP's website. It'll probably be less frustration than trying to REALLY clean everything off.
 
Ya know, my pc still runs on 8.1, and I still haven't seen a single way to upgrade to 10. I've even installed all recommended updates and looked over the list of non-essentials! Pfeh.
 
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