Hey y'alls! I'm looking for a new laptop to replace two that I have. I have a netbook and an old C2D gaming laptop. So, I would like my new one to have the best of both worlds: modest gaming and great portability.
I would like one preferably under 4lbs (5 lbs is absolute deal-breaker). And would like at least 5 hours battery life. I'm not huge on the gaming capabilities, but would like something that could run Killing Floor, TF2, Black Mesa, and have good Linux support (my netbook had NONE of these), as I will be dual-booting and want to do my part in supporting Linux gaming. Budget around $1000, but somewhat flexible.
I've been looking at the Clevo W740SU, but I don't think it's exactly what I'm looking for, considering it only gets about 4 hours battery life, and a little on the heavy side. So far, Apple's Macbooks seem to have the hardware I'm looking for, but I'm very anti-Apple, and I can not stand the keyboard layout (if it had a more standard keyboard, I may actually consider it).
Suggestions?
UPDATE: I found something close enough, but definatiley broke the budget:
Clevo W230SS:
- 13.3" 1080p Matte screen (I believe 4.2lbs, and just over 4hrs battery; intend to disable HT to see what happens battery life)
- Core i7 4810MQ + NV GTX 850M (Maxwell); IC Diamond TIM
- 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws SO-DIMM DDR3-1600 (2x 4GB)
- 240GB Crucial M500 mSATA SSD
- 1TB Toshiba 5400RPM w/ 8GB Flash SSHD
After taxes + shipping (buying parts seprately and installing most everything), came out to about $1450. I don't think I did bad at all.
As a fellow Apple hater I say no macs but it may be what you are looking for minus that shit os. Honestly TF2 is not hard to run at all and you could pick any laptop with a dedicated graphics from the past few years and be fine. My gf has a sony vaio laptop with some mobile amd card and she can play tf2 fine along with fallout 3/nv modded on max but skyrim is hard to run. Id just say pick a laptop with good battery life, dedicated graphics and nothing too gimmicky if you want to use linux on it as they obv wont support it.
TF2 shouldn't be that difficult to run, but I primarily play Killing Floor and my netbook can't run anything as it's heavily bottlenecked by the CPU (FPS fluctuates between 10 - 40, usually closer to 10). It's an AMD C-60 (1GHz/1.33GHz Bobcat), and even with Turbo, I'm CPU bottlenecked. My issue with dedicated graphics is they add to power consumption. I'm looking to stay away from the wall for at least 5 hours (web-browsing/ YouTube), and to sustain with dedicated garphics mobility will be sacrificed with either larger cooling, or bulkier battery to maintain decent battery life, or both.
Anyways, I was hoping for a specific recommendation. In my own searching I haven't found a suitable laptop even with dedicated graphics as I need the mobility aspect since biking is a mode of transportation I use regularely; I'd like to keep my load as light as possible, especially since my bike has thin tires that don't support extra weight well.
I'm hoping more laptops come out in the future with Iris Pro graphics. Also the Maxwell based 850m looks promising, but I've only seen those in 15" laptops. If I see one in a 13"/14" form factor, I may just bite.