I need Help choosing a laptop for school and play

[Sax_Derp]

I'm in the market for a new laptop for college in the fall of 2015 (I know I'm early, but I'm trying to decide now :/ ) I would like to have at least five-six hours battery life and it be portable without drawing too many stares Gaming wise I really only play Minecraft, Starmade, Smite, Space Engineers, and a little League. I've been considering the Razor Blade 14 (2013) because that meets my needs, but I was wondering if I could get some slightly cheaper options at $1,700 and under. I don't really need much power for school seeing as I'm a Pre-Pharmacy student, so anything intensive I do is going to be of my own choice, I do Photoshop and edit gameplay videos, but not very often (about once, maybe twice a month?) Oh, and on the point of storage, SSD is preferred at 256GB unless a larger capacity fits under the price range. I have two external 1TB hard drives I keep most of my crap on. Screen size is a non issue

So I guess what I need is
*Under $1,700
*Solid performance for the games listed above
*Somewhat light and thin (not Alienware 14 heavy, doesn't have to be Blade small)
*Preferably centered touchpad, buttons are a non-issue I use a mouse, and Num pad can be absent too
*256GB SSD

I've heard good things about the MSI Ghost, but offset touchpads and moving around the keys irked me when I tried it.

I actually don't know how useful what I posted was, but It would be awesome if it helped someone find what I need. Thanks ahead of time.

 

[David P2]

I'm in the market for a new laptop for college in the fall of 2015 (I know I'm early, but I'm trying to decide now :/ ) I would like to have at least five-six hours battery life and it be portable without drawing too many stares Gaming wise I really only play Minecraft, Starmade, Smite, Space Engineers, and a little League. I've been considering the Razor Blade 14 (2013) because that meets my needs, but I was wondering if I could get some slightly cheaper options at $1,700 and under. I don't really need much power for school seeing as I'm a Pre-Pharmacy student, so anything intensive I do is going to be of my own choice, I do Photoshop and edit gameplay videos, but not very often (about once, maybe twice a month?) Oh, and on the point of storage, SSD is preferred at 256GB unless a larger capacity fits under the price range. I have two external 1TB hard drives I keep most of my crap on. Screen size is a non issue

So I guess what I need is
*Under $1,700
*Solid performance for the games listed above
*Somewhat light and thin (not Alienware 14 heavy, doesn't have to be Blade small)
*Preferably centered touchpad, buttons are a non-issue I use a mouse, and Num pad can be absent too
*256GB SSD

I've heard good things about the MSI Ghost, but offset touchpads and moving around the keys irked me when I tried it.

I actually don't know how useful what I posted was, but It would be awesome if it helped someone find what I need. Thanks ahead of time.

If you primarily use the mouse over the touchpad, then I would say its positioning doesn't matter as you can physically turn the pad and its buttons off.

 

[Sax_Derp]

It's actually something that annoys me when I'm typing because of the uneven wrist rests. And because they tend to shift the keyboard over too when they do it

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Mobile Nations mobile app

 

[superunderscore]

Buy a Surface Pro 3!

 

[Keith Wallace]

There's no point in looking right now, if you want it for next fall. If you're buying now to USE next fall, that's a bit different, but the stuff next year should be Broadwell-based and much better on the battery life (and a little better on the performance) than what you would find now. League is probably the most-demanding of the games you listed, and it's not a PC-killer, so going for a high-end gaming device like the Blade isn't necessary.

I'd say that anything with an i5 inside (not a U-class i5, though) will suffice. Find one that's comfortable and looks appealing, because your demands are heavy on the gaming front, so a gaming laptop won't be necessary. Anything with an i5-M and a dedicated GPU will work.

 

[Sax_Derp]

There's no point in looking right now, if you want it for next fall. If you're buying now to USE next fall, that's a bit different, but the stuff next year should be Broadwell-based and much better on the battery life (and a little better on the performance) than what you would find now. League is probably the most-demanding of the games you listed, and it's not a PC-killer, so going for a high-end gaming device like the Blade isn't necessary.

I'd say that anything with an i5 inside (not a U-class i5, though) will suffice. Find one that's comfortable and looks appealing, because your demands are heavy on the gaming front, so a gaming laptop won't be necessary. Anything with an i5-M and a dedicated GPU will work.

Yeah I guess I should have clarified that it will be used before then, but not often. So you think I should hold off until next year?

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Mobile Nations mobile app

 

[Keith Wallace]

If waiting is an option, waiting is the best option every time. You'll always have legitimate improvements come by then, and Broadwell should be a fairly-nice jump, given the potential power gains and the possible DDR4 availability to come with it (though the machines with DDR4 will likely be pricy for a while). If you don't need it now, there's little reason to spend on 2013 hardware for a 2015 workload.

 

[Sax_Derp]

If waiting is an option, waiting is the best option every time. You'll always have legitimate improvements come by then, and Broadwell should be a fairly-nice jump, given the potential power gains and the possible DDR4 availability to come with it (though the machines with DDR4 will likely be pricy for a while). If you don't need it now, there's little reason to spend on 2013 hardware for a 2015 workload.

Actually the main reason I was going for a full fledged gaming laptop is because in Space Engineers you're rather limited by what your pc can handle. I wanted to be able to get into larger builds without having it stutter on me. And still be able to play with a friend or two. But waiting is an option, it's just that the cost of every seems to be going up so high now. Oh well. Thank you for the help.