Help, need to buy or assemble a new PC/notebook

Simply put my notebook has its HP reduced to zero. Sandragosa' frost bolt got her. She died. Preliminary examination from a hardware shop, better buy a new one. I blame shiro for this, shiro was supposed to interrupt the frost bolts heading my way. Now my notebook interrupted the bolts and galantly went down.

Ok, anyone got an idea on what to buy? Should I go for Window7? Does it work well with WoW? I admit I am conservative, I stuck with XP till now and never log on Vista once, err I did, but I hate it, so I erase the Vista from the new PCs in office and load my old XP onto it. Never look back.

I am struggling between the idea of a desktop or a notebook. Desktops are much cheaper, but given the need to smuggle it to the hospital bed, chances are I would still need a notebook, if it is not too costly.

how rich are you?... if you can stretch to it then I'd go for one of the Macbook pro 15 (or 17) inch laptops... Got one and LOVE IT.

otherwise... Win 7 all the way, get yourself an SSD, you'll never look back. Windows 7 has absolutely no issues with WoW for me. I've not got one but the newer ATI graphics cards are beating the Geforces in performance and price... clearly with a notebook you're stuck with what will fit inside, but at least with desktop you can pick and choose.
Mind you WOW is more sensitive to other things than graphics cards... so getting a medium priced one isn't a bad option.

Q: when you say smuggle it to the hospital bed... you realise you'll need to take, KB, Mouse, Monitor, cables etc as well... the only thing to decide between PC & Laptop is mobility.

but it does sound like you're set on a laptop... in which case don't worry about windows 7 it's great, just try to stretch to getting an SSD.

Here's another forum I inhabit where they ask about SSDs
http://www.lolinternet.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=18295

It's often cheaper to buy seperately and do a fresh OS install than it is to have it factory installed on the laptop.
For size you want about 16Gb for Win 7, and then a similar amount for WoW.
Plus you want extra space for other applications and all the WoW patch downloads, so 64 is the minimum you want.

As a guide I found a decent one for sale in the UK for ~150 GBP = ~1800 HKD
You can then get a 2Tb external storage drive for ~1500 honkey

It's always useful to see how much a dell would come in at... since they are reliable but not the cheapest, so it's a good benchmark. (17 inch is big... 15 is probably ok for gaming)
I priced up this...
http://www1.ap.dell.com/hk/en/home/notebooks/inspiron-15r/pd.aspx?refid=inspiron-15r&s=dhs&cs=hkdhs1&~oid=hk~en~76002~ins15r_5010-d430~~
at 7200HKD
(don't scrimp on memory... wow LOVES more memory)

Seems like dell aren't offering SSD, a similar Mac would be about double that price.

Ah... to be young again. I remember the days of playing on a laptop when I use to be able to see small things. I use a laptop for my office but hook it up to a larger monitor so I can actually see what I am typing.

If you are going to be playing from the hospital than a laptop is definitely the way to go. Playing from a hospital I don't think the biggest problem will be which laptop you have but more how good the internet line and your latency issue will be.

Personally unless you can be positive that you can raid at the hospital I would get a desktop. You can customize a desktop so much better and you will play with so much more comfort. I have recently just purchased a Toshiba satellite laptop and am loving it. It costs only around $6500 HKD and it is great.

Although I don't play WoW on it but I know if I did it would be perfectly fine. Windows 7 is great... I was quite scared when I first bought the laptop as I wasn't sure I was going to like Windows 7 but so far it has been great and I think it is very user friendly.

Like Kaz said though... if you can afford it and you can do everything you need without Windows than by all means buy a Mac. I use to have a Mac and ran bootcamp but in my opinion if you need to do that you may as well buy a PC.

Laptops now a days are not very expensive but I think if you were to play WoW you got to get one with a big screen. .. at least for us old guys.

The new Norton Anti Virus seems pretty good too and that came preloaded on the laptop that I got. Norton is not such a system drain as it use to be.

From my very limited it knowledge i'll have to say that i've had really bad experiences with norton; it seems to like to mess alot of things up and likes to (or as junek says used to) really hog up the system. It also seems very intrusive. But dont take it from me my IT is not that good.

I don't use Norton or McAfee. Good websurfing habits go a long way, as do Spybot, NoScript, Firefox and Microsoft Security Essentials which is perhaps the best piece of AV software out right now thats free. The fact Microsoft made it is all the more amazing.

Like Kaz said, WoW currently relies quite a bit more on your processor and RAM then most video games would but less on your GFX card. This isn't to say a good card is useless but you can save quite a bit and not buy the very top end model and still be safe playing it on max settings.

Windows 7 also runs like a charm compared to Vista and I've had zero issues with any programs that worked with Vista or XP (though I can't for the life of me get anything from 98 to start up even in compatibility mode )

Don't bother with Norton or McAfee... a REALLY LIGHTWEIGHT and arguably the best AV program at the moment is NOD32
http://www.eset.com/

Hey nat,

I vaguely remember that you were having problems with what your boss was asking you to do at work. And it had to do with database design and data types so I came to assume that you had a computer/IT background.

At any rate, buying a computer is usually as personal a choice as buying a car (i know it's really expensive in HK but hey!) Some may like a windows PC while others may like a Mac. At the end of the day, it will boil down to what you like and which one appeals to you more.

As far as running wow is concerned, most laptops should be able to run wow. Just watch out for the laptops that are mysteriously priced too cheap as they will often contain 'value' components and stripped down specs to achieve such prices.

Desktop or Laptop - again it depends on your usage. If you plan to use it at work or just wow? And if you will be playing for an extended period in a hospital or at home.

I'm pretty sure alot of people in these forums will be glad to critique a system you are planning to buy once you get the actual specs posted up. But as a guideline you will probably want to get something along these lines or better:

CPU: Intel Core 2 (dual core)
RAM: 2GB minimum but better if 4GB or more
Hard Disk Drive: as big as you can afford
Graphics Card: harder to choose this so just get some quotations and ask here again
Network capabilities: normally should be able to use Wifi and Ethernet

As for anti-virus, it does use up a chunk of your system's resources so use them if you're absolutely sure you don't know how to protect yourself against viruses or if you're just plain paranoid.

Anyway, good luck with your shopping! Hope you find the right computer for yourself.

rhodie... check out nod32, the system footprint is TINY

i like nod and kaspersky, nod does run very light, but kaspersky has a higher detection rate at the cost of much heavier resource usage.

hehe i just never got around to using an anti-virus program as i've never had the need to.

Also I have a mac too so that at least immunizes me from most if not all windows-based viruses.

Rhodie, I am the guy who handles data mining and data analysis. I am effective in using tools to find something, I am not that good in systems level coding any more. I use to be a C programmer and later a DBM coder, when I was 20+ years younger. Now I am dying of age.

Guys, I have checked the market, I cannot afford a Mac, b/c I am saving money for father's medical bill. The notebook will be mostly for WoW. I found that the most common hardware are i5 or i3. I suspect i5 is better.

Is Acer Timeline X good enough? It says ATI 5470 (but only 512MB). 2GB is bad, maybe I put up some money to upgrade it to 4GB.

It cost around 7k, however user comments from web seems to be very average.

dude for 7k I'd go for the dell at 7.2K....
The graphics card has double the memory, the laptop has double the memory. it would be insane to do anything else

i know about that dell, but engineers say dell quality is variable, i will take a look and see

With your budget, i assume it is hk/rmb

how about this:

Core i5 750
MSI H55M-P33 motherboard (any cheapest m/b will do)
Kingston 4GB DDR3-1333
Sapphire ati 5770 graphic card (i still prefer asus brand but im bias)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 (HD502HJ) 500GB hard disk (fastest hdd within this range)
Lite-on DVD writer
Silverstone Strider Essential 500W power supply or CM true power 500w (dont get extreme power or u will need to change your m/b within one year)
23" lcd monitor (just get what u see is nice, trust ur eye and not on paper spec but both of my monitors are Samsung )

p.s overclock is not advisable for this setup. If you plan for future upgrade you need to get a better m/b now for the flexibility

are you looking for original win7? Actually i just download from internet, the problem is i need to update everytime Microsoft come out something like "genuine verification". But dont worry our genius hacker can crack it within one week. If u wan to get an ori OS, win7 is highly recommended !!

there is no such "best AV", the "ranking" keep changing from time to time and different tester. For me, kasperky and Bitdefender can do the job nicely. The most important factor is they are cheap and reliable. Trying ESET right now (just 2 weeks) because i got a good deal from pc fair but it is still new for me so i have no comment for it.

Yes mini, if it is a desktop, the option you suggest is similar to what I have in mind.

I am considering a notebook, or now thinking of a way to get around the weekend connection issues.

seriously, get the dell... quality of the components is fine.. it'll never be top notch but it won't be crap.

Symitri wrote:

Good websurfing habits go a long way

this is such a LIE it has made me post in the forums after so long

thanks sym

edit: btw i so love my new sig. 0 hp, 0 armor, -1 avoidance.
just like RL

hahaha oh you don't need excuses to post Imzypoo <3

But it is true. It's surprising how many sites are integrated with dodgier sites and you wouldn't consciously realise it unless you run something like NoScript which allows you to block anything not coming from a specific page. I've been running on Windows Vista and now 7 for the past four-five years and haven't had a single problem despite not running any of the 'essential' always-on AV's.