[Kolgena]

I've been looking around for current generation laptops, deciding that I would like:
1. Gaming performance - doesn't have to max out Metro or Crysis 2, but should push 1080p for modern games (and WiH). (I'm thinking medium to high end 28nm GPU paired to an ivy bridge.)
2. Decent battery life when not running GPU-intensive applications. >4 hours.
3. Screen size >15 inches, weight and thickness somewhat reasonable to keep it mobile. Must be 1080p or higher. Screen view angles and color should try to be be as non****ty as TFTs allow.
4. Some SSD aspect in the HDD setup (either solely SSD or caching SSD drive--by the way how good are these setups anyway?). Minimum total capacity 256 gigs.
5. Should not look flashy/covered in LEDs/have other horrible aesthetic doodads.
6. Price is mostly not an issue, but try and keep it under $2000.
7. Should last me upwards of 3-4 years.
8. Good enough build quality to survive being lugged around by suitcase/backpack fairly frequently.
9. Fan noise should not be overbearingly loud. Obviously should not be prone to overheating (looking at you, HP).

I've basically come up with this: http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/laptops/NP700Z7C-S01US and maybe a 2012 macbook pro (though that seems guaranteed to be >$2000) once specs are revealed.
Switchable graphics are key for battery life, but automatic switchers like Optimus make me nervous. How often is it that it doesn't automatically turn the GPU on or off?

I know it's a good idea to get a cheap gaming desktop and a small cheap laptop, but I have my reasons why I want an all-in-one desktop replacement. Thoughts/suggestions?

[BloodEagle]

* BloodEagle looks at #1.

M'kay.

* BloodEagle looks at #1, then #2.

Hah, good one.

* BloodEagle looks at #1, then #2, then #7-9.

Stop it, I'm busting a gut here. 

[LHN91]

Oh come on, it's not that unreasonable. Battery life in midrange gaming laptops is improving, though higher end ivy bridge plus graphics plus decent battery life is perhaps pushing it a bit. I'll look around when I'm not posting from my cell.

[Nuke]

if it weighs more than a cat, youre doing it wrong.

but after looking at #7 i cant help but figure that you are looking for a product that most likely does not exist.

[BlueFlames]

Kolgena, is there a reason that a two-system approach won't work?  A future-proof gaming-capable laptop with lengthy battery life is a thing that simply does not exist.  For a ~$2,000 budget, though, you would not have a difficult time building a gaming desktop to last you a few years, with enough left over to cover a laptop capable of internet use and office functionality.

[Nuke]

with 2k you could get a decent laptop for $800 and a fairly good $1200 desktop. the desktop would be way better than a laptop valued at 2k, and you still have a laptop. spend it all on the desktop and you will have a rig to be reckoned with. i find portability to be more expensive than its worth.

[Bob-san]

with 2k you could get a decent laptop for $800 and a fairly good $1200 desktop. the desktop would be way better than a laptop valued at 2k, and you still have a laptop. spend it all on the desktop and you will have a rig to be reckoned with. i find portability to be more expensive than its worth.

Nah you could do it. Drop in a mid-range GPU and decent Ivy Bridge CPU. Core i5-3570K + HD7770 or preferably Core i7-3770K + HD7750 plus monitor (Dell Professional [TN panel] or Ultrasharp [IPS panel]) & speakers (Logitech X-series). Add in an ultrabook (like this Core i3 + IGP + 128GB SSD ultrabook for your mobile needs.

But if it's absolutely gotta be a single laptop, here are some models that combine most of the features you're looking for. Avoid the HP Pavilion dm4--its SSD is useless and its graphics of course suck. If those were my options, I'd probably choose the MSI GT700NC-013US (with a 128GB SSD, 500GB HDD, and 12GB RAM). Then again, I wouldn't get any of them--since I hate massive bloody laptops.

[newman]

Laptops tend to be a compromise from the get go. A powerful one will probably weigh a ton and go through the battery very quickly. A lightweight, non overheating, long batterly life one will suck at gaming. And they're all, in general, not nearly as good at future proofing as a desktop. It's at lightweight portable segment where laptops make most sense to me; a powerful desktop + a portable laptop is still the best combination in my book. A gaming laptop will typically cost a lot, produce heat like your average O-type star, and go through the battery faster than my government can go through the annual budget. And it can still be outperformed by a cheaper desktop system.

[jr2]

I like my Toshiba's method of working around that: it has an 'eco' mode... seems to work quite well.  Satellite P775-S7160

Brief specs Copy+Pasted:

Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM processor on Sandy Bridge
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 540M with NVIDIA® Optimus™ Technology; 1GB GDDR3 discrete graphics memory
6GB DDR3 1333MHz memory
750GB HDD (5400rpm, Serial ATA)
DVD-SuperMulti drive (+/-R double layer)
17.3" widescreen: HD+ TruBrite® LED Backlit display; 16:9 aspect ratio, 1600x900, Supports 720p content
BATTERY LIFE*: Up to 4.18 hours using Li-Ion (48Wh, 6-Cell) battery with TOSHIBA eco utility™ (Energy-saving mode)
Weight: Starting at 6.6 lbs.
USB ports: 1-USB (3.0) port with USB Sleep and Charge, 3-USB (2.0)
HDMI® output port; RGB port
Memory Card Reader
Headphone jack (stereo), Microphone input port with Sleep and Music (use your speakers when laptop is off/sleeping) on a Waves MaxxAudio® 3 utilizing harman/kardon® stereo speakers

Win 7 Home Premium x64 SP1

MSRP $999.99 (there's a list of different trims of the above model laptop, ranging from MSRP $729.99 to $1,279.99)

I think my laptop might not quite be as powerful as you're looking for, but I think it fits nicely as a compromise between performance and power saving (put eco Mode on, turn your brightness down, and you're gold).

[Kolgena]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far everyone. Couple things:

I thought it was now standard that laptops with discrete GPUs would also have an integrated crap GPU (Intel 3000 or 4000 HD) to fall back on, so you could switch off the discrete GPU and get all your battery life back that way. For example, the samsung I was looking into claims to last 8 hours despite housing an ivy bridge i7 and a GT 650M. I'm not expecting any machine to last past 30 minutes while gaming. I just need a long enough battery life for word processing/internet without being tethered to a wall socket.

My current laptop (a VAIO FW) has lasted me three years, and probably has 2-3 more years of functional life. I would keep it if the ATI 3650 HD in it wasn't rapidly becoming an insufficient GPU. What I meant by #7 is 3-4 years of not crapping out and dying (so build quality), not 3-4 years of futureproofing, in case I caused some confusion. I don't even expect desktops to be futureproofed for 4 years without being unusually exorbitant (quad SLI GTX 690s anyone?)

Those MSI laptops have great performance specs, but have close to 0 portability because of their 2 inch plus thickness. (On the "plus" side, because they are not portable, battery life is a nonissue). I wouldn't consider laptops of these kind, because I would sooner get a laptop + desktop combo.

But I don't want to use a desktop for mainly two reasons: way too lazy to keep files up to date on multiple platforms, and the portability is good for travel.

jr2: The Toshiba you have there does look very attractive, though I would sooner get an N55 or N56 Asus simply for comparable portability/battery life and superior performance and screen resolution. The N55 goes for around 1.2k right now. My friends have this laptop, and they say that it's a good performance between power (GT 555M DDR3, i7 sandy bridge) and portability (still manageable dimensions and weight, ~5 hours battery). My main reservation for the N56 has to do with the fact that they put DDR3 ram alongside a GT 650M, which nerfs it pretty hard because of its 128bit bus. It also sucks that most of the SSD options would send the price of the laptop through the roof.

I guess that brings me to another thing... it's really quite frustrating when you can't look at a mobile GPU and know how well it's going to perform. Laptop OEMs sometimes mess with their clocks quite substantially.

[Nuke]

ive just never seen a performance laptop last more than 2 years. has nothing to do with future proofing. last laptop was a dual core asus with a somewhat decent gpu, and one day it just upped and stopped working (literally a week after the warranty ran out). i presume they just cook themselves to death. the thing was in pristine physical condition, never been dropped or spilled on and just refused to post. i see the same thing happen in desktops too, high performance machines are self destructive by nature and can be maintenance hogs, often needing costly repairs and part replacements. this is usually not possible in a laptop (without a hot air rework station and mad soldering skillz), resulting in a useless brick. its enough to make me steer clear of performance rigs and especially laptops.

[Androgeos Exeunt]

I bought this MacBook in February 2008. Given that it has been over four years since the first time I pressed the power button, and the fact that I beta-tested WiH at 4 FPS with it, I assume it's not a performance laptop.

I've yet to see a desktop computer that can last for more than seven years on native hardware. Fury mentioned that he has a very old Mac/Powerbook or something like that, though, so I'm still hopeful that this MacBook I'm currently using will last until I get out of National Service in June 2013.

[Nuke]

my 2003 rig still functions on mostly original hardware, i did do a ram upgrade a year after i built it and i did have to replace the power supply, and as a result the cd drive, and the hard drive has been swapped a couple times, last time being when i installed win 7 on it. other than that its the same old rig and still functional. mom uses it to watch porn. not bad for an $800 rig. then there was that 3k rig i bought, its been through 3 mobos, 2 video cards, 2 sets of ram 2 power supplies. i swear every part of it has been replaced at lest once. i hate that rig. its why my last build was another $800 box, which if things go well will last as long as the one i built 9 years ago. id rather build an $800 rig every 2 years than to build a high performance rig every 5+ years, throwing money at it to keep it alive.

[Bob-san]

Thanks for all the suggestions so far everyone. Couple things:

I thought it was now standard that laptops with discrete GPUs would also have an integrated crap GPU (Intel 3000 or 4000 HD) to fall back on, so you could switch off the discrete GPU and get all your battery life back that way. For example, the samsung I was looking into claims to last 8 hours despite housing an ivy bridge i7 and a GT 650M. I'm not expecting any machine to last past 30 minutes while gaming. I just need a long enough battery life for word processing/internet without being tethered to a wall socket.

My current laptop (a VAIO FW) has lasted me three years, and probably has 2-3 more years of functional life. I would keep it if the ATI 3650 HD in it wasn't rapidly becoming an insufficient GPU. What I meant by #7 is 3-4 years of not crapping out and dying (so build quality), not 3-4 years of futureproofing, in case I caused some confusion. I don't even expect desktops to be futureproofed for 4 years without being unusually exorbitant (quad SLI GTX 690s anyone?)

Those MSI laptops have great performance specs, but have close to 0 portability because of their 2 inch plus thickness. (On the "plus" side, because they are not portable, battery life is a nonissue). I wouldn't consider laptops of these kind, because I would sooner get a laptop + desktop combo.

But I don't want to use a desktop for mainly two reasons: way too lazy to keep files up to date on multiple platforms, and the portability is good for travel.

jr2: The Toshiba you have there does look very attractive, though I would sooner get an N55 or N56 Asus simply for comparable portability/battery life and superior performance and screen resolution. The N55 goes for around 1.2k right now. My friends have this laptop, and they say that it's a good performance between power (GT 555M DDR3, i7 sandy bridge) and portability (still manageable dimensions and weight, ~5 hours battery). My main reservation for the N56 has to do with the fact that they put DDR3 ram alongside a GT 650M, which nerfs it pretty hard because of its 128bit bus. It also sucks that most of the SSD options would send the price of the laptop through the roof.

I guess that brings me to another thing... it's really quite frustrating when you can't look at a mobile GPU and know how well it's going to perform. Laptop OEMs sometimes mess with their clocks quite substantially.

I will again suggest a more powerful & definitely upgradable gaming desktop and a small laptop or ultrabook. It really is the most bang for your buck: a low-end laptop should do just fine for 2-4 years when each has its own niche. There are 13" form factor machines with more powerful CPUs so checkout alternatives as well.

At least for my uses, a desktop & high-end smartphone (Samsung Galaxy S-II) are more than enough for what I do.

[Kolgena]

I bought this MacBook in February 2008. Given that it has been over four years since the first time I pressed the power button, and the fact that I beta-tested WiH at 4 FPS with it, I assume it's not a performance laptop.

The macbook pro 2011 is the first of its line to actually have a good GPU (Radeon 6750M, runs bpmassive battle in the 10-20 fps range at start). However, it hasn't been around long enough to demonstrate whether it physically lasts a long time. Macbook pro 2012 is rumoured to pack a (possibly nerfed) GT 650M, but they're also rumoured to come with retina displays (2880x1800), which would make native resolution gaming a far and distant dream. At least at that resolution AA would be mostly useless.

@Nuke: I've heard that many models of Asus laptops like to quit working prematurely. I was actually hoping that this current cycle of refreshes might be better for heat generation due to die shrinks, but I've also heard that ivy bridge runs hotter than Sandy Bridge against all my expectations that a 22nm die would run cooler than a 32nm die.

@Bob-san: Yeah, smart phones are nice, and I pretty much love my iPhone. However, it's too small (960x640) and too clumsy to actually do work beyond checking up references. Lots of my friends use iPads, but I'm not sold on them right now.

[Nuke]

@Nuke: I've heard that many models of Asus laptops like to quit working prematurely. I was actually hoping that this current cycle of refreshes might be better for heat generation due to die shrinks, but I've also heard that ivy bridge runs hotter than Sandy Bridge against all my expectations that a 22nm die would run cooler than a 32nm die.

modern chipsets do run incredibly hot, hotter than the cpu/gpu. in the case of my latop i think that may have been somewhat of the issue. i actually think were at the limits of thermal design when it comes to portable computing. you can use most gaming laptops to heat a small room, so props to the designers of high efficiency portable heat sinks. theres still stuff you can do by shrinking the fab process to greatly reduce power consumption, not just on the cpu but on the chipset as well. we might even see more parts of the chipset move to the cpu die, at least on mobile processors. throw that in with pcb miniaturization, resulting in shrinking mobo sizes freeing up chassis space for larger heatsinks, and bigger batteries. the fact that mobile computers can actually for the most part keep up with desktops is rather amazing.

[Kolgena]

@Nuke: I've heard that many models of Asus laptops like to quit working prematurely. I was actually hoping that this current cycle of refreshes might be better for heat generation due to die shrinks, but I've also heard that ivy bridge runs hotter than Sandy Bridge against all my expectations that a 22nm die would run cooler than a 32nm die.

you can use most gaming laptops to heat a small room, so props to the designers of high efficiency portable heat sinks.

True dat. My friend reported melting his iphone cable because he left it beside his vent.

[jr2]

ya, if you smell by the exhaust of your laptop when it's under load, it smells like a hot iron ready to press some shirts / or a portable electric heater, minus the dust (well, sometimes not-so-minus the dust.. )

Anyways, my desktop cost ~$1000 after I got done putting all of the goodies - multiple hard drives, started with a 160GB and a 320GB, upgraded to dual 500GB, now it has had dual 2TB hard disks... it's still running pretty good, problem is it can't keep up, it's got the max CPU it can handle (AMD Athlon XP 3200+, 2.2 GHz, single core, no SSE2 (darn it!) with 2GB DDR RAM).  I've stopped running it for now, I'll probably put it back together at some point, but at this point, the place where I'm living is pretty cramped with all of our stuff, and I also have a storage unit. 

But it kept pace with the flash Pentium 4 3.0 GHz Hyper-Threading CPU powered units, with a fraction of the heat.  The lack of multiple cores really shows now, though, when you run a lot of programs on it.  IMHO Nuke is right - $800-$1200 rigs are the way to go, just make sure they are upgradeable (name-brand computers sometimes rip you off and intentionally cripple their systems so you can't upgrade them - case in point, I've seen Gateways with the place on the board for PCI-E graphics card slot, but no actual slot, they want you stuck with on-board graphics, if you want more power, pony up for the next better version of the same computer that isn't nerfed).  Also, systems will have only a few slots for RAM, etc... it's all a $$$$$ game.  Put your own computer together.  If you don't feel up to it, research online and ask around here, you'll be happier.  Trust me.  Just remember to ground yourself to the computer case and/or use an ESD wrist strap when assembling the computer.  Don't wear anything that makes you go snap crackle pop (wool sweaters), if you have a rug, put down a piece of plastic / rubber / whatever... that will help, however remember plastic still generates ESD so you must still ground yourself to the chassis, or otherwise, when you put your components in, the extra charge on you will travel to the case through the component.  You don't want that.  Just go slow, use your head.  If it doesn't work, don't panic, you probably missed a wire or have a loose component somewhere.  Retrace and try again... hmm... I'm rambling.  Sorry. 

[Klaustrophobia]

or, ground yourself on something else metal in your house that's not touching your components at all.  the charges involved are not large enough to make this matter, but it's worth noting that the chassis isn't grounded itself.

[Nuke]

i have a hard time keeping the cats out of the case while im trying to mount the mobo. seriously as soon as i start to build they all show up. i always grounded by plugging the power supply into the wall. if youve ever taken apart a power supply (i needed the power mosfets and regulators), you know that the ground pin mounts to the chassis, so once mounted in the case the case is also grounded. so staying in contact with the case is what i do.

i usually do things in this order:
1. prep the case. install fans, psu, if there are screw in drives i install em (if they use drive rails you can do this later on), install standoffs.
2. prep the mobo. if they have jumpers configure them now. i like to lay out the mobo on a bench, install ram and cpu before installation. for this step i periodically touch the plugged in case to discharge, moving around as little as possible to avoid static buildup. also it helps to have a squirt gun in case of cats.
3. stick em together, if you did step 1 right you shouldn't have a problem (dont install standoffs if theres no hole in that location on the mobo).
4. install drives (if you havent aldeady), sata cables, connect power to device, install add in cards, dongle brackets, organize your wiring (zipties are your friend), **** like that.
5. sacrifice a small animal in the name of satan (not the cats, satan is a cat person)
6. ???
7. profit
8. boot, maybe
9. realize you forgot to plug in the mobo and plug it in
10. sacrifice another small animal in the name of satan
11. boot it and install os
12. yell at all the cats and people who drove you nuts while you were trying to concentrate on not destroying some thousand dollars in equipment.