is this a good laptop? Amateur PC owner here?

Question

How good are the specs, and how long do you think it will last? -- Hoping 5 years at the least...
http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/laptops.to?family=Portege

Intel® Core™ i5-3230M dual core processor
Windows 7 Home Premium
8GB DDR3 memory
1TB 5400 RPM storage
Mobile Intel® HD graphics
DVD SuperMulti Drive
1366x768 TruBrite display
Intel® 802.11b/g/n wireless + Wi-Di Capable
1MP (720p) webcam
HDMI output
Starting at 3.2 lbs

13.3

Answer 1

Unless you treat it as a new born baby I doubt any laptop will last 5 years. If it stays on a table and never gets moved maybe.



The laptop your looking at has Intel graphics and that is always a bad. The CPU is not bad.



If your not stuck on a 13" screen take a look at these.



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230987

Core i5 3230M(2.60GHz) 15.6" 6GB Memory DDR3 1600 500GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW NVIDIA GeForce Dedicated 2GB GT 610M 1 Year Accidental Damage/30-Day Zero Bright Dot 5.8 lbs



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230416

Core i5 3210M(2.50GHz) 14.1" 8GB Memory 750GB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW NVIDIA GeForce Dedicated 1GB GT 620M



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834230597

Core i7 3630QM(2.40GHz) 15.6" 8GB Memory 1TB HDD 5400rpm DVD±R/RW NVIDIA GeForce GT 635M 1920 x 1080 1 Year Accidental Damage/30-Day Zero Bright Dot



These HP can be customized to what you need, Bump the APU and ram for better performance.



http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/C9W57AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ0000fb8mNv9y;sid=NID2W1inOb6JXwkRbh2qz4GoAJwzDmy78dUe8LW2AJwzDtPc7Kuhl6jI?HP-ENVY-15z-j000-Notebook-PC A8-5550M APU HD 8000 Series Graphics 6GB DDR3 750GB 5400 rpm HD Starting at $500 after rebate



http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-Pavilion/D1H55AV;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ0000fb8mNv9y;sid=NID2W1inOb6JXwkRbh2qz4GoAJwzDmy78dUe8LW2AJwzDtPc7Kuhl6jI?HP-Pavilion-17z-e000-Notebook-PC A4-5000 APU HD 8330G 4GB DDR3 500GB 5400 rpm HD Starting at $450 Your choice of 4 colors



This one is not customizable



http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/C2K91UA;pgid=c7twGfjc0ptSRpIq7ZUcoGXQ0000ptFcn-Ce;sid=UfkUk5vYup7bi8p-xu5OB0LXZeXRxq_ElKxaT319WyKZOCFLk0_Q5UIX?HP-ENVY-Sleekbook-6-1110us

HP SleekBook AMD Quad-Core A8-4555M APU AMD Radeon HD 7600G 4 GB DDR3 500 GB SATA (5400 rpm) Under $500 after rebate less then an inch thick 4.5lbs



Brand buying advise



You get what you pay for. Systems with high end parts with low prices are to be viewed with suspicion. They have to cut corners somewhere to get the price down. What cost you less today is going to cost you more tomorrow.



Apple makes a good quality laptop. The problem comes when it requires service or minor upgrades. It is near impossible to do anything with them. They even glue the battery and hard drive down so you can not change it. They solder the ram to the logic board so you can not increase it. They lock up most of the software so your stuck with what they approve.



Lenovo has serious stand behind their product problems. They bought IBM PC division and proceeded to drive the quality of the system into the ground. Their customer service is well below par. They even makes Dell customer service look good. The last and final thing to remember about them is they are a Chinese Government own company. It is up to you if you want to trust them.



Toshiba, Panasonic, Sony should be avoided because of their heavy modification of Windows and the drivers. If you remove some of the bloat they install, you can cripple the system.



Acer, Gateway, and eMachines should be avoided period. Low end system that are driving the race to the bottom.



Dell once made a good system and fell from grace. They are now struggling to regain their place in the market. Customer service is one of many problems with this company.



Alienware are glorified Dells and are more name then product. Priced extremely high for what you get. They do perform but you can get the same for less by looking around, just not packaged to be eye candy to the gamers.



Samsung has a history of using cheap parts in critical areas. Capacitors has been one area Samsung has a known history of going cheap, causing units to fail early. For that reason I would avoid them.



ASUS and HP do not modify Windows as bad as the other manufacturers. They have excellent build quality. They might add a lot of bloat but they also makes it easy to get rid of it.



Ultrabooks are the higher end of Wintel laptops but they have some of the same concerns as Apple. They make it next to impossible to change any hardware in them. Service of them will have to be done by the manufacturers. With most of them, you can not change your own battery or hard drive. They are designed to catch your eye but they are not any more special then other laptops except for the fact that they are slim or thin. Your paying for it being thin and slim. For the money your going to spend on it you can buy a much better laptop with more power.



Hybrids are the worse of the worse. The flip or detachable touch screens are just a disaster waiting to happen.



Never buy an All In One. They are far worst then laptops of any kind to service and they have a higher failure rate.



Choose wisely.



:)

Answer 2

First off, by today's standards your pc isn't fast, so don't expect miracles. However, that PC should be fine to run a few programs. You don't provide the hard drive size but I'm guessing that you have about maxed out your hard drive. Before you go spending money on your computer I would do a couple things. First, find out how much hard drive space you have and how much is free. The easiest way is to open My Computer and then right click on your "C" drive and click properties. Second go to add/remove programs and remove anything and everything that isn't an essential program to what you do on a daily basis. Third run CCleaner and clean up any temp files, and run the registry tools. CCleaner also has a remove programs and startup tool. Finally run a defrag on your hard drive. If you run multiple programs on your computer at the same time on a regular basis upgrading RAM might be a good idea.

Answer 3

Personally I think it's a ripoff at that price. You can get a quad 3630QM which is far more powerful in that price range or lower. And I would not get a 5400 rpm hard drive unless you have a separate SSD on it for the OS



It's not a horrible laptop by any means, but it doesn't have anything special enough to justify the high price tag



Off the top of my head, I know it's possible to get a Lenovo Y480 14 in laptop with a Core i7 3630QM, AND a good integrated video chip (640m GT) for around the same amount or less



http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p2050601.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.Xy480.TRS0&_nkw=y480&_sacat=0&_from=R40



eBay isn't always the best place to buy, but those are just examples, and they're new with even better specs than I listed

Answer 4

you can't play games such as BF3 or BF4 or diablo 3 or Crysis 3 with such GPU. If you can buy the same Laptop with same CPU but with 1GB Nvidia or AMD GPU. It will be great but in all ways it can't last for 5 years but 3 year is great. If you really want a laptop to last for 5 years then you need a Core i7 4th gen or 3rd gen with 2GB Gpu from AMD or Nvidia

Answer 5

take the i3 that one is better much better the i5 is a overpriced workstation pc



the i3 is meant for home and gaming and suff like that