I turn to you sages of the internet for some general advice about getting a new laptop.
I graduated today from my undergraduate program and I'm looking for a new laptop as my macbook is beginning to act up.
I have approximately 1.3k to spend on the laptop though I would be willing to spend a little more for ease of mind. I do know this is probably overkill for what I want.
The attraction of PC is that I would be able to do some moderate PC gaming. Play SC2 without any lag. Play diablo, maybe a total war and mass effect/ some rpgs. I'm not used to super high settings on the computer so that's not a huge deal for me as long as I can play games released in the next few years.
Other considerations: I am going into finance related fields so I'll be doing some manipulation in excel. If I could run stata on my laptop that could be a cool plus but I imagine not a huge huge deal. I would probably use this as my primary computer at home slash traveling with it. I am unsure if it would be used that much in a daily setting so weight is a moderate but not huge concern. Thinking a 15" screen.
One part of me is wondering if I should just go with the idiot proof piece of mind of a 13" macbook pro and drop money on a desktop eventually... I haven't really used a windows computer in awhile so I'm slightly afraid some driver installation will go wrong and everything will go to hell.
Questions:
Are there any sort of technology releases or recently released technology that would be awesome to have and make it worth to wait a few more months before buying a laptop? I.e. Should I wait maybe 2-3 months until the price of ivybridge processors drop a little?
What kind of graphics card should I be looking for?
What sort of HD size should I be shooting for?
General things I should be thinking about?
What version of Windows would I want?
I was eying : the sager 6165.
I've been doing some lurking about the notebook review forums but I thought I'd ask here first since... well you know you guys <3