(most of this is copy/pasted from LL with some edits)

So I pretty much have $2,000 to work with for buying a new desktop or notebook, but I can't decide between the two. I'm leaning towards notebook because I'm going off to college next year (though my house is only an hour and a half train ride away) [plus I intend to visit friends at other colleges and stuff], but my sister advises against it because any desktop I could buy would be much better and more powerful than any laptop I could buy. Help me decide which one to get, then help me figure out certain brands and specs and shit... because I have no basis of what's considered decent. Some notes:

- No Macs. Sorry, but I'm really not big on Macs.
- I'd like it to be gaming-quality, because I do indeed like to play games.
- I'm kind of against having both a desktop and notebook because I'd rather have just one computer that has everything I need.

Also, some questions:

- What's a good battery life for a laptop? Is 2 hours considered good?
- How easy is it to upgrade a laptop?

Thanks for the help.

desktop.

do you need a list of everything? or do you already have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers?

Well, to be honest, I'm still leaning towards notebook right now. Specifically this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834220185

But if I was to get a desktop, I'm not sure if I'd build it or not because I've never built an entire computer... just upgraded/switched around parts here and there.

First off laptops and gaming do not mix. If you want to game get a desktop. The whole purposes of a laptop is portability; if you do get a laptop you can game every now and then with no problems. Good battery life for a laptop is 5+ hours. Upgrading memory/bvattery/hard drives/DVD-ROMs is generally incredibly easy; upgrading the CPU/GPU can be easy depending on the laptop[ie gaming laptops, ie alienware probably has easy GPU/CPU upgrades].

The good thing about a laptop is portability. seriously.

Well, that's why I'd like a laptop, though. I wanna game on the go I'm kind of tired of having to be attached to a desktop all the time. Although I'm not too big of a PC gamer anyways, I just want the option to game on it if I want to. I play ROMs and games that don't require much most of the time anyways.

As someone who bought a "gaming" laptop, don't do it. Buy a tiny little laptop that gets long battery life and doesn't weigh anything, and save the rest of the money for a killer desktop. Gaming laptops are annoying to move around and not really all that portable, and have awful battery lives. Not to mention, I found myself not playing nearly as many games in college, since there's so much other stuff to do.

I'm loving my new 12 inch Thinkpad, I can bring it to class and use it all day without it running out of battery.

If your issue is having multiple computers, it is pretty easy to set up an ftp server to transfer any files you need. You install it on the desktop and leave it running, and connect to it with your laptop anywhere there is internet.

Well... alright. Congratulations, you've swayed me ohmy.gif I guess I'll go with the double PC idea. Now comes the fun part: I need to decide on what to get. Let's start with desktop recommendations and then we can work off of that to figure out a notebook.

EDIT: I've been looking around at some prebuilts, and this is what I've come up with as a combo. Sure, it's $2500, but I intend to make the extra $500 with a summer job.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16883227017
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16834280003

why would people even buy a prebuilt from newegg? buy from a damn oem and customize parts on your own if you're going to do that :/

Because I've never built a computer before, yo. And I'm pretty positive that if I was to try, I'd fuck something up.

No, you misunderstand. What I mean is go to dell.com (or whoever) and customize a prebuilt, not buy parts and put them together.

Ooooh, right. You do have a point. I guess I'll tinker around with that, then. But not Dell. I hate Dell.

Edit: Blah. Care to toss out a few names that you reccomend for customizing? I feel so in the dark when it comes to this.