And this is my second 'help me!' thread I'm now making. This is about laptops, specifically, what to buy.
For several months my laptop has been dying an exceedingly slow death. First, it started to slow down on me over time. Then, roughly a year ago, I spilled water on the keyboard and had to send it for repairs - I was without a laptop for roughly four weeks (fortunately my university has 24-hour computer clusters for when I needed to use the internet). Since then it's steadily declined in performance, including half the time when I turn it off it refuses to turn back on again, requiring multiple manual shutdowns (holding down the on-button) before it starts again. Just before Christmas last year, the disc drive broke, and I've been averse to repairing it again because of the time I'll be without a laptop again. And in the past few days, it's been shutting down on me for no reason whatsoever when I'm in the middle of doing anything. I tried installing the entire Adobe software package for film-making, and that kept making my laptop crash until I uninstalled everything. I used to be able to run most games with no problems, now it can barely run Rome: Total War without turning all the settings really low. And my 100GB memory has dwindled to just 6GB now, even though I only have around 2GB of software installed - the rest of it seems to have just vanished, and I have no clue why. Things have improved very slightly today after I installed a registry fixing tool and completely defragmented the hard drive, but nevertheless the hardware and software are both slowly failing on me, and it's just a matter of months, if not weeks, before it dies completely. It's worth mentioning that I've had the laptop for almost three years now, it was a birthday present for my 18th when I went to university, and I'll be 21 in August.
Anyway, since all these problems are happening, I need to get a new laptop as soon as possible. I have a part-time job so I earn around £300 per month, and I'll be paying rent when I move back home but that shouldn't be as much as I earn, so my current budget stands at whatever's left in my bank account after I pay this month's rent and bills, which will total around £1000. What I need is a relatively cheap laptop that's decent enough to play Portal 2 with the settings right down, or Medieval 2: Total War at standard settings. It also needs to be decent enough to run most film-making software (specifically Adobe After Effects and Celtx scriptwriting software), without crashing. I don't need it massively pimped and able to run the likes of Crysis or whatever, just good enough so I can do my film writing and editing and still be able to play the games I have (mostly pre-2009 titles) without any issues. So, what do people suggest?
[small]Also, here's the URL for my first 'help me!' thread, about a bike: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.288480-Bicycle-Help[/small]
For several months my laptop has been dying an exceedingly slow death. First, it started to slow down on me over time. Then, roughly a year ago, I spilled water on the keyboard and had to send it for repairs - I was without a laptop for roughly four weeks (fortunately my university has 24-hour computer clusters for when I needed to use the internet). Since then it's steadily declined in performance, including half the time when I turn it off it refuses to turn back on again, requiring multiple manual shutdowns (holding down the on-button) before it starts again. Just before Christmas last year, the disc drive broke, and I've been averse to repairing it again because of the time I'll be without a laptop again. And in the past few days, it's been shutting down on me for no reason whatsoever when I'm in the middle of doing anything. I tried installing the entire Adobe software package for film-making, and that kept making my laptop crash until I uninstalled everything. I used to be able to run most games with no problems, now it can barely run Rome: Total War without turning all the settings really low. And my 100GB memory has dwindled to just 6GB now, even though I only have around 2GB of software installed - the rest of it seems to have just vanished, and I have no clue why. Things have improved very slightly today after I installed a registry fixing tool and completely defragmented the hard drive, but nevertheless the hardware and software are both slowly failing on me, and it's just a matter of months, if not weeks, before it dies completely. It's worth mentioning that I've had the laptop for almost three years now, it was a birthday present for my 18th when I went to university, and I'll be 21 in August.
Anyway, since all these problems are happening, I need to get a new laptop as soon as possible. I have a part-time job so I earn around £300 per month, and I'll be paying rent when I move back home but that shouldn't be as much as I earn, so my current budget stands at whatever's left in my bank account after I pay this month's rent and bills, which will total around £1000. What I need is a relatively cheap laptop that's decent enough to play Portal 2 with the settings right down, or Medieval 2: Total War at standard settings. It also needs to be decent enough to run most film-making software (specifically Adobe After Effects and Celtx scriptwriting software), without crashing. I don't need it massively pimped and able to run the likes of Crysis or whatever, just good enough so I can do my film writing and editing and still be able to play the games I have (mostly pre-2009 titles) without any issues. So, what do people suggest?
[small]Also, here's the URL for my first 'help me!' thread, about a bike: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.288480-Bicycle-Help[/small]
). But thanks for the suggestion, and that laptop does look like it'll suit my needs perfectly 
