This is good and I'm very excited about it. I'm going to need a laptop for college/university.

I more or less fall into the same demographic as you, and you're only sixteen. God, I wish I was half as committed to my future when I was your age.

I'm off to college in only one year. I'm going into twelfth grade (end of the current, eleventh grade school year ends in half a month). and I have to look into colleges and apply soon... and it leads up and goes through November (That's not fair... I want to play Skyrim, not fill out application forms and write essays!).

Well, I start college at the end of August and have to get myself one soon. I have somewhere from $700-800 to spend. Even though I may not have time to play Skyrim (or perhaps I will, being a listless English/history major), I do need the additional processing power for things like Photoshop and InDesign since I do lots of independent work in those fields. A friend of mine who used to be the high school newspaper's chief layout editor before I took over (in badass Machiavellian style), she's got some connections with some powerful organizations and I'm hoping to have some nice work coming in for me while I'm in college.

That is to say, you do NOT want to attempt to do any high-grade work in Adobe/Autodesk programs with an Intel Integrated Graphics processor. Rendering takes ages. It. Just. Doesn't. Work. :banghead:

I already steer away from all computers that have the word "intel" in their graphics chip description. I'll just hope the extra year makes for noticeably even more powerful laptops.

Are these visual improvements you can adjust on your laptop? i.e. buttons or dials on the machine. Or are these things that are specifically adjustable for the particular game you're playing? i.e. the settings control panel within the game menu mode.

And I always thought that anti-aliasing was supposed to be turned off? I always have HDR turned on and Bloom and AA turned off when I play TESIV.

I'm referring to the graphics settings for the particular game. Usually there is a slider where you can adjust the individual level for AA and AF.

IIRC Oblivion has something weird going on where you can't use HDR and AA at the same time or something. I don't know exactly how that works, but the game looks a million times better with Qarl's hi res textures, OBGEv2 and ENBSeries shaders.

I own a fire extinguisher, don't you? :mellow:

I'll hunt you down and destroy that save anyways


:flamethrower:

If my house was on fire, I'd pull the hard drive out of my PS3 and jump out of the window with it.

I feel like I'm simply reiterating a lot of what people said already, but it just depends on your personal tastes. Laptops and Desktops each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

Desktop Advantages:
- Generally cheaper since parts aren't downsized
- Ability to upgrade parts as you need to
Laptop Advantages:
- Comparable power in a smaller package
- You can take it anywhere you go
Desktop Disadvantages:
- Can be bothersome to maintain if you are inexperienced with hardware
- Stuck wherever you put it. Moving it somewhere actually requires effort.
- Can often be missing certain technologies that most laptops come with standard (WiFi, Bluetooth, a webcam, etc) though you can easily get those as well with extra expense.
Laptop Disadvantages:
- Almost always no way to fix or upgrade parts. If it breaks, pray that you still have a warranty.
- It costs a lot to fit so much technology in a small package. A good gaming Desktop can run you about $800, but a powerful gaming laptop is easily over $1000 (my old one was $1500).
- Most powerful laptops have an awful tendency to overheat.
- Laptops forsake features for size. My desktop can fit 3 disk drives, has 9 USB ports, a Firewire port, and DVI, VGA, and HDMI out, while my laptop had only 3 USB ports, a single BluRay drive, and only VGA and HDMI out.

If you're a student, I recommend a laptop because constant access to a computer is a vital resource. Playing top-notch games is just a very nice bonus. If you are conscious about money, get a desktop. There's no reason to pay more money if you never leave your house to play games. If you are neither of these things, then you could get both I guess.