Asus N61jv-x2

I dont know much about laptops and this is going to be my first laptop purchase. Ive been looking at the model in the title, the ASUS N61JV-X2, and it seems to be a good laptop. Im going to be doing the occasional gaming but thats not a focus, its mostly for schoolwork and surfing the web. Im going to take good care of it, cleaning it constantly and just overall being very careful with it, would it be able to last me around 5 years? Also does anyone have anything good or bad to say about this laptop?

 

I do not own this laptop, I have the G51J, and sometimes wish I went for the N61JV.

I think the specs are perfect for a casual gamer whose focus is productivity. That said, 5 years is a long time, and I suspect that while it will be a fine general purpose computer in 5 years, the GPU might have a lot of trouble keeping up with games.

If you are willing to spend a little more, the N61JQ might hold up in 5 years a little better. It's a quad core, and the ATI card in it is a wee bit better. However, I suspect battery life will be a little lower due to the power-hungry i7 CPU.

The N82JV (i5) / JQ (i7) will be released fairly soon, and might be worth waiting for. It will have a slightly better NVIDIA card then the N61JV, the 335M (the same one used in the Alienware M11) and is pretty powerful for such an energy efficient card. Maybe more importantly, it will come with a blu-ray drive, and will be USB 3.0 compatible, which is 10x faster than USB 2.0. Very helpful if you have an external USB hard drive.

What kinds of games do you play?

 

FPS games mostly with some RTS. Occasionally RPGs.

Im interested in the N82JV, but wasnt able to find much solid info on it. Whens it going to be released (like is it a matter of days, weeks, or a few months)? Also ive read that its price should be around 900, how much more would the i7 version cost (and is the increased performance worth that?)


Also when i say last 5 years i dont expect for it to be able to play new games 5 years from now, id just like for it be functional/working for my schoolwork.

 

I saw the i7 version for approximately 200 dollars more, Canadian. I'm not sure what other goodies come with it.

I'd say we are going to increasingly see quad core performance being important in the future, but the dual core in the JV is no joke either. It depends on what you plan on doing.

I got the G51J, wanting the quad core for music production. The quad core gives you something around 30% increase in performance over dual cores for tasks like number crunching, video rendering, music synthesis, photoshop, etc.

If you're creating multimedia or programming, I think it would be a good move.

If not, the i5 is very good, will give you a longer battery life, and generates less heat. You will likely not notice much difference, performance wise, at least until a few years from now where your laptop will be obsolete either way. Few games take advantage of quads these days (I think BFBC2 does), so it might not be worth it if you are otherwise just surfing the web and using the office suite. You might appreciate the longer battery life more.

I have no idea when the 82 will be released, but if you can wait a month, I think waiting for the blu ray/USB 3.0/better video card would be a wise move. In 5 years time, DVDs will be looking like VHS. The i5 N82 will likely cost you about 900 as well.