Desktop or Laptop

[vodkkaa]

I am graduating soon and my parents said they will get me either a laptop or a desktop as a graduation gift. The problem is I don't know which is the better choice.

Pros
laptop:
- Most important to me is the portability. I do a bit of traveling so a laptop is easy to take around and I can get work done pretty much anywhere
- A laptop is easy to store and won't take up a lot of space on my desk

desktop:
- expandability/futureproofness. If I build my own PC I have the opportunity to expand on it in the future and hopefully make it last for a good while.
- relatively cheaper to build my own PC than it would be to buy a laptop
- Functionality (maybe its just me but I've felt that a desktop is better well rounded when it comes to gaming, media, etc...)
- Seeing as this will be my computer for everything, I need quite a bit of storage, probably 250GB+

Cons
laptop:
- its pretty expensive to buy a decent laptop that is sure to last a couple years.
- Most laptops I've looked at have 200GB hdd or less
- There is not much room for expansion and it can become obsolete far more quicker than a desktop

desktop:
- Like I said, portability is important to me and I don't want to be lugging around a desktop with me when I go off to school.

Right now I am leaning towards a laptop only because it is portable and easy to take around. This is the price range and specs I am looking at: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1208562594248

[Slasher]

Acer is a bad and unreliable brand - just to warn you!
They break down easily and look tacky.

I bought a laptop the other day for just over $1000, I think it's an awesome price for such a good laptop. It has a 12 cell battery (7+ hours of on time, which is twice as good as most laptops), 320 gigs of hdd space, 1.83 ghz processor, 3 gigs of ram, 256mb dedicated nvidia video card, 3 usb ports, built in webcam and mic, dvd drive/burner, hdmi output, and many more goodies...

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodde...39&catid=25253
This thing is honestly a deal

[explosions]

Originally Posted by Slasher

Acer is a bad and unreliable brand - just to warn you!
They break down easily and look tacky.

I bought a laptop the other day for just over $1000, I think it's an awesome price for such a good laptop. It has a 10v battery (7+ hours of on time, which is twice as good as most laptops), 320 gigs of hdd space, 1.83 ghz processor, 3 gigs of ram, 256mb dedicated nvidia video card, 3 usb ports, built in webcam and mic, dvd drive/burner, hdmi output, and many more goodies...

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/prodde...39&catid=25253
This thing is honestly a deal

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

Same thing on the .com site, amirite?

[Slasher]

Originally Posted by explosions

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....#productdetail

Same thing on the .com site, amirite?

Yep, that sounds like it.
200 bucks cheaper in the US, damn you

[MICHAELSD]

What are you going to do on your laptop? If you want to game you'll need to spend at least $1k, but that'll be with a low-end card that'll last two years at best. More likely is only a single year since they've been on the market so long and NVIDIA and ATI have yet to update their mid-range laptop video card line with a worthy update.