*sigh* new laptop again
 

I seem to be going through laptops like... uh, for the lack of a better metaphor...

Well, it broke. And the way it broke is not covered under warranty (goodbye, lid).

I'm back to square one with regard to a real computer.

I figured that it's probably a good idea that I go for broke this time around. What's a good desktop replacement, high-end multimedia or gaming laptop for me. Remember that going beyond 15.6" displays is not even a consideration due to lack of desk space, as are desktops and HTPCs due to the need for moving the system around.

I'd prefer the resulting system to have both an optical drive and a dedicated GPU of some form, though it's extremely likely I can get by with Haskell graphics (but not Ivy Bridge 😉)

In my opinion your best bet would be to build it yourself, if that's even possible. Self-builds tend to be a bigger bang for your buck, and you get to pick and choose the specs of the system yourself. It all depends on what specs you'd like to have in your computer. Will it be geared towards gaming? Net surfing? General use?

It's a laptop. If I want to build, it pretty much means I'm stuck with Dell and various ODMs.

Be thankful you can even afford a new laptop. I've been in need of one for a while, I'm lucky that it's even working right now as the wireless card and driver have both been failing recently. Only a matter of time now before this nearly 3 year old Asus laptop dies completely. But that stinks that had to happen, though I know the feel all too well. What I could use is technically a desktop computer but a laptop is much more convenient for my college classes at the moment. Hopefully I'll be in the same boat as you soon, well in terms of getting a new laptop.

I do wish you the best though I don't get the preference for not Dell. I have a Inspiron 1520 that still runs and it's 5-7 years old and the battery just finally needs to be replaced and only ever had one dead pixel on the screen. Do searches and go online about gaming laptop or what your think would fit best, it's what I did for my birthday and it will show you some options so you can take consideration what maters.

Oh, sorry. I misread that, thinking you were going all out and getting a desktop this time. Good luck with you search, especially if you want to play games on it. Almost all laptops these days have that GPU switch that switches between a dedicated and discreet GPU depending on when it's needed. I've heard plenty of rants about these switches not switching over to the dedicated GPU when it was needed.

Hehe. Sometimes it feels so bad to lose a laptop that you use every day. I can live with a graphics chip as slow as a GeForce GT 630 M, and it's pretty easy to exceed that if we're talking about GPUs these days. I'm more concerned on the keyboard these days. I can always mitigate a bad trackpad any time with a mouse, but carrying an extra keyboard? Nope.

Hmm...

I hope I do succeed with all this. I'm actually quite interested in some Dells as they seem to have pretty nice warranty extension options.