Laptop or Tower PC?

[SrsX]

I've decided to do some shopping for myself, I can't decide if I should get myself a laptop or a tower pc. I'm ideally looking for these specs:

1TB HDD (or 750gb)

6GB ram minimum

Wifi integrated

My conflict is I want something easily portable like a laptop, but that doesn't overheat and get very hot. Thoughts?

Looking to spend $600 max.

 

[MannDude]

Definitely a laptop. Check out NewEgg or TigerDirect, some great refurbished deals on there. $600 will get you a solid machine.

Hell, I recently bought a tower PC with a i5-2400, 4GB RAM, 1TB HD, and Windows 7 for $150. It also came with a 24" Dell Monitor, that used alone is worth more than the $150 I spent. (http://www.amazon.com/Dell-UltraSharp-Widescreen-Performance-DisplayPort/dp/B00302DNZ4)

Good deals can be found browsing local for sale boards. Only thing the PC was missing was a decent graphics card, and for $40 one was found on NewEgg with 1GB of video memory. $190 total for a pretty solid PC. For another $100 I could easily double or tripple the RAM or get a SSD for the OS.

 

[Pete M.]

I don't think I could live without my laptop since I am always on the move haha. 

 

[MannDude]

Laptop is great, though lately only gets use when I'm too lazy to get out of bed and move to the desk. I usually spend my first 15-30 minutes after waking up catching up on things on it, and same before going to bed.

 

[notFound]

I recently got a Samsung really cheap NP370R5E, it was one of the older Dec 2012 models but it has a decent i5-3210M CPU and 6GB of RAM for just about £450 which should just about squeeze into your budget. It doesn't get too hot although any laptop will get hot, and has a fan off option which is handy and works nicely with Linux drivers-wise etc., was just a bit confusing at first due to some newish sort of BIOS and finding the boot menu and not having a CD-drive etc.

Other than that I would look at Lenovo, there are sometimes some awesome deals on them and they are really solid laptops in general, I bought my brother one a few years back and no problems whatsoever, and it was even from their budget line of laptops.

I bought a 1TB SSD to replace the 750GB HDD only to find I didn't really need that on the laptop so don't make that mistake either. ;-) Waste of a good £500.

 

[NodeWest-Dan]

I just switched from my laptop to my desktop.  I've been a desktop guy for a long time and tried to go to the laptop a few times, but I just can't get over the difference in performance between the two.  

Tower is a custom quad core phenom, 8gb of ram and a bunch of HDDs

Laptop is a Lenovo i7 with 6gb of ram 

for some reason though that laptop doesn't run very smoothly.

 

[Marc M.]

I'm chained to my desktop workstation and couldn't live without it.

 

[zshen]

You really need to weigh what you're wanting to use it for. I have both/several and wouldn't part with any of them. 

 

[nunim]

I've been working off a laptop for the last 6 months and I'm building myself a desktop for Christmas.  I'm not a gamer so I'm going with an AMD APU, 8gb of ram and SSD to start, it's great to have a laptop but for work I want a desktop with dual monitors.

If you want something really portable that will keep cool, grab a netbook.

 

[SrsX]

Right now I'm looking at a HP Pavilion 500 w/ AMD A10-6700, 1TB HDD, 8GB ram with AMD Radeon HD 5870 Graphics card. Windows 8 is pre-installed, but I'll just override it and throw Debian 7 on it. It's not too expensive, luckily. It's about $550.

 

[wlanboy]

It depends on what you do.

My laptop + 24'' BenQ monitor + docking station + esata 3 TB disk is all I need.

Won't go back to a pc brick - tower.

 

[nunim]

Right now I'm looking at a HP Pavilion 500 w/ AMD A10-6700, 1TB HDD, 8GB ram with AMD Radeon HD 5870 Graphics card. Windows 8 is pre-installed, but I'll just override it and throw Debian 7 on it. It's not too expensive, luckily. It's about $550.

That's pretty much the build I'm doing, you should be able to build it yourself for $400 tops.

 

[drmike]

Depends.  Two different things.

Notebook is great since is in theory portable.  But after you tether stuff to it not so portable.  

I use both desktops and multiple portables.

I'd lean towards desktop unless you plan to actively be away from home.

 

[BuyCPanel-Kevin]

Oh you can make a tower computer with that kind of funding no problem, i'd suggest going out to Fry's or newegg

 

[NodeBytes]

I work on a Macbook Pro full time. I upgraded it and it has an SSD as well as a spinning drive. I generally stay portable but I also have a screen that I plug in to on my desk.

I'm getting a Dell Venue 8 Pro in the the next few weeks for client work that requires a Windows machine. This will also be nice because I currently have a Lenovo Android Tablet that barely gets any use because I don't like it since it doesn't multi task very well. That said, the Venue 8 will probably not become my everyday portable carry because I need the full keyboard for my work.

It's your choice which you use. Do you need to be portable? Do you like a bigger screen? Also, parts are cheaper and easier to replace on a desktop.