Buying and laptop for study...and fighting GW dragons...

So in about a year and a half, I'm going to be buying a new laptop for school purposes. But I also want to be able to play some games, specifically Guild Wars 2.

I also wanna be able to do this with as little upgrading as possible. Any ideas or directions you good folks can point me in?

Lol! Yeah, get back to us in 1.45 years. Anything we'd say now, probably won't have much meaning in 1.5 years.

I'm not sure what you mean by "as little upgrading as possible" - basically, 1.5 years from now you'd buy a new laptop. No upgrading involved.

1.5 years from now we'll all have holographic PC's on our wrist

sorry i lost my crystal ball. Any tips on what to buy 1.5 years from now will have to be taken then. We can barley tell you what to buy next mouth right now and takes makes 1.5 years impossible.

Well, i was meaning more towards specs. How many processors etc. not exactly exact laptops :P

Yes, and that's what will change. Right now, you would want at least a dual core with a discrete graphics chip. In 1.5 years it could be 6 cores with on-chip graphics, or photon CPUs and holograms.

despite the sarcastic replies, I can recommend looking into the Qosmio series of laptops from Toshiba - they're gaming / multimedia laptops but they're sort of mid range in price. the models have been updated every year for the last 4 years or so, chances are pretty good there will still be a competitive model available in 1.5 years.

http://www.alienware.com/Landings/laptops.aspx

Im serious, buy a MX14 or 17. And buy an Alienware if you want a gaming laptop. It costs more but trust me it's worth it, cause the cooling on many other laptop manifacturers simply isn't enough for gaming usage. Quite litterally burned myself at this the last time I bought mine, it got so hot that now, 3 months after the last time i used it for gaming, I STILL DONT HAVE FINGERPRINTS ON MY PINKIE FINGER! Seriously, no fingerprint! My pinkie finger is scarred for life!

Too expensive? Yes I agree. And there's no knowing whether GW2 will be out in 3 months or 2 years. Nor is there any knowing if you're new laptop will actually handle GW2 well, because it's not always as simple as a yes or no answer. Mine handles some games excellently and others games not at all, even though you'd think it would handle the games i doesnt, and not the games it does. Gaming laptops are moody creatures!

In general I'd say buy two computers in stead of one, 1 stationary computer for gaming. And 1 laptop for beeing on the road. The laptop will likely work just as well for normal school related tasks, and the stationary computer will be significantly better then a gaming laptop even at a low price.

But if you buy one, BUY QUALITY!