Looking for a mainly home-use laptop with big screen

[havitush]

What is your budget?
800$-950$

What country will you be buying this in?
israel

What size notebook do you prefer?
Mainstream (15 - 16-inch screen)

Would you consider a refurbished laptop?
No

What are the primary tasks you need this notebook for?
Web Surfing, Office and Productivity Software, Listening to Music, Photo Editing, Video Chat and Conference, Movie Streaming and Viewing, Output Video to TV or Large Monitor, 3D CAD Design, Casual Gaming

light photoshop work

Where will you be using this laptop?
Will be used different places

How many hours of battery life do you need?
4

Will you be buying online or in store?
online

Which OS do you prefer?
Windows 7

List the screen resolutions that interest you:
High Resolution (1600 x 900)
Max Resolution (1920 x 1080)

Do you prefer a glossy or matte screen?
Matte is fine

Is the laptops design important to you?
No

Approximately what date will you be buying this laptop?
Around 01/29/2012

How much storage capacity do you need?
250 GB

Are you interested in SSD for storage?
Maybe

Do you want a built-in optical drive, what type?
DVD Burner

Thanks a lot for your help !

[Fenom96]

Wow you're quite a ways away. What I suggest, is that you check out the Dell Inspiron 17" series. They have mainstream specs (and what I mean by this is listed below).

- About 4GB of DDR3 RAM
- About a 500GB 5400RPM HDD
- Integrated Intel Graphics
- Intel Core 2nd Gen i3 (3MB Cache)

These are great specs for a mainstream laptop, so you should have a look at it. Just go to Dell ? The Official Site | Dell.

[Sxooter]

I'd say look at the Sony Vaio F. It's one of the most popular models Sony makes, and it's got a very strong following here on notebookreview. In fact, the user's lounge is up to the 6th part (they get restarted after ~10,000 or so posts because they start to get too big and slow).

Pluses: Great 1080p screen, nice keyboard, good touchpad, decent battery life.

The lower end GT520M GPU on it is only really good for very casual gaming on lowest settings, but more than powerful enough to process 1080 video streams etc.

Slightly more horsepower and slightly higher priced is the Sony SE which is the lightest 15" class laptop I know of, at 4.4lbs, which is lighter than most 14" machines. It too has a 1080p screen but while it is a very bright and pretty IPS screen, it has issues with color shift that makes reds appear orange and violets appear blue. The AMD 6630M GPU on it is about twice as fast as the GT520 on the Vaio F.

If you want more gaming horsepower in a 15.6" format wait for the Asus N53SN to come back in stock / find it elsewhere, for about $799. The screen isn't quite as beautiful as the one on the Sony F tends to be, but it's still quite nice and 1080p (note that some N53SNs come with 1366x768 screens, pass those by in this price range you can do better.)

Also you can look at the Sager NP5165 for sale by various clevo / sager resellers for about $875 or so starting price. Comes with a 1080p screen, GT555M GPU and is a good performer for gaming etc. The 95% sRGB color gamut upgrade screen is the best of the tn based displays made.

The Sony is gonna be the most stylish of these three, the Sager the most "carved from a single block of plastic" looking and the Asus somewhere in between.

There's also the Dell XPS15 with a 1080p upgrade screen that is the same as the glossy 95% color gamut screen that xotic sells. Price may be just out of your range.

And my final recommendation is to find the coupons that get you 33% off etc from HP and kit out a dv6t with an AMD 6770M which is the fastest mobile / switching GPU made before you get to the dedicated high powered GPUs like the GTX560M or ATI 6970M and so on. With a 1080p screen, 6770M GPU and a blueray player it's about $850 or so after coupons are applied.

I'm not sure which if any of these would be available in Israel.