Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Meow?]

I am in the market for laptops now. I browsed through Danawa a little and now need some opinions and feedbacks from you good people about the products.

Usage:
Work and Travel. At work, I get a lot of small breaks where I get time for Facebook, Emails, very light Photo Editing, and basic text files (work notes, rants, blogs, diary, to-do list, shopping list, and what not). This is actually the main reason of buying a laptop 'cause running back and forth my room is getting old. Travel is not so much. It's more for photographs and just having the option of using it linked with my camera.

A tablet would've been a great option. 3G is the biggest thing that draws me to it. But the lack of physical keyboard is one of the biggest downers. So I guess I'll pass for that this time.

Top priority:

Screen size. Since I'll be using it for my photos a lot of times, I'm guessing 15" is a must (?).
Built. I'm a clutz. And no matter how much I try to care for my things, they just bump here and there a lot.
Keyboard. I'm not really fond of small keyboards. But I don't use the numpad much either.
Accessibility and affordability of accessories and extras. I know batteries are one of the biggest issues with portable. And being a clutz, I need all those extras to protect the laptop too.
Can be tethered with my phone. I live in an anti-wifi city (or feel like it) and building. No computers near my work place to connect to either. So my only option is to tether my phone or use the phones's wifi hotspot (this is one of the biggest reasons why I wanted an Ipad).
Market. Has to be bought here in Korea (No Ebays and Amazons please).


Not necessary but would be nice:

Weight. I'm not so bothered as long as I can carry it in a backpack.
ODD. Once the softwares needed are installed, I will have no much use for it.
HDD. With my intention of using, I'm not bothered even with a 100Gig but ofcourse, the bigger, the better.
Webcam. I chat a lot sometimes but video chat isn't really necessary.
Speakers. I can live with poor speakers. I don't intend to play vids on it anyway.
Gaming. It won't be a gaming laptop for sure. But maybe to pass time, a good word game or some simple puzzle games would be nice to pass time.

Budget: I initially set 500k won for this. I'm not about to spend a lot since I'm not really that passionate with laptops (I'm a desktop guy), except that I just need it now. But when I look at 15" screens, I considered raising it to 700k won. But I think that should be enough for my needs.

I'm currently looking at these products. I'm more confused on brand names, honestly. I don't know which of them has a better reputation.

http://blog.danawa.com/prod/?prod_c=1355541&cate_c1=860&cate_c2=869&cate_c3=12734&cate_c4=

http://blog.danawa.com/prod/?prod_c=1238757&cate_c1=860&cate_c2=869&cate_c3=12734&cate_c4=

http://blog.danawa.com/prod/?prod_c=1336519&cate_c1=860&cate_c2=869&cate_c3=10586&cate_c4=
... and the likes of them Lenovos

There's a lot of them and it's starting to confuse me. So I'd be really happy if you, good people, would recommend a particular brand/model or perhaps suggest what specifics to look out for that'll suit my needs. It'll not be a desktop replacement. I'm already happy with my rig, thanks to your recommendations.

Thank you for taking time on this.

[jackdaniels]

I guess you intend to install your own OS.
Looks like you picked the ones without an OS.

[Meow?]

Yeah, I did notice that. But I thought it'd just be easy to ask to have one installed.

[archmagos]

[Meow?]

Thank you. Checking on Lenovos now. There's just too many of them from brand to brand and I figured, I'll just check out the models of a good rep brand. Admittedly a little lazy. I was looking more at MSI because they kind of "looked" like I can almost sit on it. While the others like HP seems like they'll break easily. But that's just in pictures though since I never had the time to go out and take a look at them physically (shrugs).