Quest for the Cheapo Laptapo

I live in a land where technology is priced at a premium. Considering that a lot of the parts get manufactured in nearby countries like Taiwan, China and Malaysia, it's strange that the prices of laptops and gadgets are much higher here in the Philippines. Several factories manufacture microchips here in the country so why is the final product so expensive here? Consider the MSI GX series laptops that are being sold in some shops in the Philippines. The prices are outrageous. Fifty one thousand pesos (or roughly US $1,050) for a gimped version of the GX620 when the US version can be bought at a far cheaper price ($ 900) even when you include the shipping.

So it's now my quest to find the best valued gaming laptop here in the country. I've already mention the first option, the GX 620 which they market here as the X-edition. They probably used X cause they crossed out a lot of features. The next laptop that is better than the gimped GX620 is the NEO Elan 3105. The specs of this laptop is that of the un-gimped GX620 at a price of 55,000 pesos. That's reasonable considering you get 400 hz more for your dual core processor, 2 gigs more ram and 340 GB more hard disk space. NEO is a local laptop assembler and I know they are generally cheaper. I'm wondering now if the price I have at hand is the latest price.

The third interesting option is the Lenovo Y450. I hate these laptop names as you can't decipher the power of the laptop through the name. There are several different configurations for this laptop. Here, we get a Nvidia G130M and a 2.4Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor for the price of 58,000. This laptop has the best value among the three I've mentioned despite it having a 1 inch smaller screen. The problem with this model is that it's the rarest among the three. I think this has also sold well because of it's value.

I've decided to take a laptop instead of the desktop for the sole reason that I'll be leaving home probably soon. I can't go around lugging a desktop around so I have to settle with these value gaming laptops (despite them not being the best choice for gaming). There are slightly more expensive laptops that have similar 9600GT and G130M video cards but those things are way out of my budget.