(Tech-y) Laptop Advice Wanted

[Dhalin]

So, I have this old, old laptop (800 Mhz Athlon-M if I recall, barely runs WinXP) and I am giving thoughts to upgrading it.

I want something that can play Istaria comfortably, but yet I don't want to plunk down the huge bucks for a "gaming" laptop.

I don't care if I only get 30 or so FPS with Istaria, I just want it to be able to run the game in general.

I'm looking to spend between $800-$1200 USD, preferrably more towards the $800 range.

I don't have a lot of experience with Laptops, the aforementioned laptop being my first serious one.

I normally build my own desktops, so I stray away from factory-makes, though sadly that is difficult (if not impossible?) to do with laptops.

I would also prefer to buy locally (instead of shipping it) from a well-known store chain (maybe even Wal-Mart, but I dunno how good HP Laptops are, which is mostly what they sell last I checked).

As far as what the thing has in it, I don't really care, as long as it has an RJ45 LAN port (and not wireless). CD/DVD Burner, etc, are purely optional. As long as it has the CPU/RAM to do Istaria and the HDD space to hold it, it will likely be good enough.

Any insight/advice/thoughts would be nice, thanks!

[Dhalin]

On inspiration, I decided to browse Wal-Mart and found this..

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...ct_id=12347219

If it is strong enough to run Win7, surely it would work for Istaria and other stuff too?

Opinions on this one?

$480 is much cheaper than I expected to spend for something like this...

[Sounjah]

I have been on a Dell Vostro 1700 for a couple of years now and havent found a game I cant play. The video card is the determining factor with game like Istaria. I have not personally used the video card listed in the laptop you linked but it looks like it will do the job.

Something to be aware of though with laptops and games is the amount of heat they put out. If I am just surfing the web/email simple stuff not much heat. Once I start this game or any other 3D game (WoW, LoTRO) the heat gets very HOT!

So if you planned to have this on your lap and play this game you might want to consider a lap-table of some kind or a desk.

EDIT:: One other thing to consider is the size of the screen. Mine is a 17 inch wide screen and is easy to use all day. The one you linked is a 15.4 inch screen. I recomend going to Walmart or wherever and look at the screens and see if the size is going to work for you. Better yet, if you have a friend with a laptop see what his/her opinions of the screen size they use are.

[StalePopcorn]

Might also be worth contact HP direct and seeing if you can updgrade the video card. Most laptop manufacturers don't offer any support for doing this, and it's possible that what you have will not be upgradable.

I have a Dell Inspiron 9400 which works quite well, but I still have to slug the settings down to get anywhere near 30-40 FPS. Most first-person shooters recommend around 40FPS, but for a MMORPG where you are not playing who-shoots-fastest-wins then you could easily get away with 30FPS IMHO.

[lightning claw]

Ditch your DELL ASAP!!!!

Inspron sear's has chronic and terable heating issues it will over heat and if you get a bad one it will get up to 190 Degrease f just cause it wants to

take your receipt get in your car drive back to wall-mart and return it go to best buy and pick up an hp or an acer gateways are OK VIO is the best

there is a saying

Dude ... HA HA you got a dell for a reason

[Sounjah]

Well I have had the Dell for 2 years and it only gets hot when working it hard...such as playing games. I did modify it by removing the heat syncs and putting a copper bonding agent on them and they perform much better. It is a laptop and only has one fan on it so heat can be expected.

I cant speak for Dell's current products but this Vostro is a tank and I bought it when 17 inch laptops were first coming out.

Also, with laptops being a small compact package but with the same speeds and hardware as is available in desktops you HAVE to expect heat issue. I have 1 inch blocks under the back legs to give it more room for cooler air and it never over heats.

[Dhalin]

Thanks for the advice thusfar, a couple things I forgot to note:

The laptop will be actually a "desktop" -- its main purpose is to sit next to my desktop PC and offer support, like being able to browse the web, do email, IM, etc while I'm in a full-screen game.

My current one, as I said, cannot run Istaria, not even close. It is also a bit slow booting up, and some of the newer software likes to eat up more CPU/RAM, and I've even seen some slow-downs occurring in some normal tasks, so I thought I'd upgrade it, and go for one that could do Istaria so that I could make life for me a little easier, if I could have 2 comps capable of running it at the same time on my desk.

As far as the 15.6 inch screen, that's what my current laptop has. A little small, but I don't see any reason I couldn't see the game in 800x600 mode; I'm not going to be doing battle or anything like that on it.

[velveeta]

i love dell - never had a prob with them....

however, my laptop is this: http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=un3hitoonkMSfRsX

in fact, i am using it right now, and i plan on using it when i go back to skewl in jan - but i bought it specifically because it is a gaming puter and makes istaria look even more awesome than it is!!

i totally recommend asus products as being powerful and inexpensive - this laptop was only $100 more than a sony vaio (my first choice, incidently) with twice the power.
built in everything, massive ram, processor the equal of any desktop - personally i totally recommend asus products and think you would be happy with it as a choice of replacement.
i most certainly am!

[Guaran]

For istaria, believe it or not the largest inhibitors to performance will be the cpu's power and the hardrives' speed, followed by amount of RAM. The world cache can exceed 80,000 files, this is where a good hardrive comes in. The game itself is (mostly)software rendered, this means your graphics card has less impact that you would expect.

You can find something better by going to hp's website and doing the configuration thing, where you can choose the components (like cpu speed, amount of ram, size of hdd) and options. Don't skimp on the cpu or ram (get 3gb min), and most new laptops that aren't $300 bottom tier models should have as good of a hardrive performance wise as you can get in a laptop. I'd shy away from a $480 walmart laptop. Buying local means being able to take it in for service (when thinking of a desktop anyway), and I can tell you now that any laptop problems beyond a 30 day window will result in you dealing with the manufacturer, not the local retail store. Best Buy might be a little bit better in that they can ship it off for you (but it still has to go to an authorized repair center).

Tha ASUS model velveeta linked looks fairly decent. Use its' specifications as your minimum and you should come out just fine. If you can find a reasonably priced laptop that uses the i5 or i7 quad core cpu's, you should be very satisfied.

[Drakarr]

Check out the HP Entertainment laptops at Costco if you have a card there. You can get a pretty nice one for about 900$ The one I was looking at has 4 gigs ram and an ati Radeon HD 4650 vid card, core2 duo T6600 (2.2 ghz) processor. This is more than enough to run Istaria. I have what comes to the older model of this the dv9700 HP model.