Which Laptop Should I Buy? Advice Needed

[sallu 0]

HelloI am about to buy a laptop. I need some expert's advice right now. Which company is good and reliable? The main question is this- I want a laptop which had a lot of RAM, good speed, a lot of hard disk space, good video and sound card, bluetooth and a biuld in webcam. The thing, I play Microsoft flight simulator (One of the slowest games you will find). It needs a lot of space, fast computer and a good video card. This is all that I know of it. Please advice me over this. Which is the best laptop for me? And please dont advice anything too expensive. I cant afford a lot. I am just 15 and have to stay in my allowances.Thanx in Advance

[sonesay 7]

If you want to find a good deal within your budget range you will have to do the hard work and start looking at laptops and comparing them with specifications and price. Since we dont know your budget we have no idea what kind of range your after.There are basically 3 ranges cheap poor mans laptops 1000 dollars nz newish.mid range laptop 2000 nz newish (what most people will get)high end laptops 3000+ nzwhen you know your budget go out and look, you'll want something you like in looks and features. I cant really recommend any laptops but thats a guide to finding one. The thing is you have to look at as many as you can if you want to find a good deal. You could end up buying a laptop tomorrow and find out a better one existed but you were too lazy to go do the research and find out yourself.good luck

[Thingcubed 0]

Well, I recently bought a laptop from a small(ish) company called M-Tech. It ended up costing around $1600 US. As far as quality/power goes its done quite well so far. If it's any help, I can run Crysis with fairly decent settings. Most older (a couple years) games I've been able to run with full graphics settings.If you're looking for a computer for gaming, does it need to be a laptop? While I greatly appreciate having a laptop that can run games, I got it for doing schoolwork and to be portable. If you're 15 then I assume you're probably still living at home, which means portability may not be an issue. A desktop is usually much better for gaming, cheaper, and you can upgrade it before it becomes obsolete.

[csp4.0 1]

Yes, get a desktop. I know quite a few people who got laptops who thought they just looked 'cool' and so that they can take them to school, friend's houses etc etc... I got my laptop because that I was going to move from new zealand to australia two weeks later so no point in getting desktop.

But if you can get a desktop...

Otherwise. For your requirements, I would recommend getting a computer US$ 1600-2000. And what is your budget by the way?
Get atleast Dual Core (Core 2 Duo, not a Core Duo, and certainly not Pentium Dual Core), get atleast 2GB of ram, try getting 667MHz. Hard drives should be around 200GB, and try getting a decent graphics chip none of that intel made stuff... If you haven't much money to spend try buying it from a local computer store or dell. If you have money to bathe in then go to Falcon Northwest they have the best laptops many times better than alienware, which is a subdivision of dell...

[Thingcubed 0]

On the subject of hard drives... I think you would probably be better off with a smaller hard drive, but at 10,000 rpm. I've only got a 75 GB hard drive in my laptop, but I use an external hard drive to store all my files. You can pick a 500 GB external for less than $150 US nowadays, and they're really quite handy.

[rayzoredge 2]

You might want to give us a budget to work off of.Flight simulators are demanding games, so you may not find the performance you're looking for in a cheaper laptop. Desktops would be the way to go if you want to sacrifice portability, as you can hike up performance specifications without suffering as much of a blow to your wallet as a potential laptop purchase would do.Have a budget, see what the RECOMMENDED requirements for the game are, and then give us some guidelines. As for brands, I've gone with HP and Dell so far... no real qualms with either company as of yet. (I've owned a Dell Inspiron 8600 and currently have an HP Pavilion zd8000 and an HP tc1100 tablet PC.)

[danielscottisilva 0]

Man!!! What can i say to you...if you prefer to buy a notebook, because of the mark, like, ACER, HP, TOSHIBA, ASUS or others, i think you should buy , ASUS first, HP, ACER and TOSHIBA, because the computer package is much better, but if you want to buy a computer with quality and low price, you should buy ACER. I have a Acer Aspire 5610, it's a core duo, 1,6 Ghz, with 2Gb RAM, and 120 Gb HD, it's really nice and i paid a good price for this. It have some problems like, the visual, or it isn't strong enough, but he is very good for who whants good price and faster notebook...

[jlhaslip 4]

I have a friend that just bought an Acer with pretty much exactly what you are asking for for around $800 Cdn, including the Webcam, but without the Bluetooth, ( as far as I know... ).Check them out.

[pop 0]

i think HP laptops are great and affordable to anyone. i really don't know requirements for ms flight simulator, but you should go out and check for HP laptop that meets those requirements. i bought real cheap nx 7300 and i like it a lot. the thing is that same laptop configuration is slightly faster then same Pc one. but if you are already playing ms flight simulator you should really consider buying PC so that you can connect more LCD monitors to it and enjoy the game even much more

[Dooga 0]

A lot of laptops at around 700$-800$ CAD/USD (oh I love the fact that I can say both at the same time) are pretty good.Acer Aspire, and HP Pavillion are some of the pretty good ones. They will have most likely the following specs:- 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo- 2GB RAM DDR2- 160GB HD Space- 256mb Video CardThat's what I am aiming for, and to be honest, 800$ is the market price for computers with these specs, DO NOT buy for more.

[indrazam 0]

- 2.0 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo- 2GB RAM DDR2
- 160GB HD Space
- 256mb Video Card

Well... in my opinion, Toshiba is the best laptop company and you might want to try Dell (XPS). You get both these laptops with the above spec!

[leiaah 0]

I just got a compaq presario. I guess it's okay. It's one of the relatively cheap ones being sold here in the Philippines. It has a dual core processor, 1gb of memory, but only 80 gb of HD space though but I plan on buying an external because they're very cheap now, so yeah. Acer also has relatively cheap ones too, you might want to check them out. Anyways, good luck

[rayzoredge 2]

I just looked at the required minimum specifications for Microsoft Flight Simulator X and figured, hey, this isn't too bad.

 

Then I read the Wiki article on it and saw this:

 

Microsoft Flight Simulator X comes on 2 DVDs and requires approximately 15 gigabytes of hard drive space to install. Although official minimum system requirements call for a 1.0 GHz CPU, 256 MB RAM and a 32 MB DirectX 9 compatible video card, much more powerful hardware is needed to achieve good performance with visual settings increased beyond the lowest values. With anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering either disabled or reduced, low-end and even some high end graphics cards, such as NVIDIA's 7300 GT and ATI's X800 will perform respectably at relatively low resolutions (ie. 1024x768), even with all other visual options maximized.^[8] On the other hand, there is no apparent benefit from SLI technology, except for the most extreme resolutions with high AA.^[9]

 

A fast CPU is essential for good performance. While Service Pack 1 improved performance on multicore processors, FSX performance is largely dependant on CPU speed.^[10] Also, Service Pack 1 has introduced compatibility with dual-core and quad-core processors, with an upgrade to enhance graphical performance, although the extent of performance increase is variable.

You're out of luck if you're trying to keep under budget and still get a laptop powerful enough to run this game well with considerable eye candy when peers are having less-than-desirable results with video cards that ship with laptops (unless you can tolerate less-than-desirable graphical options and lack of eye candy).

 

Be prepared to fork over $1000 at the very least for a laptop that will be able to play this game without too many hiccups. I say that you're better off with a desktop, if you want value for your performance dollar.

 

The Acer Aspire AS5520-5716 is the cheapest laptop that I could find with respectable performance in running MFSX. At 1024x768 with Ultra Quality, no anti-aliasing, and trilinear texture filtering, it runs at an average FPS of 18... which is playable, and if you're not too bothered by slight choppiness, that's a decent framerate to play at.

 

I suggest you shop around and take another look at that budget. Like I said, it's going to be hard to stay cheap but be able to play your favorite games without killing performance with eye candy.

 

What I suggest you do is go to NewEgg and shop for laptops there, specifying a dedicated graphics card filter (at least), throwing in other things that you want to filter your results, and then looking solely at the video card within the laptop to gauge whether it will suit what you want for a gaming laptop. Use the VGA charts and match them up as closely as possible at Tom's Hardware, as they conveniently have a scenario for Microsoft Flight Simulator X.

 

Edit: More tools incoming... here's a site that actually charts mobile graphic solutions against each other. It's not as intuitive as TH's VGA chart, but hey, it's more accurate than guessing an equivalent.

 

Edit edit: An awesome thread post to gauge what kind of GPU you would want to aim for in a laptop.

Edited January 30, 2008 by rayzoredge (see edit history)

[rayzoredge 2]

NewEgg spits out two laptops that might fit the bill as far as graphical rendering capability goes.

Toshiba Satellite X205-S9800
Toshiba Satellite X205-S9349

Both laptops sport the NVIDIA 8700M GT, which is the high-end of video chipsets in the mobile computing field. I have NO idea how this will actually perform in real-time, but if it surpasses my mid-range ATI X600 that I have in my HP Pavilion zd8000, and if it's that much better... I'd say it's a good bet.

Both laptops ring in at around $1300-1500, which really isn't that bad considering what you're getting. The processor speeds aren't awesome, but they make up by being dual-core. If you want HD DVD capability, you'll have to go for the more expensive one, but at a price hike of around $100, it's not that bad for HD DVD.

[schulz 0]

I bought few weeks ago Acer 4920G(Core 2 Duo T5450 / 1.66 GHz - Centrino Duo - RAM 2 GB - HDD 160 GB - DVD?RW (?R DL) / DVD-RAM - Mobility Radeon X2400, WLAN : 802.11a/b/g - Vista Home Premium - 14.1" 1280 x 800). But it doesn't have bluetooth. It is rather fast in games and just for work. Price is 1000-1300$(i've got it for 800$).