New laptop

[Somebody Else]

Having poured a glass of wine into my last laptop (a four year old Dell... so due an upgrade anyway) I've placed an order for this. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001H54HDS) Had a budget of about a grand, is this the best I could have done for it? Desktop out of the question - far too much traveling to do. Obviously, I want it to run, well, everything. (Just as a point of reference, I was able to run DoW2 on my old one, and not just at minimum spec - despite its antiquity)

Still have some time to cancel my order, if someone has something better they can recommend - I'm in Edinburgh, by the way, and do want it sooner rather than later.

[KukriKhan]

NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT 3D graphics card with 512MB VRAM

Half-a-Gig of Vid memory will play all of today's games, and most of next year's, probably. Being a laptop, your issue will be heat-dispersion (as you already know, being a previous lappy-owner). If it turns out to be a 'hot potato', Amazon will take it back within 14 days - so I'd try to burn it up in the first 3-4 days, if I were you. Fire up CPU and V-card intensive apps all at the same time, and see if it crashes/distorts or strains under heat.

Economy-wise, looks like pretty good bang-for-the-buck, to me.

-edit-
What kinda wine did your old lappy drink? Cheap stuff, one hopes. :laugh4:

[Somebody Else]

Yeah, the price was what got me - I'm wondering what the catch is... As for heat dispersion - you should have seen my old Dell - half the facia removed, as well as the battery, and all propped up (on a first field dressing - don't ask). Hopefully the fan won't conk out on this one - one of my old laptop's fans died about a year in. (And on the previous one too...)

I should test it thoroughly huh? Sounds like an excellent excuse to get this Empire Total War that I've heard about...

The wine wasn't anything special - had already had the first bottle of wine (1st wine good, 2nd onwards less so).
Chateau Richard - £3.75 from Majestic, good enough to drink, cheap enough to cook with)

*edit*

And when did you stop being green?

[KukriKhan]

And when did you stop being green?

January. Going back to Uni to finish up my degree (30 years later), so I can switch careers, since it looks like I hafta work into my 70's. :beam:

[pevergreen]

Your laptop is almost identical to mine. I have more RAM, but you have more disk space.

The graphics card handles most games well enough, DoW 2 gets a bit stuttery on high graphics when the screen is full. ETW plays nicely on low/medium.

Other than that, heat issues are a problem, at least for mine. Nice flat surface, or move it every so often. (if at full usage)

[Somebody Else]

Should suit me fine then - assuming it arrives - I don't mind a little compromise in graphics - as long as it works (I even managed to run Crysis on my old 'un. Minimum everything...). As for the heat, I'll probably keep it propped up anyway - I never use a laptop keyboard if I can avoid it - big hands.

Just have to wait for it to arrive. Ordered guaranteed delivery by 1pm today... received a laptop bag, nothing else. Called up, and should get a replacement on Thursday. Just in time not to be able to use it to do any of the work that's due on Thursday. Woo.