Laptop buying

[Warmaster Horus]

Right, this is my first post in this forum I think.

Anyway, my birthday is in a couple of months, and my parents have offered to buy me a laptop, since I travel often and stuff.
Money is not a problem, what to buy is.
I would really like a very good laptop, so it can last me two or three years. I guess I'd need 3 Ghz of Processing power, 1 gig of RAM, as much on the hard drive as possible, a good graphics card, and a good sound card.
I'm looking for something that can run Oblivion, Medieval 2, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer 3, the best kind of games, in other words...

Anyone have a suggestion which model to ask for?

[TevashSzat]

For your specs, I would recommend 2 gigs now. 1 gig is becoming the new 512mb seeing as some games will have 1gig as part of their mininum requirement so 2 gigs is needed on any computer that can run games smoothly and nicely for the next 2-3 years. Another issue that you must think about is will you be using the battery extensively. If so, it would be better to sacrifice performance for longer battery life. Some of the more advanced videocards and processors require an immense amount of power and I don't think you want to lug around 10 batteries everywhere you go

[AggonyDuck]

I'd advise you to take a look at the ASUS G1S, it is propably one of the best gaming laptops around at the moment.

[Togakure]

I'd advise you to take a look at the ASUS G1S, it is propably one of the best gaming laptops around at the moment.

Hmm ... yes, thanks for mentioning this, Ducky.

Here is a link to a detailed review of the ASUS G1S, complete with lots of pictures and benchmarks.

[sapi]

Right, this is my first post in this forum I think.

Anyway, my birthday is in a couple of months, and my parents have offered to buy me a laptop, since I travel often and stuff.
Money is not a problem, what to buy is.
I would really like a very good laptop, so it can last me two or three years. I guess I'd need 3 Ghz of Processing power, 1 gig of RAM, as much on the hard drive as possible, a good graphics card, and a good sound card.
I'm looking for something that can run Oblivion, Medieval 2, Supreme Commander, Command and Conquer 3, the best kind of games, in other words...

Anyone have a suggestion which model to ask for?

I can't provide specific models, but the thing you really want to consider is, as xdeathfire pointed out, the trade off between battery life and power.

GPUs, especially, take a hell of a lot of battery power; and as such, laptops with discrete graphics cards have much, much lower battery lives than those with integrated chips.

Considering you want to game on it, the decision between discrete/integrated is already made, but you should still keep power requirements in mind...

[Stuperman]

you have to keep in mind that there are many tyoes of integrated GFX, an integrated X1150 or 6150 (I've played BF2 on a integrated 6150, it's not bad)is much better than intel GMA 900 or 950. I'd look at a hypermemory/turbocache card, they have a dedicated core, but integrated memory. Unless you are willing to put up the big $ needed for a proper gaming laptop.

3Ghz worth of CPU power is a lot, a very lot, I'd be surprised if you can find one with a cpu that big. any of the C2D 5xxx series or 7xxx series is probable prlenty of CPU for a couple of years.

[Warmaster Horus]

Okay, thanks for the answers!
I'll consider the ASUS G1S.
I would prefer power. I would prefer using an external power supply (not the battery). And, anyway, one day the battery will die, so...
I'll take advantage of this thread to ask a few of questions:
-what is bloatware? That's one of the cons the reviewer found with the ASUS G1S A1.
-the specifications show a processing power of 2.20 GHZ. Is that enough? When using one of the aforementioned games, on the highest settings, will it work correctly, without lag?
-and finally, is Vista better than XP SP2? I understand many of the games to come out in a few years will use DX10, but is Vista worth it now? Will most games work under Vista? I heard something about Vista not being as good as XP for gaming.
-Also, if Vista is better than XP, which kind of Vista should I get? 32-bit, 64 bit, home premium? I admit I'm a bit lost...

Thanks in advance! Hope I haven't been too much of a bother...

[TevashSzat]

Bloatware means that the computer comes with alot of random crap that is basically never needed or can be easily replaced by a better program that is free. This sucks up system resources and lowers the comp's speed requiring much time uninstalling everything that you don't need.

A 2.2 Core duo is probably as high as you can get on laptops and can certainley power everything you need for games in the next few years. The odds are that your system's bottleneck will be your video card instead of your processor if you do have any problems in the future.

I really dunno about Vista or SP2 seeing as how I haven't even touched Vista yet. From what I have seen, Vista may have problems with games written for DX9. If you don't mind the hassle of uninstalling XP and getting Vista up as well as spending the money to get Vista, I would recommend XP until Vista is more stable and is troubleshooted more thoroughly.

[Lemur]

-Also, if Vista is better than XP, which kind of Vista should I get? 32-bit, 64 bit, home premium? I admit I'm a bit lost...

If you absolutely must get Vista, Home Premium should be the least worst option. 64-bit is said to still be a driver nightmare.

[Warmaster Horus]

absolutely must

I take it you don't reccomend Vista?

Thanks guys!

[TevashSzat]

Generally new OS's aren't tested very well so Microsoft depend on this poor little buggers that bought it when the OS came out to do the serious testing and then troubleshoots the most serious problems with SP1.

[Warmaster Horus]

So, you recommend I wait before getting Vista?
Say, if I install XP on a computer, then uninstall it and install Vista, it'll work okay?
Is a Vista compatible graphics card only for Vista, or can it be used for XP too?

I know, I know next to nothing in computers...

[TevashSzat]

I personally would get XP now and upgrade to Vista later like in a year, but it is a real hassle upgrading OS and costs alot of money so it is really your preference.

A Vista only graphics card only means that its full potential is achieved only with DX10 which is Vista only. Some are trying to get DX10 to work on XP, but there haven't been any news.

Given that you dont know much about computers, I would recommend you getting Vista because its pretty annoying for me to get a new OS and for you its probably gonna be hell. Just remember to get all Vista updates when they come out since they may have some serious fixes.

[Husar]

For the tenth time or so, my Vista runs absolutely stable!
It seems about as prone to crashing as XP or even less, maybe it's not the holy cow we've all been waiting for, but it doesn't crash all the time either.
Yes, drivers fro 64bit and some software can be problematic, but we have had 64bit CPUs for several years now and I can't understand why companies don't migrate to it since 64bit software is supposed to run quite a bit faster than 32bit software. Apart from that, the next Windows OS will be 64bit only anyway, so either noone will buy it or they will HAVE to support 64bit.

That said, I've got drivers for all my essential hardware, most games do run on my 64bit version and the few things that don't, well there is dual boot, though I use that less often as time goes on.

[Warmaster Horus]

Okay. Thanks once more guys! Really, the Org's great for this stuff...