Laptop recommendation for playing SL

Hi. I'm asking this question in behalf of a friend of a friend (in the UK)

She currently is attempting to play SL on her 2 year old laptop and it's not really very good.
I don't know the spec/model, but it's not a "Gaming" model. which means it's almost certainly got some horrid Intel shared memory graphics chipset built it.

Anyway, she's after upgrading to something better which will give her a good SL experience.
(She does not need to run everything on MAX settings, just high enough so SL runs smoothy and looks good)

Her initial budget (in the UK) was £400 (possibly plus the proceeds from the sale of her current one) and looking around I don't think £400 is a realistic price point. Perhaps £600 to £700 being more like what she has to find.

From reading these forums, it seems Nvidia is the chipset of choice for SL (though I'm not "up to speed" on which model chipset is the one to aim for)

I think we agree 2GB of memory is needed, a nice screen, keyboard etc.

So. I'm sure she would very much appreciate if anyone here could recommend a model to look at, or failing that, some hardware (such as graphics card/cpu) to aim at getting in a model.

Many thanks.

I bought a Sony Vaio, FZ31J, in March, with Vista on it and an NVidia 8600M GS-I realise the 8600M GT is a better card, but I can run SL fine on Ultra settings. It has 2 GB RAM, too. It cost about 1200 Euros, though-that would be a bit over the limit of 700 quid you mentioned...but it also has a really good WLAN connection, I can even run SL from the garden just fine (on a 16,000 DSL connection)

ibuypower.com

you're not gonna find a good gaming laptop under $850usd Ive looked, and bought a $600 desktop instead

lap tops and SL --- even high end don't truley mix

unles you want no Graphix and slow FPS I mean 2-4 if your lucky and heating of the CPU untill it dies ... 6 month old 1600USD with nvidea to go couldn't hack it more than 30-60 min a t a time even with a cooling fan under it!
desktops even a low end will produse much better results , 1. because you can upgrade GPX cards and add to it and cool it better, SL is very CPU intensive as well as RAMM intensive...

I can run it in full screen on a intell 945, but its like an atria 2600!

Just a bit of an update.

And many thanks for the suggestions so far.

I have talked to this lady again (she still wants to go with a laptop)

She has accepted that the price she was originally thinking of was just not high enough and I think we are now looking at the £600 to £700 price range (that would be about double that in dollars)

Putting makes and models aside for the moments.
Can someone perhaps advice on what spec hardware to aim for.

Screen is not relevant.
Hard drive size is not relevant.
I assume Audio chipset is not relevant.
Make. Keyboard, etc etc is not relevant.
Windows XP for sure.

The only REAL things I thing are:

Memory (amount of)
CPU Make and model
Graphics chipset (we assume we want Nvidea)

So, I'd answer the 1st one, and say 2GB of memory is WANTED and 3GB would be a luxury.

That only leaves 2 items to decide upon and then we can look for models.

So, anyone care to explain current Laptop CPU's and Nvidia chipset specs/ranges?

Thanks.

look for comments below:

Screen is not relevant. - nope
Hard drive size is not relevant. -size relevant 80gb min recommended for cache and other purposes, if it's going to be multi-purpose, 120+
I assume Audio chipset is not relevant. - not at all
Make. Keyboard, etc etc is not relevant. - I prefer Acer, but i mod my hardware/software. HP is good if not planning on making any changes
Windows XP for sure. <NOT possible, xp is long out of the market,vista is now the definite os

The only REAL things I thing are:

Memory (amount of) - min 2gb
CPU Make and model - doesn't matter. dual core is best
Graphics chipset (we assume we want Nvidia) any nvidia will work but go 6600+ recommended. (support for SSE2/3 best) my desktop is 7100, works well.)

For performance reasons you might want more than 2GB RAM, but 2GB would be sufficient.

The CPU isn't that big of a deal for SL. A Core 2 Duo at 2GHz or higher would work well.

For the graphics processor, you'll want an nVidia 8600M or higher, or a 9600M or higher. Many mobile graphics solutions use TurboCache, especially in the price range that you're talking about. Avoid TurboCache if at all possible.

this is true, but for vista it is, and issues with vista = issues with SL on Vista

Yes, although any Core 2 Duo series mobile processor would perform just fine for what the OP has in mind, so it's really not a big of a deal (with the potential exception of the U2400, which would probably be a tad bit slow for SL, but then again, you won't find LV and ULV CPU's in computers that can run SL adequately). Vista is more RAM sensitive than CPU sensitive.

A good GPU is magnitudes more important in this case.

I'd love to test the theory, but I have 2 2gb sticks in my PC, and a 64 bit os. again I say what affects Vista WILL affect sl, and I stand by my comments. SL was dodgy slow on my old PC, it's much better on my new one.