Laptop died, need help for new one *whine*

Well, my three and a half years old laptop died yesterday. I will need a new one (and someone to save the data from my hard disk, but that's another problem...)


I need an opinion from those of you who run SL on Dell laptops (or laptops that use the same graphics cards that Dells have, but I think asking for Dell owners is easier). I have no idea about current laptop/notebook graphics cards, and I need to run Windlight with the fancy stuff enabled. PLEASE help me find a card that works. An additional problem will possibly be Vista-I'm afraid I have to get a puter with Vista on it. So, anyone with a Dell laptop with Vista on it that runs SL and Windlight/RC?

(And yes, I don't think theres's many things crappier than coming home from a holiday to find the laptop has died when in fact, you actually need it for work (anyone want to install Access, an Oracle client, and establish an ODBC connection with a remote computer for me? )

Are you seriously telling me nobody here has a Dell laptop that works??? I was also looking at other brands yesterday, as the one from Dell I thought sounded okay has a waiting time of three weeks...none of the cards I have looked at, though, are anywhere in the "recommended" list, and I don't quite understand the naming conventions of either NVIDIA or ATI, as sometimes higher numbers don't seem to indicate a better card either.

Well, I'd certainly recommend NVidia over ATI, not only because the hardware and drivers tend to be more reliable, but also because they're far lighter, more configurable and don't depend on .NET amongst other things.

Dell currently offer a NVidia GeForce Go 7950GTX with 512MB DDR3 onboard memory with some of their higher end laptops, and that would undoubtedly outperform the graphics cards in the majority of SL users' desktop computers. Some people say you don't need more than 256MB GPU RAM, but I've always disagreed with that, and the price difference between 256 and 512 would be pretty marginal nowadays anyway.

Given how much MORE expensive laptop GPUs are compared to their desktop graphics card counterparts, I think it would cost you an arm and a leg to go for a GeForce Go 8 or 9 series GPU right now, but if you can afford it and are a bit crazy with your money when it comes to SL , go for it.

I wouldn't go for anything less than a NVidia GeForce Go 7900 at this time though.

Some ATI users will disagree with my bias, but all I can say is that after ten years experience with ATI, from the 2d rage 32 chips right up to the Radeon, I have suffered all kinds of hell that I have never experienced with NVidia (since I started using their cards in 2003). Around 2000, I even wrote an application to remove pixelation from DVD playback because ATI were incapable of releasing decent drivers; I also had a problem with an ATI Radeon causing bluescreens during gameplay in a brand new computer two years ago. It wasn't caused by heat, the different drivers available didn't resolve the problem, nor did identical replacement hardware. I ended up buying an NVidia and haven't had a single problem in the 18 months since.

I have a dell laptop, mine is inspiron 9300 with Nvidia 6800 geforce go but its about 2 yrs old and I'm on xp. I recently had to replace the graphic card and had to get it from dell. I was lookin at some lap tops wanting to get new but hubby said no way LOL anyways
I liked the xps but they are pricey and I also saw that dell has some that still have xp on them.
good luck
keep me informed on what u get
Sasha
or u can IM me in world Sasha DaSilva