Great Laptop for Playing Second Life?

With Christmas a few weeks off and a new (higher paying) job coming the first week of January, I'm considering investing in a really good laptop.

I've owned a whole series of laptops in the past and currently have a two year old media center pc. My media center plays SL very well (but I did upgrade the video card).

I've been on SL for over a year now and still log in daily. I'd like to do so using a REALLY GOOD laptop. Not a $5,000 Alienware gaming rig, but something between $1,000 and $2,000 would be great.

Any suggestions from those of you currently playing SL on a laptop that has great performance?

Thanks!

- Lenny Looming

Take a look at the HP Pavilon DV7 series. I like the one I have a lot. I spend a lot in hotels for my work and this laptop makes it possible for me to play SL and other games when I am away from home.

Some details:
- Duo Core 2Mhz procesors
- GeForce 9600GT M graphic card (a real graphic card)
- 4Gb Memory
- 17" Screen
- 4 USB slots, HDMI, firewire and more
- DvD burner
- Webcam/Microphone built in
- Remote control for watching movies on it

I run SL in the highest settings.

I paid around 1000 Euro for it, so it is within your range.

Morwen.

This is a popular question for those actually in the market and for those like me who hope to be able to upgrade and fear having to replace our computers in the future.
/327/53/295184/1.html

I run sl with an HP dv9700 2GHz dual core with 4 Mb ram, Nvidia 8600M GS video card. I have been very happy with it as compared to my Toshiba with Intel integrated graphics card. I have had this 2-3 months so I can't comment on long term quality.

I fell for an Alienware gaming laptop - it was great but burnt out and ate itself within about a year. Lots online about how prone to this they are. It still is a dustcatcher.

I'd love to know which laptops can run SL too. I got a (different) PC laptop hoping it would, being told it would (by salesguys) and it freezes within a minute or so of booting up SL. Desktop for now.

As I always say when this question comes up (which is fairly often), I'm a huge fan of ASUS laptops. As the only laptop maker in the world that also manufactures their own motherboards and graphics cards, ASUS is typically able to offer a lot more bang for the buck than other brands. To get similar features from other makes, you have to spend a lot more. For the money, no one else really comes close. Plus, ASUS happens to make the nicest screens of any laptops I've ever seen, hands down, which in and of itself is a huge selling point.

My current laptop is a G70S-A1. You can read my full review of it at /327/da/280009/1.html . It's a fantastic machine. If you can up your budget to $3000, it's worth every penny. (And presumably so is its newer sibling, the G70SG-A1, which has larger hard drives, and a slightly different video configuration. See the same thread I just linked for details.)

Before the, G70S-A1 I had G2S-A1, which I also loved. It's a bit underpowered by today's standards, of course, but for its time, it was excellent, especially considering it was only an $1800 machine.

If you're looking to stay in the sub-$2000 range, they've got many to choose from. Newegg is a good place to get one, but their offerings lately seem to fluctuate pretty wildly from day to day (probably due to Christmas season supply headaches, I'd imagine).

I just bought a new laptop, based on Chosen's enthusiasm I went with ASUS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220391


This is a secondary system, so I wasn't up for the higher end version that Chosen got. So far, this thing runs SL kick ass. I'm impressed enough that ASUS has a fan for life. I'm even sort of liking Vista....

I opted for the 14.1" screen since when I'm home I will be hooking up my large widescreen monitor.

Glad to hear you're pleased with your new machine, Isablan. That particular model wouldn't suit my needs, but for only $1149, it looks like a great secondary computer. I'm happy to hear that it runs SL as well as you say. ASUS rocks.

can someone tell me if this laptop is suitable for SL?

http://www.empiredirect.co.uk/content/products/details/index~modelcode~SON-VGNNR31JS.htm

    *  Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core™ Processor
      T2390(1.86GHz), Supports Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology
    * 2GB of DDR2 SDRAM (2x1024MB)
    * Optical Drive Type: DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
    * 250GB Hard Drive
    * Write speeds: CD-R
      x24, CD-RW
      x24, DVD-R DL x6, DVD-R x8, DVD-RW x6, DVD+R DL x4, DVD+R x8, DVD+RW x8, DVD-RAM x5
    * Read speeds: CD x24, CD-R
      x24, CD-RW
      x24, DVD
      x8, DVD-R DL x6, DVD-R x8, DVD-RW x6, DVD+R DL x6, DVD+R x8, DVD+RW x8, DVD-RAM x5
    * 15.4" X-black LCD
      display, WXGA (1280x800) resolution
    * Graphics card: NVIDIA® GeForce® 8400M GT GPU
    * 4 x USB
      2.0 ports
    * 1 x i.LINK™ (IEEE1394), 400 Mbps
    * Built-in Modem
    * Integrated Wireless LAN, 802.11a/b/g
    * Intel® High Definition Audio compatible
    * Built-in Stereo Speakers 

1 Year Parts Guarantee
 /

1 Year Labour Guarantee

Thanks in advance

It would probably run it, sort of, but not very well. That machine has two pretty glaring strikes against it.

The major showstopper is the GeForce 8400. As retail-available video cards go, the 8400 is nVidia's lowest performance model of the last four generations. It's not suitable at all for high end graphics. If it can handle SL at all, you'd almost certainly need to keep your draw distance very low, and you'd probably have to disable a lot of features, just to get usable frame rates.

The other sore thumb I notice right away is the Pentium Dual Core. Again, very low end. I wouldn't touch it.

If you Google for reviews of that machine, you'll find they all pretty much say the same thing. It looks nice, but it doesn't perform. Notebookcheck.com, for example, rates it at a 90 out of a possible 100 on display, and 80 on workmanship, but only 60 on performance. They average it at 65, and I think their final comment pretty much says all you need to know. "Such a bad rating is rare. There exist hardly any notebooks, which are rated worse."

From what I can see, about the only thing that machine has going for it is its low price tag. If you want to spend £389.99 on a nice looking shiny paperweight, then go for it. But if you want something you can actually use, all indications are you should get something else.




Note: I haven't actually used the machine in question, of course. All comments are based on listed specs and on reviews posted by others who have tested it. The only way to know for sure would be to get hold of one, and see how well it works, first hand. Sometimes computers do end up surprising you. Not often, but every once in a while, you do find a low-spec machine that runs well, or a high-spec machine that runs poorly. The chances are extremely low, but it does happen. Whether or not you want to take the gamble is up to you. I wouldn't.

I've found over the years as a system admin that IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads are generally pretty good. I recommended one to a friend in SL on that basis and he loves it.

I suspect that the other brands listed in this thread are good as well. They all have good features. In the Thinkpads, I love the superior keyboards, the modularity that makes them easy to work on, and long-term compatibility between generations (we only had to keep a couple of Ultrabay versions in stock to support our road warriors, for example).

The only popular brand I would be wary of would be Dell. I've had serious problems with all classes of Dell hardware, and replacement parts have all too often been unnecessarily version-specific.

Ok thanks for that, they're sold out now anyway.

The problem is i only have £400ish to spend, maybe im asking too much for that price?

That does change things. If you have a limited budget, I suspect that the best you can hope for is a dual-core CPU and *any* nVidia graphics chipset.

I'm getting a bit confused with the laptop graphics.

Would this be suitable?

Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS 256MB Graphics

Thanks

With most nVidia products, the first digit denotes the production series, and the second digit shows the performance level within the series. Generally, the second digit is much more important than the first. A 7800 will outperform an 8600, an 8600 will outperform a 9400, etc.

The most significant differences between the GeForce 9 series and the GeForce 8 series are just manufacturing technique and power consumption. The chips in the 9's are smaller and more power-efficient than those of the 8's. But for actual graphics performance, they're pretty much the same.

The 9300 has a slower memory clock than the 8400. Other than that, they're identical. Both are very low end cards. If I absolutely had to choose one or the other, I'd go for the 8400, since it's at least got that little bit of memory clock speed in its favor. But really, I wouldn't buy either one. Neither is likely to perform well for anything so graphics-intensive as SL.

If you truly only have £400 to spend, I would ask two important questions. First, do you absolutely need a new machine right now? If you can possibly stand to wait, it would behoove you continue to save up your money for a while, and then buy something better. Second, do you really need a laptop? For the amount you've got, you could put together a pretty decent desktop that would run circles around any laptop you could find.

I don't pretend to know too much about what might or might not be available in your country, but if you take a look at online parts sellers like Overclockers UK, you'll see that you can get what they call a Gamer Bundle with a nice processor, motherboard, and 2GB of RAM for £245, and a GeForce 9600 GT for just £65. Round out the rest of your budget with a case, hard drive, CPU fan, and power supply, and you'd be all set (assuming you already have a monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse). For your £400 or so, you'd have a pretty nice machine. It just wouldn't be a laptop is all.

That's just what I happened to find in about 2 minutes of searching, by the way. If you were to devote more time to it, you could probably find even better deals than I did.

Whatever you get, I'm sure it will be better than my rig:

CPU: AMD Athlon MP/Mobile Athlon (Palomino core) (1399 MHz)
Memory: 248 MB
OS Version: Microsoft Windows XP Service Pack 2 (Build 2600)
Graphics Card Vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5500/PCI/SSE/3DNOW!


K, you can stop LOLing at me now. At least I can log in!

I'm actually surprised at how much I can actually do before I crash. I can usually build and script for hours and fly and TP about without much problems.... as long as I stay away from crowds of blingtards.

I'm usually ok untill the page swapping starts thrashing my hard drive to the point where my machine locks up for a few seconds and my network connection times out.

I reboot the machine, and I'm good again for another few hours. But with all my graphics settings set to their lowest, I should probably be walking around with a white cane and dark glasses.

Ha ha, well at least it sorta works!

Reply to previous question, its gotta be a laptop. I've built the last 2 desktops i have, its just that i want to sit in other places, like bed, that are a lot more comfortable than the comp chair that i use.

Thanks for explaining the way the graphics cards work tho.

I know Newegg has an excellent reputation but please be careful if you do not already have a verified account payment method with them. At Chosen's recommendation I decided to purchase my ASUS latptop with them and my experience with their account verification process was nothing short of a fiasco and a nightmare.

Because of their perplexing and inexplicable actions, they were not able to verify the information I provided for my credit card, failed to contact me about it except by notice on the their site under my order status (notwithstanding false claims that they had left voice mails and emails regarding the same), had a customer service rep that gave me the incorrect advice of resubmitting the order again, and entered so much misinformation about the credit card acccount multiple times that it resulted in the credit card company putting a block on the card which I found out about when I attempted to use it to purchase through an alternate vendor. A pretty lousy experience overall (I can't imagine how it could have been worse ).

Be aware that the company built a lot of its good will when its operations were significantly smaller and that the overall consumer ratings I see for the company, while generally still quite good, have a far greater number of negative reviews in the past 2 years than they had in prior years. Bigger is not always better.

Ouch, sorry to hear of your troubles, Dagmar. I've only ever had one mildly negative experience with Newegg. Like yours, my situation also involved credit card verification. I'm not sure what security processes they use, but for some reason, they were unable to verify my billing address once. It just took an extra couple of days to clear up. It was annoying, but hardly a showstopper.

I never had any issues before or since with them. But if you're not happy with them, by all means use one of their competitors. I just tend to recommend them because they usually have a good selection, and their site is easy to navigate.

I am glad you mentioned it. Hey I got 4 year old Pentium 4, 2533 mhz, 768 ram, geforce fx 6200 card, My friend is using 4400, I got another who is running a server and playing sl on 800mhz with 6200 card too. LOL Bit better then Matrox and something little above 386 I used in beta in 2003. LOL