Best Laptop choice to run secondlife well?

yep, that's what them trademarks is supposed to be for, lol. Yes prolly 2 distinct companies. The PSU has a little lightning bolt logo of some kind. Very generic logo for a generic company. I'm not up on the Gamer stuff, much more of a trailing-edge eficianado. Also not sure why a company that sells Gaming rigs would even want to be associated. The PSU's anyway were notorious.

Yep this is the card I am using as well, and it works wonderfully.

i run sl on a gateway gaming laptop, fx series. Other than heating up i have had no issues whatsover

+1

Asus G1S-B1
2.4GHz Intel C2D
2048mb DDR2-667
15.4" WSXGA+ (1680x1050)
200GB 7200RPM SATA
NVidia GeForce 8600MGT
Windows XP Pro

I have used it in airports and hotel rooms across the USA. It plays SL reliably and seamlessly even in adverse conditions, full capacity sims, walking a runway or dancing at a formal. On the downside, the fan can get loud. This was my second attempt at an SL-capable laptop. First attempt was an Apple MBP which was very shiny, dismally slow and unreliable.

Yes this is what I use as well when I am traveling. Works very well.

Wish one could add the NVIDIA card to the low-end model. Everything except for the integrated Intel graphics would be sufficient for SL use. I'd have to think about dropping $1400 on a SL laptop, despite the faster CPU, more RAM, and NVIDIA graphics.

Looked at Toshiba, and they're really expensive. That surprised me as I thought they'd be cheaper.

Looked at Dell for a laptop comparable to the Gateway P-172 series, i.e., 17" display, Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 512 MB non-Intel video adapter. The less expensive of the two costs more than the comparable Gateway except that it only has 1 GB RAM instead of 2+ GB.

I don't need a laptop desperately, but the Gateway, based on price and features alone, would be high on my list.

One question about this is that I can't find pictures of what it looks like on the left, right, and back. It would be nice if the power and USB ports aren't on the right where my hand and mouse will be flailing around.

There's a reason the P-172S is so cheap for a 17". Take a look at the resolution spec. It's only 1440x900. Typically, 17" laptop screens are 1920x1200.

I would never use a screen that is only 900 pixels tall, especially for SL purposes. If you're planning on doing any texture work at all, that screen won't be fully adequate. You can't view a 1024x1024 texture at 100% magnification, for one thing. And by the time you subtract the amount of space needed for your Windows start bar, and your graphics program's GUI, the 780 or so pixels worth of height you have left doesn't give you a whole lot of breathing room around a 512x512 if you want to zoom in much and still be able to see the whole thing.

You'll also find yourself scrolling a lot more on Web pages than you'd otherwise need to. Even Word documents tend to be a kind of pain at any height less than 1024 or 1050. And of course, you won't be able to watch HD movies, if that's at all important to you.

If it were me, I'd continue to save up a little longer, and go for something with full resolution screen. But if you're not terribly concerned with any of what I just talked about, then the other specs on that machine do seem pretty good for the money.

There are ports on both sides ... I mainly use the USB ports on the left side so that the wires aren't in the way of the mouse as you say. The power is the back on the left. The ethernet port is on the right side, unfortunately, but it's mostly okay.

There is some tech porn here with numerous pictures from various angles:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8780198&st=gateway+fx&lp=2&type=product&cp=1&id=1204332501169

thank you soooo much everyone! I just knew you'd all have some good input on this. I've some point by point comments, but it's time to get my kiddo ready for her school bus.

(sends big hugs to Crystal, wouldn't leave home without my little cooling thing for my present laptop. After a severe thigh cooking, it's an absolute must.)

ok...

We've actually got our hearts set on each of us having a new laptop. I do have a usable enough laptop for everything else when I travel, but it cacks on SL and has from day one, and so I do need a new one. When I travel, I wouldn't be diving into SL and doing *all* that I do from home (dance dance dance dance and film it.. lol), but at times I do need to check in, lest someone buys FlyDances, the grid eats the purchase and I need to send them what they bought. Also, times when I'd normally just stand at my home base and chat a bit in IM with friends

Victorria, that's almost exactly the model my sweetie was ordering from the gateway company. Unfortunately, they also wanted to load a BUNCH of other stuff we didn't need on there and some of that was (as Eli put it so nicely) malware magnets that I'd just spent time removing from our neighbor's machine, lol! The sale might still go through, if they can satisfy Eli's demands... (hmm, I doubt that, considering Eli does have some IT experience and companies flat out refuse to send the actual OS disc instead of a recovery disc, but we'll see). Frankly, it seemed a bit of bait and switch happened between the different models screen and the order confirmation email that I personally would have thrown the brakes on the sale immediately. But, that's Eli's decision to make. When it comes to mine, I'll decide.

(we'd both love a roll your own machine, but we've yet to see that on laptops, lol)

Chosen Few, we've looked at a couple of Asus machines, it's definitely on the consideration list.

Joshua, Mac is out of the question. Other considerations for my laptop is that my disabled kiddo has specialized PC software she enjoys.

Briana, (quote: "SL burns up laptops unless you get one of the special gaming laptops.)"

Precisely why I posted this (wink grin) We dont know what the current latest greatest is and I'm really glad I asked the folks who do know. Very grateful for the variety of knowledgeable replies!

Kyllie, I've been sold on nVidia for years.

Crystal, all good advice and you're the one who got this ball rolling in the first place! (we both send hugs)

Kornscope, my current laptop is an HP, and while it's good enough to fiddle with other sites and programs while we're in motels and such... it's just not adequate for SL. If it was, (if the latest model was)... I'd still not go that direction because I've personally had trouble with the HP company over the years for customer service. (geez they sent me the wrong power cord THREE times, and the doofus on the phone was telling me to plug it in anyway, even though the numbers did NOT match up. I told her she was nuts and I was not about to start a fire on my lap! I learned long before this incident, that if it's the wrong transformer, it's fire time and thankfully those $5 speakers were easy to replace, even if I didn't get the smell out of my house for over a month! That wasn't the only gaffe I'd dealt with from them over the years, but it was bad enough to affect any future purchase)

Mangosio, Dell is another on the consideration list

Chosen Few: (quote: "I only wish it were that simple with laptops. But unfortunately getting a barebones notebook along with all the parts to make it into a high end machine actually costs way more than just buying a pre-assembled one. It's just not worth it. It's a shame." Yes, it's a shame because we're sold on that plan for desktops as well.

Amy, sounds like your Sony came better equipped than my brother's and his gf's machines did. We found the most unbelievable amount of bundled stuff on those that literally filled their C drives and made the machines pretty much unusable. (they'd both thrown up their hands, gave up and the laptops were buried in the closet)

Furthermore, someone had formatted the D drives larger, and made the C drive FAT32 and the D drive NTSF. Once the partition was removed, the whole thing on NTSF and win2000 pro installed, they now work great for what they use them for while traveling.

Talon, your Dell sounds like a good one to check out

Deira, your Rock system also sounds like a good one to check out

Thank you all for the detailed information! It can all look and sound really great on the sites, in the catalog or on the showroom floor, but the acid test for me is "can it run secondlife efficiently?". A sales person would lie through their teeth even if they didn't know, claiming it would... but, only those who use secondlife really knew that answer and I thank you all again for sharing!

A couple of things. Firstly, don't jump for a 1920x1200 high resolution screen unless you've tried one first. Everything appears very tiny on a 17 inch screen at that resolution and it's not for everybody. Secondly, it's worth checking if the graphics card comes with DDR2 or DDR3 memory because it makes quite a difference. For example, the Dell M1530 comes with decent DDR3 memory which gives it a boost in performance, where as a Sony Vaio costing two to three times as much and with the same graphics card model comes with just DDR2 memory. I love Vaio because they're just about the only laptop manufacturer who use decent keyboards, but they also skimp on the internals. Their offering in the US fairs better though judging by their website (everything is customzable and you can pay more for better components). Sony don't seem to care much about the UK though - we just have a few fixed configurations to pick from.

Nice

The P-172S FX series should work very nicely with the GeForce 8800M GT in it.

Right now, the best laptops for Second Life have one of the NVidia 8000 series mobile graphics chips. The NVidia chips come in GS, GT, GTS, and GTX versions (not all versions available in every model); they go from slow to fast in that order. The mobile versions are close in performance to the desktop GPUs with the same number; not QUITE as fast because the clock rate has usually been slowed down a bit to reduce power consumption.

The 8400M is the least powerful. It's adequate for a lightweight mobility laptop with a 1280x800 screen; it won't let you turn on all the eye candy, but you'll get a good frame rate with moderate settings. Mostly you'll find it in small systems with 12-14" screens, and you won't find the higher-end chips in those for power and heat reasons.

Next up is the 8600M. A nice mid-range chip that you can find in a number of 15" and 17" systems. You're still not in full eye-candy territory here, but you can turn on a little more and/or drive a higher-resolution display.

The big bruiser is the 8800M. That's the one that will get you have all the visual goodies. The main catch is that you're not likely to find one in anything but the heavy 17" desktop replacement systems; if those are too big and heavy for your taste, you'll have to make do with a lesser chip.

There is also an 8700M. I don't know much about that one, but I would expect it to fall between the 8600 and 8800.

9000 series mobile chips have been announced and are on the way, but only represent a small improvement over the 8000 series for gaming. The 9000 series chips have hardware decoding of HD video, so you'll get much better battery life if you put a Blu-Ray drive in your laptop and watch HD movies.