Laptop help

Hi,
I'm very new here and would like to use Second Life on the road. I am about to purchase a laptop, but wanted to see if it would run well on it. I was hoping to find out which laptops people have good luck using, or even which ones did not work at all. I have read the minimum computer requirments, but sometimes finding the video graphics card in a laptop and be difficult.

Thanks in advance,

D.

I don't know the best one for sure, but my work Dell laptop runs it just fine.

STAY AWAY FROM ALIENWARE!!!

While they boast gaming laptops, they can only go for so long on high processing games, before things start to give out, I've owned 2 separate ones, along with a roommate, and all 3, before a year, crashed out and it took months for Alienware to fix (and several times paying for shipping back when they still didn't get it right).

All I can stress is the video. Stay AWAY from ANYTHING that says "intel" on the graphics" Try to get something higher end either in nvidia or ATI's mobile graphics. I have a mobile x1400 that does a nice job.

you have 2 real choices...

GAMER EXTREAME!!!!
pros:
these things use full bodied pentium 4 or amd 64 processors just like in your desktop
these things have TOP END BADASS video cards gefoce 7's ati X1billions ect
real soundcards (not the cpu cycle leaching onboard types that only sound ok)
gigabit eathernet
huge top of the line, make george lucas cry screens

cons:
they weigh alot ... 6-8 lbs
they have basicly no battery life
they usually dont have wireless internet biult in (why would you need it with a 2hr battery @ a lan party, your teathered to the wall anyways)

you can get em for about 1200 or more at places like ibuypower.com

AVERAGE JOE LAPTOP!!
these are your gateways, HP, dell whatever

pros:
lightweight
usually have wireless internet biult in
4-6+ hours of battery life

cons:
they use "mobile" processors, not plugged in say bye bye to half your cpu power + they are just plain ol weaker than their full bodied brothers

they usually have nice screens ... usually not much above your best buy budget lcd

integrated sound network ... everything whatever cpu power you did have you just lost some more

99% of the time they come with sub par video cards, ati mobile, intel (intel cards can barley render that old 3d screensaver that comes with windows since 1995) shared memory, which is drasticly slower, and your computer cannot reclaim it, if you have 512 mb of ram and 128 piped into the video card you really only have 384mb of ram to use... kinda stinky

the average joe laptops can be as little as 399$ to get decent performance from sl your back in the 1200$ ish range (altho that 399$ special with a ati mobile can do it just fine just dont expect stealler performance)

edit :
when i say mobile ati cards,... sry they are all mobile cards in notebooks, if you can try to stay away from the ones that say shared memory, or donot just plainly state its a ati mobile X whatever model, they have a habbit of sticking that label on the laptops and its probally a stinky one if they dont bother to mention which model it actually is

I don't think they still put Pentium 4's into notebooks because of the mass amount of heat issues.

I sell laptops everyday and all our current "Desktop Replacement" or "Gamer" laptops are either dual-core Turion 64's or Core Duo's/Core 2 Duo's

If you can wait any longer, wait until after Thanksgiving because that's when we sell stuff for cheap and have better financing

[EDIT]

If they still put Pentium 4's and Mobile Athlons in laptops, I would not recommend getting one since the Pentium 4 is easily outperformed by cooler-running dual-core mobile processors.

Above all else stay away from Celeron M's and Mobile Semprons, as they are the devil

[EDIT2]

Also, anything you get will have wireless built in unless it's like Uncle Bill's Bargain Laptop that comes shipped in wood shavings and has a Celertard J 0.9 ghz and costs $10

im still in the habbit of calling them p4's but yea noone uses them in laptops anymore

and the mobile Turion .. yea it says mobile which i said dont buy, but its a good chip


besides amd changes their cpu names every 3 months... hard to keep up with becuase i dont buy laptops anymore ... i keep em too long then they are worthless ... thats why i have a pentium 90 as a email server

and no the lanparty 10 pound monsters dont come with wireless generally .. but they have upgradeable video cards in replacemnt ... which is ok to me .. ill pay 10$ for a wlan card knowing that i can get the geforce 8 (or whatever) later on ... but again i dont buy laptops anymore

[EDIT] I agree with Osgeld Barmy [/EDIT]

My friend has a Pentium 4 HT in an HP laptop and it got hot and ended up damaging the battery

heh my p-90 did that 2 months after i got it (in 1994) laptop batterys suck... to be helpfull about them please read your pamplet er manual about proper charging and discarging ... leave a laptop plugged in and charging for a month your battery life may end up being 10 min due to "memory" issues in lower models (Nicad NiMh)

the standard issue Li batterys nowdays are not as fragile but you can still goof them up via abuse

I dunno about all the debates on mobiles and such to be totally honest. I can just speak from user experience that the Dell I purchased for 1500 last year, but they have a better model now that's 12-1300 or so. (It's the XPS.) It runs SL with little to no lag on the regular 'recommended' settings (I.E. bandwidth at 900, draw distance at 64, which I run on my high end comp anyways).

I also chose to buy the docking station, so that I never had to worry about the small things. It came with wireless already, weighed about 4lbs., excellent screen detail, great customer service (yes, they really have it), played DVD's, burns DVD's and CD's (most of this is included with a standard model). Yes, it carries Intel's Duo Core (customized and depending on model the price varies), and quite frankly, they may be a chip behind now (AMD is going crazy over the last year), they will come out the leader in the whole picture. Not only my opinion, but quite a few professional gamers think so as well.

Anywho, the only thing I'd recommend is an upgrade to the hard drive to 80g.

ETA: The battery life on it, a year old, is about 3 hours. When new it was around 10.

Thanks for the great info, It really did help me out.

well, off the the laptop store!

*caresses her lovely new HP laptop, that runs SL far better than my poor PC*