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Abu
join:2001-05-17
Miami, FL
edit:
June 8th, @12:34AM
| Laptop for work / school
I'm being a bit lazy by asking for advice instead of doing all the research, but I suppose that's what forums are for. 
Anyway, I'm a senior comp. sci student and I'm looking for something that will be used as a platform for programming and testing my projects. I mainly work on small simulations and games. I build my own desktops and I have one which I will continue to use for games and more complicated things, but I still need something portable for presentations.
One important consideration is a graphics card which has the capability to run any game projects built in XNA or some similar engine (shader model 2.0 required) and simple graphics renderings. I don't need top FPS... just enough so I can test programs I write.
edit: I forgot to mention that I'm looking to spend as little as possible to reach those goals. I don't really want to spend more than $1000 if possible. | |
PeteC2
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-20
Bristol, CT
clubs:
 ·AT&T Yahoo
| With a top budget of around $1K, you are likely going to be relegated to something with Nvidia 8400M...maybe 8600M GS graphics at best. Not an ideal gaming platform, but will probably fit your needs.
Ideally, you'd want to try and get 250gb drive, and a minimum of 2gb ram. Drive space being more important than ram, since ram is much cheaper to upgrade than a hard drive!
I am not much of a brand-fan, at the price range you are looking at, they are all more similar in quality than not, and with very few exceptions, use the exact same parts.
Rather, I would simply look at the 2 or 3 main features that you want/require, based on what you are using it for, and then within a given price-point, narrow it down to which one meets your needs and has the intangibles (look & feel).
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...something is happening here but you don't know what it is...do you, Mr. Jones? | |
Abu
join:2001-05-17
Miami, FL
| said by PeteC2  :With a top budget of around $1K, you are likely going to be relegated to something with Nvidia 8400M...maybe 8600M GS graphics at best. Not an ideal gaming platform, but will probably fit your needs. That's very useful, thank you! I don't really keep up with mobile graphics so you've given me a good place to start comparing. | |
PeteC2
Ballad Of A Thin Man
Premium,MVM
join:2002-01-20
Bristol, CT
clubs:
·AT&T Yahoo
edit:
June 9th, @08:33AM
| I think that you will find competition pretty tight between Dell, HP/Compaq, Sony, with Acer and Gateway perhaps offering a little more for the dollar, and there is also Toshiba and ASUS in with that mix.
I have yet to see a notebook with the Nvidia 8800 at the $1K point, and there are still too many notebooks at $1K that don't even offer discrete graphics at all...but it is getting better! At least you can get a discrete graphics card at the $1K point now.
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...something is happening here but you don't know what it is...do you, Mr. Jones? | |
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