Hey guys, sorry to suddenly turn up after being inactive for a while and ask, but this could get me back online:D
I was considering getting a "Netbook Laptop" or notebook or something. It would be something (relatively) cheap, that would be portable, but most importantly, could handle most retro/older games fairly well running windows XP/ Windows 7.
I'm quite knowledgable in this sort of area normally but I am not so familliar with the laptop market and whether I want a Solid State Drive or a regular one, what size of screen is good, what type of battery I want, and was just wondering if anyone could offer their experience or knowledge.
I was looking into the ASUS Eee PCs originally, but over time other manufacturers have been releasing netbooks, like Acer, MSI, Dell, etc. and I'm not sure whether or not ASUS is the choice now, so could anyone who owns something like this or is experienced give me some advice please?
I want something that isnt too expensive, probably something less than ?300, that had the 'umph' among a netbook/notebook to handle regular everyday tasks but could also handle Freelancer/Disco at the highest settings, or at least breeze it on lower ones. It would also probably be playing other older 3d games such as Jedi Knight and running DOS emulators, but I would also like to easily be able to play most of the Westwood Command and Conquer series, up to (and including) Renegade
One thing that you should note however is that I'd like to keep it more-than-often hooked up to my monitor, if that's possible. It has spaces for just about every cable imaginable, but I'm curious as to whether or not the laptop will drop off performance too much on the monitor, because it would have to run FL at 1600 x whatever, considering the monitor is pretty large.
Also could someone please reccomend an antivirus program, prefferably a free one, which doesnt take too hard a toll on performance and would run Disco/FL on XP/7 with minimal or no effort? I was thinking maybe AVG.
DVD drives and mice don't really need to factor into it as I could probably buy peripherals and accessories individually and connect them via USB.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and if you are thinking about responding!
This may suit you, but I have no idea what the conversions between pounds and dollars is currently. (And I cba to look it up) It's about $800 USD.
There's another one like it, smaller HD and no XP disc, but it's $680.
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
' Wrote:This may suit you, but I have no idea what the conversions between pounds and dollars is currently. (And I cba to look it up) It's about $800 USD.
There's another one like it, smaller HD and no XP disc, but it's $680.
Thanks for the help Boss:D
That is an absolute beauty, but that equates to ?400-?500 at the best I can find, so a little much for me. I can dream though:P
I'm looking for something a little cheaper, but that's a great starting point, thanks!
These are under your projected 300 quid. The GMA 950 isn't your top-of-the-line video chipset like the 9300, but it's decent enough, and it'd run FL no problem.
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
' Wrote:These are under your projected 300 quid. The GMA 950 isn't your top-of-the-line video chipset like the 9300, but it's decent enough, and it'd run FL no problem.
Thanks!
Would you advise getting the 9300 if I could? I think there is a pretty large gap between them but do you think there is enough to warrant the extra money?
Also, do you think the 950 would tackle newer games at all? I'm not talking NEW here, but do you think it could handle, say, Knights of the Old Republic or Republic Commando on reasonably decent graphics?
Agreed with Boss on this one, you may want to add a GB of memory to your system before tackling those two newer games though. Adding a Gig will change your performance vastly.
I run both of those games on a Sempron with half a gig of RAM and a Radeon 9250SE.
Making it three gigs isn't going to boost performance any. (A better proc would, but meh)
Besides, netbooks usually max out at two gigs anyways.
Zealot Wrote:Just go play the game and have fun dammit.
Treewyrm Wrote:all in all the conclusion is that disco doesn't need antagonist factions, it doesn't need phantoms, it doesn't need nomads, it doesn't need coalition and it doesn't need many other things, no AIs, the game is hijacked by morons to confuse the game with their dickwaving generic competition games mixed up with troll-of-the-day.
AMD Athlon Neo Ultrathin MV-40
2 GB DDR2 RAM upto 4GB
12'1" Screen
ATI X1250 64MB + Shared with Main Memory
Altec Lansing with SRS Premium Sound
250GB HDD
You can pay an additional 200 for 4 GB total RAM and 256MB Dedicated Graphics and a bigger HDD from what i saw in an Magazine ad.
Plus Free Upgrade to Windows 7 when its Released
Fairly good deal. If you want something portable with a bit more graphics power then a netbook.
Just thought I'd mention that (from past experience anyways) Vista requires a hefty amount of RAM to run mid-level to high range games well, not sure if the same applies to Windows 7 or not but its just something to watch out for.
2 gigs is more or less a minimum for running Vista and being able to run games (based on the RAM levels of my last two computers versus my current one)
Alright, I can probly help a little bit in telling how those little nettops will run as I've looked very deeply into them previously and will probly get one myself eventually (and already have a lappy that pretty much has the exact same specs as them).
In terms of all the nettops with just the gma950; yes they can run FL on max settings but you will have a hard time getting newer games to run on it. The chipset doesn't have hardware T&L (meaning you can't use bloom - remember that when you're installing disco) and since almost all games nowdays need that to even run it's a bit limiting. In fact, the only two "new" games I can confirm as able to run on gma950 is SoaSE (just - is pretty slow in battles but I don't mind that) and Spore.. Another thing that many people don't know is that normally the gma950 can allocate through bios up to 224mb of memory for graphics, but in the nettops they can only allocate up to 128mb. For FL this wouldn't be a problem but for something like SoaSE this could kill.
In terms of plugging them into monitors, I can say that one of my mates does and it works well at 1680x1050. The chip does go up to 1900xsomething but the performance starts to degrade at maximum res. Like Boss said too, nettops only allow up to 2gb ram, and I reccommend maxxing that out asap. My current lappy has gma950 and 1.6ghz dual core (only thing better than a nettop). When I upgraded from 512 ram to 2gb the things boot time halved. I think that's proof enough that extra memory's a must.
If you can find the money though I'd definately go the N10j - it has both the gma950 and the nvidia graphics, which you can change between the two using a switch on the side. This gives you the best of both worlds, being able to play EVE and WoW (and some of the newer games out there but not all - this time it's the atom cpu that's letting you down) and then with a flick of a switch go to 7hrs battery life. Spend 30 or so for 2gig ram and you'll have great all-rounder.
P.S - I'd use AVG or clamwin as an Antivirus., and for gods sake delete Norton if it comes preinstalled. It's idiotic if they load that in there - the poor little atom won't cope..
P.P.S - I forgot as I hardly ever go there, but on my lappy Newcastle system drops FL down to 28fps - this would be less for a nettop due to the less graphics allocation. Everywhere else FL runs at ~80fps though.