Help with getting myself a laptop? ?
Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at
9:25 pm
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Filed under: Screen savers
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This person goes through all the trouble to give a detailed explanation for her requirements and all you can do is say "Buy Brand X" because you bought one too?
The usage requirements break down into 3 items:
1. General usage
Well anything will work here Under this category, make sure you are getting wireless-N, and bluetooth since that’s hard to get later and connect properly to the internal antenna
2. Photo Editing
For this you want lots of RAM, medium CPU and enough screen real estate to see your tool palettes… look for a 1920×1200 resolution screen.
If you plan to use Photoshop later, get a fast 7200 rpm hard drive…
3. Gaming
The toughest requirement. This requires a dedicated graphics chip and decent cooling.
There are quite a few graphics chips and they can be confusing so use this list as a guide:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html
Also check this Sims forum for the best guess at playable system requirements for Sims 3:
http://forums.sims2community.com/showthread.php?t=57989
From that, it would be a good idea to err on the high side since expansion packs to SIms 3 will increase requirements as you go along and laptop graphics is NOT upgradeable.
It looks like a NVIDIA 8600M GT or greater or ATI 3650 or greater will do the job. Check those chips on the notebook graphics link above and stay above them in the ranking…
4. Price of $1,000 – Both decent graphics and decent cooling will be hard to get at 1K
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Update:
The Sony suggested by an answerer is not suitable for Sims 3 because it does NOT have a separate graphics chip, just Intel integrated chipset graphics with the 4500 only being a slight improvement over the 3100
All Macbooks have only low-end crappy Intel 3100 chipset graphics making them completely unsuitable for games.
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Ideally you want
a) any dual core CPU over 2.0 Ghz
b) 4 Gig of RAM because it’s so cheap and eliminates that concern.
c) a 7200 rpm hard drive
d) a 1920 x 1200 resolution screen
e) NVIDIA 8600M GT or greater or ATI 3650 or greater graphics chip with 256meg or 512 meg of dedicated graphics RAM
It is usually easy to compare laptops by clicking on the "Specs" link and looking for those items.
Dell.com can be a useful starting point because they let you configure online so you can endlessly experiment until you find the right combination.
One config that can make a reasonably priced workstation for graphics and play mid-level games like Sims 3 would be the Dell Studio 17 with the ATI 3650 graphics option, the 1920 x 1200 screen option, the 7200 rpm hard drive option in either 250 gig or 320 gig and throw in the backlit keyboard option for that 2008ish feel…
http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop_studio_17?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs
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Also, nobody has a crystal ball, but I think your Mom is wise to shop now. I have noticed that during the back to school sales the prices went lower but the included components went even lower so that the overall value of laptops offerred during these "sales seasons" really seemed to drop. I expect the same thing to happen a Christmas as laptop manufacturers expect people to be in a rush and not look too carefully at the specs as long as the price is right since it’s hard enough even during the best of times to figure out all the specs…
This is perfect for you… click below
Well in order to play the sims especially the sims 3 your gonna need a lot of ram. So it can run fast, I have 3 GB in mine and it runs excellent. I also recommend getting Windows Vista Home Premium not basic.Just for the simple fact that its better in my opinion. I have a laptop with 3 GB of RAM and I have played Sims Life Stories on it and it runs really fast. I bought my laptop for like 699.00. Which is in your price range. As far as school stuff, any computer can pretty much do the things you are wanting to do. Also depending on how much stuff you are going to have on your laptop you might need a larger hard drive. My hard drive is 200 GB and I am no where near having it filled up. But depending on what you are going to have on it ex. music, pictures, videos, documents, you may want a slightly bigger one or maybe even smaller. I have an HP laptop and I love it. It comes with a little remote so I can control my music without even having to go up to my laptop. The main thing that you want to check into is battery life, because mine could use a better battery. You can install one later on too. So if I were you I would go with an HP. They have good prices and excellent computers. You could go for a Dell too but I wouldn’t recommend it because if anything ever broke on it you’d have to go through Dell to get a new one instead of any generic brand. But dells offer full custimization so I guess that one is kind of up to you. Also you might want to get one that is wireless that way if you are ever somwhere where there is wireless service (or if you have a router) you can browse the internet. Hope this helps!
I would avoid the Dell Inspiron and Vostro laptops, as Dell puts a lot of its experimental technology in them. The XPS ones are great, but they start at about $300 above your price range. I would recommend a Sony VIO, similar to the one in the link below:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8892996&type=product&id=1211587729137
I am not suggesting that you buy this one in particular, or that you should buy it from Best Buy, but look for similar specs. You should firstly wait until closer till Christmas as there will be additional sails around that time, which means you can get more bang for your buck. What you should do is build the computer online and customize it. As I said, look at the Sony VIOs. Also check out Toshiba, but avoid Acer, HP, and Gateway. Acers go bad immediately after the warranty expires, HPs come with a lot of trial software pre-installed which slows down the computer and is time-consuming to remove, and Gateway is on the verge of bankruptcy, so unless you want you support and warranty to disappear, I suggest you avoid them.
The Intel processors are better than AMD, but avoid the Celeron processors. Go for a Centrino Core 2 Duo at least 2.0 GHz in speed (preferably slightly high preferably) and 4 GB of RAM since you will be running Vista on it, which eats 1 GB just to run system processes. Also make sure that the graphics card is at least 128 MB (this is needed to run Vista better and will also come in handy for playing Sims 3). You shouldn’t need a hard drive that is bigger than 160 GB, but try to get one that has a speed of 7200 RPM. An internal Bluetooth Device, as well as a Bluetooth mouse and an Intel wireless networking card might come in handy. So will a DVD-RW optical drive. You will also want Microsoft Office 2007 Student and Teacher for all of the typing, and perhaps an hp printer if you don’t already have one.
Get a MacBook. I got one and do not regret it at all. You are going to spend a little more than you are planning but it will be well worth it.