laptop buying suggestions.

[draconis1410]

I need to buy a new laptop for school/play(i play games alot) but i also travel with it alot so weight matters a bit. I will pretty much be using the laptop everyday so it needs to last pretty long. Budget would be at or below 2000. I want to know some brands that would be good for me. So suggestions would be appreciated.

[mbossman2]

my advice is if you are mobile a lot, spring for the upgraded battery and the upgraded warranty as the more a laptop is moved around the more likely their is going to be a hard drive failure.

[glc]

It's hard finding really portable laptops with a true gaming quality video chip in them at any price. Without going to a 17 inch beast, about the best you are going to do is one of the Nvidia Turbocache or ATI Hypermemory adapters. If you want a 17 incher, you can get a Dell Inspiron E1705 with a GeForce Go 7900GS with 256mb discrete ram for under $2000. In 15 inch widescreens, you can get a Dell Inspiron E1505 or Lenovo Thinkpad T60 Wide with ATI X1400 Hypermemory chips. If you want a nice 12 incher that's less than 5 pounds, the Dell XPS 1210 is available with a GeForce Go 7400 Turbocache. They all have Core 2 Duo processors.

[draconis1410]

i was wondering about those Nvidia turbocache...what are they? is it any good for playing games? can they get fps around 30..for games like WoW?

[glc]

A Turbocache adapter has a limited amount of discrete ram and borrows ram from the system as needed. Hypermemory works the same way. Either the X1400 or the 7400 will be a better gamer than the standard Intel GMA integrated video. You can compensate by getting plenty of system ram to begin with, 2gb is a good number these days.

I can't really answer specific FPS questions as I'm not a gamer. I don't know how graphics intensive WoW is.

[draconis1410]

um at the moment my laptop sports a ati 9200 video card. would any of those video cards be better than the one i currently have?

[glc]

Either one will blow a 9200 into the weeds. The current Intel GMA is as good as a 9200.

[newbuilder14]

As a gamer I'll tell you don't expect great performance from those cards at all... that doesn't mean you won't get it with a nice processor, just don't expect it. You may very well get... say 40 fps which is okay for smooth gameplay.