Buying a New Laptop.

[Craig]

I'm thinking of buying a laptop for when I go off to uni, I've already chatted wit some people and it looks like I want something like this:

One of these:
Intel Core 2 Duo
AMD Turion 64 X2
Intel Core Duo

Mem:
2GB of ram

Graphics:
ATI X300 or X600 or the NVidia Go series 7

Because I want to be able to run at least Half-Life 2 and the following episodes...and I found most of the laptops have vista, and that that needs 2 GB of ram. I found some laptops but they don't have everything I want. Also it feels like alot of people I speak to want me to get the absolute best laptop I can, but that will cost extra. I don't expect to really push my machine.

Oh, and I like to play with photos in photoshop, which is also graphics intensive.

And my price range is nothing over £600.

I have found some machines on Ebay (from ebay shops) which will do what I want, except, say the right graphics card, or not enough memory (which can be upgraded though...) or not vista, but that's not such a big problem.

So, is my idea of what I need (not want) right? Or am I over/undershootign some stuff? And any tips on where to find a laptop like the one I want? And any other advice....?

Thanks guys!

[Ferrick]

I can't answer all your questions but I can answer a few because I did intense research for the last three months to buy my daughter a laptop for college.

Both Intel and AMD have released newer dual cores. Either one will do you very fine. If you choose Intel definitely go with their Core 2 Duo.

2 Gigs of memory is what I would definitly go with, especially with Vista.

Since you want to game I say stick with XP as your OS -- if you can find it on a new laptop. If you are going to get a used one just be careful. My daughter is running Vista Home Premium and we haven't had an issue with it yet and it runs Offiice 2003 very well. The biggest issue with Vista are drivers.

As for graphics cards I can't reall say much in this department because my daughter isn't a gamer. But since you are I would do a lot of research and I believe one of the things you want to look for is a graphics card that has dedicated memory instead of shared memory.

[Craig]

Between now and the time I posted I found a laptop! It looks pretty good. I've heard good things with Vista and games actually but I'll be careful! Thanks!

[Ferrick]

So what did you get?