Buying a Laptop

[IthyStPete]

I'm looking to buy a laptop for my own use when I go off to college this fall, and I'm looking for some advice on a few areas.
First: I'd like to have Linux on it, (Ubuntu, specifically) but I'm not sure how many programs this will cut me off of. I know Wine exists as a Windows emulator, but how well does it work, in general?
Second: I'm looking at a specific Dell laptop as one of my options that looks pretty good, except for having an integrated video card - an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD - that I'm not sure of the quality of. Does anyone have any knowledge of that, and how well it works for casual gaming?

Thanks for any responses and help.

 

[Hielor]

I'm looking to buy a laptop for my own use when I go off to college this fall, and I'm looking for some advice on a few areas.
First: I'd like to have Linux on it, (Ubuntu, specifically) but I'm not sure how many programs this will cut me off of. I know Wine exists as a Windows emulator, but how well does it work, in general?

Honestly, the only thing that you can do on Windows that you can't do on Linux is some of the more hardcore gaming. Pretty much everything else, there exists a program for Linux that will work just as well as the Windows equivalent. I'd encourage you to look for native Linux apps first before resorting to Wine; if you have concerns about specific apps or tasks, do some research for those.

Second: I'm looking at a specific Dell laptop as one of my options that looks pretty good, except for having an integrated video card - an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X4500HD - that I'm not sure of the quality of. Does anyone have any knowledge of that, and how well it works for casual gaming?

Define "casual gaming." What kinds of games are you talking about?

I personally would never get a laptop without a dedicated graphics card--with a desktop, if it turns out that the integrated chip isn't enough, you can upgrade. With a laptop you don't have that option. It really depends on what you're thinking of doing with the laptop, though.

 

[doggie015]

Nice choice going for Dell there, however the integrated graphics are NEVER up to full-blown 3-d gaming, my laptop struggles to get a beyond 20 FPS framerate with Orbiter! maybe go for an upgradable external graphics card, that way you can get more performance out of the laptop's graphics

 

[RisingFury]

If you wanna game, avoid laptops.

 

[ar81]

What is the best laptop that you could get for $1000?
Main use:
-MS Office
-Internet surfing
-Playing DVD (as a portable DVD player)
-Orbiter
Recommendations?

 

[cjp]

What is the best laptop that you could get for $1000?
Main use:
-MS Office
-Internet surfing
-Playing DVD (as a portable DVD player)
-Orbiter
Recommendations?

All of the above, except for Orbiter, can be done fine on even the cheapest new laptops, even on those cheap netbooks.

$1000 is more than what I'd pay for a new laptop, so you can probably afford some luxury for that price. Maybe you can start by thinking about what you want:

• Do you want a big screen for Orbiter and for watching DVDs, or do you want a small device that's more convenient to bring with you?
• Do you want lots of graphics power (for the more demanding Orbiter add-ons)? Do you want/need a long battery life? Do you want the thing to be light and thin? Graphics power does not necessarily contradict with battery life: even the more powerful chip sets can be energy efficient as long as you're not using their full processing power. A big capacity battery adds weight and space to a laptop, so it has both advantages and disadvantages.

Can you imagine yourself playing Orbiter with a touchpad? If not, then you probably shouldn't worry too much about power consumption of the graphics card, because on places where you can conveniently use a normal mouse, you usually also have access to electricity (though I don't know about Costa Rica).

The disadvantages of the laptop I have now are the limited hard disk capacity, the limited number of USB ports (only two, and I need both: one for my mouse and one for accessing storage devices), its large weight, the fact that Linux can't automatically detect wireless networks, and, surprisingly annoying: the screen's light intensity is very low, so I can't use it outside, and not even inside with bright sunlight. But then it was about the cheapest one I could find back in 2006.

 

[MJR]

Are you sure about a laptop? If anything, what is your budget limit because coming from my experiences the factory integrated chip set is absolutely horrible. I would get a decent laptop and upgrade to a $100 video card and you should get pretty good frame rates. Of course not like a desktop, but better than the original card it came with.