Any suggestion on hardware for buying new laptop?

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Wed Sep 26, 2007 1:10 pm

I'm going to buy a new laptop next week that I will use mainly for developing games and applications in general.
Can you suggest hardware I should include in my laptop?

My budget is approximately 1100$.

pinballwizard · Post by **pinballwizard** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 6:17 am

Not to rain on your parade, but I would advise against buying a laptop for game development. Sooner or later you'll want to upgrade the graphics card and with a laptop, that means buying a new computer. I've been doing 3D programming for several years now and each time I bought a laptop and each time I wished I could upgrade the graphics card. Next time I'm going back to buying a desktop.

One thing you could try would be buying a reasonable desktop PC and a low-end (or previous-generation) laptop. Set up a wireless network in your home and run a VNC server on your desktop and a VNC client on your laptop. That way your cheap laptop just works as a wireless dumb terminal connecting to your powerful and upgradeable desktop PC. This gives you freedom of programming on the couch or on the bed while still having the benefits of a desktop PC.

If you really want to be doing 3D programming on the laptop for portability reasons (e.g. you need to take your PC to a client and show them the latest demo), then go for it, but as I said, my experience is that sooner or later you will want to upgrade the graphics card.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 9:47 am

No idea on hardware. But request from the shop to run a Linux live CD on the hardware before buying, so you can be sure it handles real systems ;-) Bonus: A linux live CD with working 3D acceleration (although I'm not sure if that even exists...)

monkeycracks · Post by **monkeycracks** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 10:58 am

CuteAlien wrote:Bonus: A linux live CD with working 3D acceleration (although I'm not sure if that even exists...)

Good luck @_@
I was thinking about getting a laptop for linux running since my desktop is my windows machine(I like to play games sometimes and my favorite distro is Ubuntu)

Any suggestions on that as well?

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 11:00 am

pinballwizard wrote:If you really want to be doing 3D programming on the laptop for portability reasons (e.g. you need to take your PC to a client and show them the latest demo), then go for it, but as I said, my experience is that sooner or later you will want to upgrade the graphics card.

This is the reason but I found a place where I can buy a laptop with graphic card upgrade option (from 256 to 512) which is all I need.
But thanks for the insight.

@CuteAlien: What your trying to say is that I should ask them if it can run Linux on it?

FlyingIsFun1217 · Post by **FlyingIsFun1217** » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:34 pm

I have to say from my end, I develop almost exclusively on Linux, using the Gateway MT6705, which works flawlessly with Ubuntu 7.04

FlyingIsFun1217

kburkhart84 · Post by **kburkhart84** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 3:58 am

I bought my laptop right around when Vista came out. It was around $1600 though now the same configuring may be a little cheaper. It has for graphics the NVidia 7600 GO, and I think it is 256MGRAM for the vid card, but I can't remember. I think this video card is plenty for a few years. It has 2GIG dual channel RAM and a 1.6Ghz Core 2 Duo processor(dual core), so it isn't the top of the line, but it works. I insisted for game development that I had to have a larger 17inch widescreen and an onboard 10-key, especially since Blender uses the number pad some and I find it much more convenient than messing around with the number pad on top of letters. At least for me, this machine is plenty powerful for game development and gaming as well. I haven't used Linux so I can't say anything about it, but as far as hardware, this is plenty.

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Sat Sep 29, 2007 7:03 pm

Stay away from HP/Compaq laptops. My current job has a contract with HP for Laptops and Desktops and their Desktops are okay, but the laptops are crap. VERY slow, and comes with Nvidia Quadro instead of GeForce GO's. I like my 2 year old Dell laptop better than this HP one they just gave me, I'm actually tempted to tell them to take back the HP and keep my older Dell, cause I've had nothing but problems with this HP laptop.

zeno60 · Post by **zeno60** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 12:19 am

Dell has a vostro line for small business, and you could probably snag a 2.2 GHz Core Duo, NVIDIA 8600M GT, 2 GB RAM and Vista for around 1200 - 1500.

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 3:14 am

MasterGod wrote: @CuteAlien: What your trying to say is that I should ask them if it can run Linux on it?

Even better - let them show that linux runs on it. With Live CD's you can test if Linux runs on a system without the need for installation. You just have to boot those CD's. But either the shop does offer that already, or they usually won't allow you to run a live CD (because you could do evil stuff). Still asking never hurts :-)

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 9:19 pm

CuteAlien wrote:Even better - let them show that linux runs on it. With Live CD's you can test if Linux runs on a system without the need for installation. You just have to boot those CD's. But either the shop does offer that already, or they usually won't allow you to run a live CD (because you could do evil stuff). Still asking never hurts

I'm 99% certain they don't offer it although they might allow me to use a linux Live CD I have created in the shop so they'll see I don't mess with anything..

@Spintz: About the HP's laptops, unfortunately my dad can testify on it..

So which manufacturer do you suggest?

Spintz · Post by **Spintz** » Sun Sep 30, 2007 11:13 pm

Buy laptops from Dell. Best quality and performance I've seen.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 7:45 am

IMHO Lenovo (former IBM manufacturer) builds the best Laptops. They are very robust, have a very long battery run-time, and come in very useful configurations. They are pretty expensive, but deliver a better quality than equally priced HP or Toshiba.
I found that Dell made some very weak models the last time I compared them with others. Only a few years ago Dell had some very interesting product lines, but they chose the wrong trade-off between features and quality. I think they lost their clear separation between business and consumer line.

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 8:59 am

I have consulted someone who is a pro in this matter and she suggested to go on Lenovo notebooks too.

So, which graphic card do you suggest I should use?
* I need something better then the Radeon 9200 I have on my PC (*yack*)

A little reminder, the budget is 1100$±

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Mon Oct 01, 2007 9:51 am

What do you think on this computer
With this Processor - Intel Core Duo T2450 / 2.0 GHz ( Dual-Core ) + Firewire IEEE-1394 + a matching bag for less then 900$?