[trekkerjohn]

I'm shopping for a laptop that can play games (car races, flight sims, train sims, and the like), and also play dvd, burn cd, do digital photo editing and the normal word & excel type functions. I've been looking at the refurbished Dells and I'm not sure what the minimums would be for processor type/speed, ram, & video card to run these kinds of games so they look good and still not break the bank (to keep it under $1500). Costco had an online add for a Toshiba today for $1700 that looked really good. Experienced advice appreciated.

 

[Drifters]

Welcome to the forum,

Go to pcmall and they have this laptop as of now IBM ThinkPad R32 Notebook. It has Intel® Pentium® 4 1.8GHZ, 256MB RAM, 20GB HDD, DVD, 56K v.92, 10/100 Ethernet, 14" XGA TFT Display, Microsoft® Windows® XP-Pro

Part # 672332
Mfg. Part # 2658J3U

$1,479.00

This should be enough power for you to play those games and still be under your price range.

IBM laptops has been pretty good to me so far. I have a couple of sales men who uses similary laptops and they have no problems with them.

Be wary of Compaq/HP though.
:|

 

[Drifters]

Sorry,

Here's another one:

Sony
VAIO GRS100PA Notebook PC
Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 1.8GHz, 256MB DDR SDRAM, 30GB Hard Drive, CD-RW/DVD Combo Drive, V.90 Modem, 10/100 NIC, 802.11b Wireless LAN, 15" XGA TFT Display, Windows XP Home
Part # 753313
Mfg. Part # PCG-GRS100A

$1,679.00

A little bit more then $1500 but you get DVD/CD-RW combo.

Hope this helps you.

 

[trekkerjohn]

more follow up questions

For what I want to do, would you consider a celeron processor at all, with only integrated video ? if not, please explain why. thanks for the suggestions. I've looked at the ads and the ones mentioned are definitely in the ball park. Also, what about the Dell Inspiron or Smart Step properly configured? Is Dell still as good as they have been in the past ? thanks for the advice.

 

[mikeyp]

if you are going to be doing gaming, then dont get integrated video, it will save you money but all of your games will be slow and will look crappy. Int Video is just taking some Ram (somewhere like 16-32 mb) and using it as video. But I believe that Video Ram is different than Ram-Ram. So that is where you will lose your performance.

 

[Lectraplayer]

Should I?

Apple iMac.

It has onboard ATI 3d and is priced well under 1.5K.