Advise me on buying a laptop for Oolite?!

[Cody]

I need Win7 Pro badly, so I can slap a whole load more RAM into my machine while it's still dirt-cheap.
But at about £100 for the OEM version, it'll take some saving.

[maaarcooose]

For cheap windows 7 I got it from SoftwareForSudents as they allow you to get educational discount if you are the parent of a child in full time education.
If you are, it works out at about £35 for a copy of Win7 Pro.

As for new laptops, I decided enough was enough, my credit rating is much better than last year and I went out and got a Mac Book Pro 13".
Plays OOlite lovely, just need to get used to everything and install all the OXP's I like. I was worried about the Intel graphics chipset being a bit crappy, but it seems just fine with Portal 2, as good as it was under Win7 on my Dell XPS with a Geforce 9400M.

Now I'm just gonna sell my old one to help pay for it.

!m!

[Cody]

educational discount if you are the parent of a child in full time education.

Heh... those days are long gone (and they weren't even 'mine', if you get my drift).

[snork]

I need Win7 Pro badly, so I can slap a whole load more RAM into my machine while it's still dirt-cheap.
But at about £100 for the OEM version, it'll take some saving.

Why do you need it badly ? directx 10 / 11 ?

And £100 is WAY too much.
I understand most things are a bit more expensive on the islands, but this should not make windows 7 cost £100.

here on the continent you can legally buy Win 7 pro SBE @ around 85 €, that should translate to somewhere around £70.
"home" of course being even cheaper.

I am still not sure if in windows 7, pro is as necessary/ advisable as in XP.

[Cody]

£100 is WAY too much.

Rip-off Britain, as they say! Many things cost more here than they should! Even Home Premium OEM is over £70 here.
As for wanting Pro, I believe that only Pro/Ultimate have the XP mode available, which I may find useful.

Why do you need it badly ? directx 10 / 11 ?

DX11 has a bearing, yes... as does the fact that XP will be unsupported by next year (I think).

[JazHaz]

This laptop has two GPUs installed, the Nvidia GT 635M, and Intel(R) HD Graphics 3000. First run of Oolite was under the latter, and although it supports full shaders, there was lots of graphical glitches. Second run I worked out how to turn on the Nvidia for the game.

At the moment I'm not sure if there is a way to select Nvidia for every run of Oolite.

In the nVidia control panel you can set-up an Oolite profile (at least on a desktop PC), but I don't know about specifying the GPU.

I'd want the nVidia GPU in use all the time anyway as default.

I've worked out how to do it now. There is an option to set the default card to use for individual programs. The Nvidia kicks out a lot of heat so its inefficient to have it on for just web browsing etc.

[Cody]

The Nvidia kicks out a lot of heat so its inefficient to have it on for just web browsing etc.

Makes sense, does that.

[snork]

As for wanting Pro, I believe that only Pro/Ultimate have the XP mode available, which I may find useful.

hehe, that is the reason for myself to consider Win 7 pro.
I am so used to that - at other places - folks do not care for that, that for a moment I forgot this is Oolite forums, place where many retro-this-and-that users are around. (4x that in one sentence)

But I am unsure if it really is needed.
XP-mode = Virtual PC + WinXP(32bit) with license for being used within that Virtual PC + integration into Win7.

Virtual PC : Microsoft offers it @ no charge to win-7-home users also, nowadays. There may be better free virtual-machine alternatives anyways, do not know.

Win XP : You already have one, so could use that one in whatever virtualisation you choose.

integration into win7 : this is mainly what makes me wonder should I buy a notebook with Win 7 pro, even if it is annoyingly more expensive.
(same models, actually the pro models come with slightly less in CPU and harddisk space.)

decisions, decisions. and at serious-money levels.

[Cody]

decisions, decisions. and at serious-money levels.

Yeah, and some!
<considers trying to sell his hi-fi turntable>

[Cody]

I'll tag this onto JH's thread to save starting a new one. I maintain my brother's PC etc, but now he needs a laptop as well and is thinking about a Fujitsu brand, specifically the A531. Anyone have any knowledge of the brand, ie how reliable, how good is the battery/charger? Its basic specs seem pretty good.

[JazHaz]

I'll tag this onto JH's thread to save starting a new one. I maintain my brother's PC etc, but now he needs a laptop as well and is thinking about a Fujitsu brand, specifically the A531. Anyone have any knowledge of the brand, ie how reliable, how good is the battery/charger? Its basic specs seem pretty good.

It seems nice, the only possible problem is the graphics card, which on the website is listed as "integrated". As long as he doesn't want to play games more complicated than Minesweeper or Solitaire, it should be a good machine.

[Cody]

As long as he doesn't want to play games more complicated than Minesweeper or Solitaire, it should be a good machine.

He's in his mid-seventies and Freecell etc is about as far as he goes with games.

[snork]

Did you notice that offer is VAT excluded ?

I still think it is a good offer, even more so on your island with the funny pricing.
Ususally here the Fujitsu A 530, A 531, and so on are seen as good offers for solid non-gaming notebooks only if equipped with lowest CPUs, 2GB RAM and no Windows - then they come at 300,- €, up to 400-little €.

When equipped with i5, 6 GB RAM, large harddisk etc. they usually cost > 600 €, for that money then there are other notebooks in the competition.

So, I think that offer is good, only I wonder if it comes with Windows or without ?
Even without Windows the price is ok, imo.

But £358,32 + VAT + Windows would sum up to ~£500

At that price you could also get other notebooks - e.g. a HP ProBook 4530s, or this or that Lenovo. Some of those Lenovos offer additional pointsticks, good for people who do not get along well with touchpads. Then again, an additional mouse does the trick even better.

Without Windows HP says you can get that Probook 4530s for £341 - that at least is HP's suggested retail price. How the UK reality is, I don't know.

[Cody]

Thanks snork. Yeah, I know VAT has to be added. My brother has been to the store and says Win7 Home Premium is incl, but I'll double check.

[Capt. Murphy]

I'll tag this onto JH's thread to save starting a new one. I maintain my brother's PC etc, but now he needs a laptop as well and is thinking about a Fujitsu brand, specifically the A531. Anyone have any knowledge of the brand, ie how reliable, how good is the battery/charger? Its basic specs seem pretty good.

It seems nice, the only possible problem is the graphics card, which on the website is listed as "integrated". As long as he doesn't want to play games more complicated than Minesweeper or Solitaire, it should be a good machine.

It's the HD3000 if it's a 2nd gen i5.