I really need a Laptop…

[Sorrows Neptune]

my brother just got a Laptop, and I was thinking I could just use his Laptop to write my book on or play my PC games intel I get my own Laptop. but now I realize I can't do that. since I'll have way more on the Family Macintosh computer to write my book, and he just literally treats my PC games as if they're his. seriously, whenever I say "come on, It's my game" he'll just reply saying "well it's my Laptop!".

so I'm not looking for a Laptop that's better than my brothers, I just want a nice, Cheap, that I could use for two things:
1) writing my Book
and 2) playing the latest PC games (such as the Orange box, and Spore).

[Victoria]

Yeah... if you want a Laptop to play the latest PC games, that's not going to come for cheap. That'll easily cost $1,000+.

However, a few hundred will net you a Laptop if you just want to write your book. So it really depends which priority you want more.

[Dark Squall]

You can always ask the help from our "mother land" and "Google"...Srsly, why don't you just google it?!
try the Ebay, I'm sure you'll find what are you looking for

seriously, whenever I say "come on, It's my game" he'll just reply saying "well it's my Laptop!".

He's more like my brother!!

[Clint]

I don't know much about laptops, but if you're going to write a book, then you'll need to back up your work, because if something happens to the computer, if you don't have your work backed up, you will lose everything.

[Victoria]

Yes, that is essential to any writer. However, since it's just text documents, you can just get a cheap USB flash drive for like $20 or so. I think 1GB ones are that price, lately.

Although you may want to check out newegg.com to see what you'd like. Google doesn't really help anything. Nor does ebay, when you don't even know what you're looking for.

[Raider]

hey for really cheap and trust worthy electricals try

ebuyer.com

i've bought from them tons of times, and they have a good range of decent laptops, so give it a go.

[Furore]

It's not THAT expensive. The main thing is to go for the cheapest piece of crap laptop that has a nice monitor and graphics card. DON'T UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES GET ONE WITH INTEGRATED GRAPHICS!!!!

And don't worry about getting one with bugger all ram. Ram is cheap and easy to install.
I've gotten laptops for just under $800 (Australian dollars btw), and they can easily handle games like Oblivion and The Orange Box so long as they have enough ram installed. Other newer games usually run, but you need to change a few performance settings. Like a lot of the eye candy that has little to no bearing on gameplay. >>

[Sorrows Neptune]

ok, thanks guys.
the Family computer will be open a lot now, so I'll just write my book on that. plus I'll only rarely buy a PC game. its' just doesn't feel right paying $50 for a game, than have someone treat it as if they own it.

I'll just wait for when I need a Laptop for school to get one. (though I doubt my mom and dad would buy me one)

[Govinda]

You could always write on paper? I'm starting to think I'm the only one who sees that as a viable option these days. Computers and laptops are useful and convenient, but they are by no means essential. Christ, get a second hand typewriter, even. Save yourself some money.

Get your parents to negotiate times for your and your brother to share games on the laptop. That's what my brother and I did with the internet. Well, no. It's what we were told to do.

[Sean]

There's no such thing as unintegrated graphics in a laptop. There is no room to put an actual card in there, the GPU it's self is nothing but a chip, not a fully functional gpu/heatsink that you'll find in a PCI-X16 slot.

PCs that use integrated graphics only have a small chip to deal with the graphics built into the motherboard; laptops use the same thing, except their chips have fancy names like "GeForce GO 8600" ect. Granted those chips are produced by nVidia, they still don't carry half the power a PCI-X16 card would carry of the same model.

A laptop to play games at decent frame rates will run you in the $1200 range; and don't expect to put anything on max settings, including outdated games like WoW. A PC for the same price can run a game like Age of Conan on max settings at 40FPS.

See where I'm going here?

This is also coming from a guy w/ a $1200 laptop and maybe a current market price of $900 in parts in my PC.

[Furore]

Well I know my laptops with the Mobility Radeon and Geforce GPUs handled everything and the one labelled 'integrated graphics' on the specs couldn't handle anything requiring hardware acceleration. I know I should probably say 'GPU' rather than graphics card, but the point is the same.

I also know I've never spent a full grand on a laptop, and that's including extra ram (though not peripherals such as a USB gaming mouse, some speakers/headset and a decent keyboard). Yes, a similarly priced rig will play better games, but laptops these days can't be underestimated in what they can handle. I've done video editing on a $700 laptop (Aussie dollars) in my Grade 10 or 11 IPT class a couple years back that required a good deal more processing power than most games. Considering I spent a lot of my time in class playing games such as Oblivion and Doom 3 as well as several PS2 games such as Kingdom Hearts and FFX through PCSX2 (a PS2 emulator), I KNOW decent graphics can make all the difference. My first laptop with integrated graphics couldn't play games as basic as Shrek Superslam.

[Sean]

That's $600 US o.o;;

I just did a quick pricing on a decent "gaming" laptop from hewlett packard and wound up at $764 US. 15.4" monitor, GeForce GO 8400GM, 1GB RAM.

The reason I spent so much on mine is the 17" widescreen display, HDMI output, 8600 GO, 2GB DDR2 RAM, and a few other "high end" things.

[Dan558]

If you are looking for a new system laptop or otherwise I would suggest personally to go for a mac or something without windows. All operating systems have decent writing/word programs so it won't really matter for your book writing. But for games steer away from any laptop that has Windows Vista. Windows vista is annoying because you actually need HIGHER requirements to play most games (I'm not sure exactly why but I know from experience it IS true). Most any popular games can play on mac systems or linnex and stuff. It is quite difficult to play games on Vista computers because they have even less pre-installed drivers then XP had. To use a USB mouse I just got a couple of years ago I had to search around for awhile to find a driver to use it when my XP had it plug-in-and-go like the box said it should.

[Furore]

That's $600 US o.o;;

I just did a quick pricing on a decent "gaming" laptop from hewlett packard and wound up at $764 US. 15.4" monitor, GeForce GO 8400GM, 1GB RAM.

The reason I spent so much on mine is the 17" widescreen display, HDMI output, 8600 GO, 2GB DDR2 RAM, and a few other "high end" things.

Online? Despite people saying they can get systems cheaper online, I've found it's best to go into into stores and look around. Sometimes they sell laptops dirt cheap when they only have a few of the model left, and sometimes they're just cheaper. Like the Acer Extensa 5220 for example. It's advertised as being $749 (Australian), but I know I can get it for $499 at the computer store a couple suburbs down, or $450 if I paid cash.

Yeah, it's not that good by today's standards [ Acer Computer Australia - Product Introduction Text ], but it's just one example of the savings I seem to find in stores. Generally, if I stick around my area, it takes around 2-3 weeks before a nicer machine drops into my target range.