Laptops (1 Viewer)

[JoeSchmo]

So let me start off by detailing my situation as of July 16th...

I recently took a position as a consultant with a company and the 1st project I'm working on will have me somewhere in the SE US working M-F and probably home 2 weekends a month. I plan on using my free time playing EQ again and obviously traveling with a full tower and monitor setup would be troublesome. I'm looking for some recommendations on laptops that can be used to dual box and triple box if needed. Obviously the cheaper the better, but if that can't be the case I will make due and live on Ramen for a while. Any input is appreciated and thanks ahead.

 

[sshadow]

I use a zv6130us laptop from HP. I got it last year and it does fine. You could pick one up for around 400 bucks I bet now. It has a 939 pin AMD 3400+ cpu installed with ATI 200m grafix card 128meg agp on board. 512meg installed upgradeable to 2gigs. The cpu can be upgraded to 3800+ I can two box with MQ np in all zones with grafix on low. Running is sometimes a problem in NEW zones.

But for the price you cant beat it. As for break downs. I bought a new HD week after I got the Laptop buy my friends HD broken few months ago. They fixed it for free. My DvD rom got corupted but I think thats my fault. don't mess with ROM hehe.

 

[Sylas]

I would recommend you check out the Dell Outlet section of their website. I was able to snag a E1705 for about $1200. This thing has a dual core processor, 2gigs of ram, a 256mb PCI Express card, sata drive, and more. That was about a year ago so you're bound to find equivlant for cheaper now. I'm able to run 2 sessions with high graphics and not a glitch.

http://www.dell.com/outlet/

 

[Warrene]

I'm using an HP Pavilion, dv9339. Standard 2 gigs, 512mb video, T5500 Core2. Wide screen display, 100gb drive....lots of stuff. At the high end of the price range, $1400 or so at Circuit City. I was specifically looking for a laptop on which I could 3-box, and ram/video ram/processer seemed to be critical. This one appeared to have everything I wanted...and I haven't been disappointed. Fire up WinEQ and I'm flying along.

...Vista, on the otherhand, is one major PITA.

 

[Blueice22]

I bought a dv6040us HP laptop. It came with a 7200 Nvidia Go card (pretty decent video card), it's a 1.6 AMD dual core system with 2 gigs of DDR2 memory. With a 15.4 HD widescreen. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...8685&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

I can very easily triple box in every zone I have ever been in. (Even up to Solteris). Every once in a while I get a little lag but not too often. It cost me $1268.92 brand new about a year ago so you should be able to find one used for about $600-$800 or so... All in all it is a very good laptop. The way I normally run it is I have my first instance of EQ (My tank cause that is who I am on the most) running on processor 0 while my shaman and rogue are both on processor 1.

 

[JoeSchmo]

Thats all good news, I was looking at some of the top end laptops and they were all 3500$ plus, good to know I shouldnt need something like that.

 

[alabama20]

I'm running a Dell Inspiron E1505. Intel Core 2 Duo, 1 gig of ram, 256meg ATi Mobility Radeon X1400 with an 80 gig HD. I can 2 box on it without a hicc-up, though when I try to 3 box, the third instance always crashes just before it gets to the character select screen. No idea why it does this, I've tried just about every trick I've ever heard of (EQPlayNice, WinEQ, different vid drivers) and nothing has worked. Also, when I take a screenshot, it looks like someone put the picture thru a shredder and when it was pieced back together, the strips were not lined up quite right.

So might wanna avoid this model. Be advised, if you call SOE Customer Service and admit you are using a laptop, if you listen VERY closely, you can hear the CS rep laughing under his/her breath at you. They won't give you the time of day, only say that laptops fall under the "may not work with some video/sound cards" clause. I was quite pissed when I found this out. Other than the above problem though, I love the thing. Just aggravating I can't figure out this problem.

 

[Crystane]

Folks, I run EQ on normal desktop and a Laptop.
And there is one thing I learned about EQ.

Limiting how many boxes you can run is your memory.
My desktop had 1Gig Ram and a 128MB video, i could run 2 boxes fine, then I upgraded to 3Gig Ram. Now I could run 4 boxes but after certain time one box allways crashed due to "not enough video memory".

Now I have a 512MB video card. The maximum I tested was 7 boxes at once and it looked that it gets slow because my hard-drive is reaching its limits. However this effects only zonetimes and only when I zone ALL 7 at once.
The game itself runs smooth on all boxes.

What I suggest and know is for buying a Laptop to play EQ,

Get one with a videocard which has its own memory and not shared. And the more memory for the Videocard and the systam ram, the more boxes you will be able to run at once.

I hope that helped a bit.

Enjoy Crystane.

 

[Jinx]

Sounds about right. I have a 256meg vid card and 2 Gig memory and normally 3 or even 4 boxing is ok in most zones. However I was in Icefall and would die a lot. Must have been from lag because once I went to 2 box I didn't die. Wish I could go to 3 Gig but board is maxed at 2 gig (. No money for new set up at this time. If I upgrade the board I would prolly have to upgrade everything else so will have to wait a bit.