Buying a poker-only computer
 

Seeking to buy a computer for poker and very little else (web browsing, Poker Tracker, Stars, that's probably it).

I'm wondering what kind of specs I can get by on. I don't want it to be deadly slow, but I can also handle it not being super-fast.

I guess I'm talking mainly RAM and hard-disk space (though if there's anything I'm missing, let me know).

I usually six-table (occasionally more, may do more in the future) and have an external hard-drive I can use for Tracker databases.

Any thoughts extremely appreciated. Thanks. Any suggestions welcome too.

EDIT: I guess the processor's important too.

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

If you go to any office supply or electronics and spend more than a grand you will have a fine computer for just playing poker. The number of tables only matter because of PT, they aren't resource heavy by themselves.

The bottle neck playing poker is large PT databases. You want quick hard drives for that. It's doubtful you will get a desktop with slow enough hard drives to make an external drive faster. Use it for back up or purge the damn DB, you don't really need 8 months or more of hands in it.

Basic stats you are looking for-
2 gigs of ram.
5400 rpm hard drive, 7200 is better
You can take a bump down with processor speed if it will get you more ram or a bigger HD.
That's about it.

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

I should have noted this: I'm buying a laptop. I travel a lot for work.

It seems like price starts to go up significantly when you hit 2Gigs of ram -- how bad would 1 be (or, for that matter? 512 KB?)

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

buying laptop tip: when you buy from the retailer, get the minimum amount of ram*

then, after market, go buy ram yourself. it is one of the very few parts of laptops that are user-upgradable.

*make sure the ram you are getting with the laptop is the same as the ram you intend to buy afterwards, and that you will have space to insert more ram later. eg, if the ram coming with the laptop is 1gb, but comes in two 512mb sticks, you would need to upgrade both sticks and essentially buy a whole 2gb of ram later (this is obviously bad). however, if your 1gb of ram comes in a 1gb stick, then you can just buy another 1gb stick and insert it.

i hope that this is as clear as mud in a dirty beer bottle.

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

If you can get a laptop with XP 1 gig will be fine, but two is always better. If you are getting Vista you'll want the whole 2 gigs. What is your price range?

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

Don't have a range, per se, just really trying to figure out what I can "get by" on for 2 years or so.

Love the "buy a computer with minimum RAM, then upgrade." I'm new to this though -- how do I check at the retailer if I can do this? Is it a simple quesiton any sales associate should be able to answer?

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

If you are going to get a lappy and are in a hurry you will probably be fine going to a chain store and getting something, they will be able to tell you about upgrading the memory. However, you won't get the best deal and you won't get a big screen. In one of the other threads on the front page there is talk about a 1500 dollar dell that sounded good, if that doesn't make you choke you may want to think about that.

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

Yeah, I'm choking.

Thanks guys.

Re: Buying a poker-only computer
 

U can upgrade the Ram yourself. Its very easy to do. Took me about 30 min on a Dell which are harder than most to upgrade.

Buy the RAM at slickdeals.net they have tons of good deals going on right now for 2 1GB sticks.