Buying laptop, need help

Offspring6767 · #1 07-27-2007, 05:57 PM

Ok, I basically don't have a budget, as I'm heading off to college and my parents are buying me a laptop. I'm a business major so I don't need any crazy engineering programs on it. I used to game alot but I don't think I'm going to at all in college. My main goal is to have a laptop that can at least 4 table efficiently. I'm guessing that requires a pretty big screen. I've also been told that heavy laptops suck ass, as I'll probably take it to class alot. I saw alot of people using macbooks on campus, does any1 know how they work with poker software? I didn't really know where to put this post so if its the wrong place I'd appreciate if you'd tell me where to put it. Thanks for any advice you can give.

gobby888 · #2 07-28-2007, 10:31 PM

why not get a decent portable, and get a 20inch+ tft to plug in?

King Car · #3 07-29-2007, 11:23 AM

I am also planning on getting a macbook pro.

If I am not mistaken, Apple has a bootcamp application that allows you to run a Windows environment on their machine.

The 17" macbook pro can be upgraded to have 1920x1200 native resolution, but the unit is pretty big.

The 15" model only supports 1440x900 resolution, does anyone know if this is pain point when tabling? Considering you are using re-sizeable tables, and PA-HUD?

Are things really that crowded and hard to see?

Shoe Lace · #4 07-29-2007, 02:25 PM

1440x900 is doable but not close to ideal for 4 tabling. If you can't get 1920x1200 then 1600x1050 would be something to aim for.

Here's what PS looks like on my LCD at 1440x900.

Normal PS to fit 2:

Resized PS to fit 4:

Luckily I don't use my LCD for poker tables. You could probably clean up the size of the resized tables a bit. I just did this quickly since I play at 1600x1200 on a different monitor which fit 4 perfectly.

King Car · #5 07-29-2007, 09:23 PM

Shoe Lace,

Ty for the screen shots.

Freakin · #6 07-29-2007, 10:37 PM

As a guy who had a 17" laptop, then moved down to a 12" laptop, I'd STRONGLY recommend against a 17". They are far from being conveniently portable because of their weight and size. They barely fit on airplane tray tables.

With my 12", I can get 4-5 hours of battery life on my primary battery, and another 2-3 on my backup battery. My whole bag with power adapter, batteries, laptop and external harddrive doesn't weigh as much as just my previous 17" laptop did (my backpack with 17", power adapter, and extra battery weighed over 17-20lbs). The new smaller laptops also use LED lit screens (not sure if it's available on larger laptops), so battery life is as high as 7 hours on some of the models.

Get a 12-15" laptop and get a 20-24" external monitor for your room.

For model number reference, the 17" I have is a Dell XPS Gen2 (the one just before the M1710 came out) and the 12" I have is the XPS M1210 (which has now been updated to the M1330 with LED Backlit LCD screen).

Oh, and I also have an internal mobile broadband card for my M1210 so I get verizon EVDO internet everywhere without any external cards or antennas... very nice.