Hi, Hogan. What kind of games are you looking to run? If you're planning to run any recent heavy-3D games, you will want a laptop with a fast processor, fast memory, minimum of 2 gb RAM, video card with dedicated RAM, and a decent sized hard drive. If you're going to be running primarily games such as Solitaire, then you'll still want the fast processor, fast memory and 2 gb of RAM for Visual Studio. I know some people have suggested 1 gb is enough for Windows XP, but I'd suggest getting 2 gb anyway. Then you have everything you need in case you decide you want to run Vista later on. Most laptops will come with some form of Vista anyway. Home Premium or Business should be plenty for programming on, with Business probably being the better choice due to easier IIS support and no Media PC software to bog te system down. :-> My current laptop is an Acer Aspire with 2 gb RAM (128 mb shared with video card), 160 gb hard drive, and a Pentium-D 1.73 ghz (pre Core Duo, heh) processor. It is plenty fast enough to run VS 2008. It won't run the latest and greates 3D games (due to both the weak processor and video card -- Intel EX945), but I don't play much in the way of games anyway. I paid about $750 total for it after boosting the RAM and hard drive space in it. By contrast, I'm looking at a Dell laptop for later on that's pretty much loaded -- 2 gb ram, ATi video card with 256 mb dedicated memory, 320 gb hard drive, Blu-Ray Rom/DVD+-RW drive, Core2Duo 2.0 ghz processor and a bunch of other stuff -- over $1700, but it should last at least three or more years, heh. Flynn
If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...