Right thinking about buying a laptop for swmbo. Not been a laptop fan so dont really know whats what.

First off its going to be used for Sims 2 and Vag-com

Whats all this MXM (mobility PCI Express module) on about. Can you now upgrade your graphics card in laptops :eek: If so does every laptop fitted with PCI express mean it can be upgraded? And where can you buy them from, the graphics cards that is.

Cheers in advanced.

Look at the recommended requirements for Sims2, not the minimums, the recommended!

thats your starting point.

Re:Vag-Com - you'll be hard pressed to find a laptop with a serial port these days, so will need a suitable USB style cable, or a pcmcia card serial adaptor - but they ain't cheap either......mine cost about 70 from ebay........

The best way to buy a laptop is to set yourself a realistic budget and then shop around and see what you can get for the money and if it meets the game's requirements. Laptops are better for component swapping than they used to be, but I believe most of the cheaper ones still use "on-board" rather than separate...

As Gwilo says, for VAG-COM you'll either want a USB cable or to get a PCMCIA card to create a serial port, although I'm not sure how reliable either of these is with VAG-COM :(

Oh, and also don't buy any laptop that appears on eBay being sold by a certain Devonshire resident

:sofahide:

Chris

Forgot about the serial/usb vag-com things.

Chris if I got one now with onboard grpahics say like an ATI X200m would I be able to upgrade it in the future using the PCI Express port?

Oh' date=' and also don't buy any laptop that appears on eBay being sold by a certain Devonshire resident

:sofahide:

Chris[/quote']

:slap:

Well, its working now. But only plugged in to a monitor. The screen I got looks to be incompatible, so the hunt continues. :thumbdwn:

if I got one now with onboard grpahics say like an ATI X200m would I be able to upgrade it in the future using the PCI Express port?

Laptop graphics chipsets are soldered onto the motherboard, they maybe on a agp/pci express bus but very few if any are upgradeable so you are stuck with what they come with.

I have a Dell Latitude 510m which I use for work and this has a serial port, unsure whether it will run The Sims quickly or not. At home I use a Dell Inspiron 6000 which is a brilliant laptop but again I don't really use it for games (apart from Civilazation 3 )

Bear in mind that a laptop that will run sims2 well will be quite expensive... and will be a "gaming" laptop..

i would check out a mid spec Acer machine... will be lookin round about the grand mark for something decent.