Experiment on Sony VAIO - questions

[shadow dragon64]

yo due its ither one of the problems they mention or the emulator is missed placed which is a glich

 

[squall_leonhart]

i did not try it on her machine but i have tried it on another similiar machine and the best you can get out of it is the Dx6 plugin.. the Dx8 plugin is just too much for the system

 

[NeoNFITC]

I have a pretty hefty 'custom' laptop. It has a Radeon 9700 in it. I haven't tried N64 emulation, but I DO run a PSX emulator with near perfect results. It slows down when there are lots of polygons, lighting effects, or fog, but not enough to deem it 'unplayable'. Normally it runs full speed.

The down side to a 'custom' laptop is that I have NO tech support or warranty on it. I haven't hit any major snags in the past year-and-a-half, but the hinges on the screen feel like they'll give out any day.
I just don't like buying brand systems because they don't like user customizing and they'll always use SOME part that's substandard or only moderately reliable. My lappy cost a little more than $1600.

 

[atticusg47]

yeah that int is crap and a 1.5 celeron, not so good either, forget sony, theyre like dell

just newegg a laptop, acer is exceptional right now.

 

[Doomulation]

IMO Acer laptops are crap. They include sub-standard hard drives, their homepage is crap...

 

[squall_leonhart]

agreed, the only company that you are certified to get a decent laptop from is Alienware

 

[atticusg47]

no way alienware overprices the hell out of there laptops and ive never had a problem with acer, who cares about their homepage? just newegg it

 

[squall_leonhart]

acer laptops are CRAP

they use exactly the same crappy intel chips.

son,.. go away.. obviously you have no idea about the stuff in your laptops

 

[atticusg47]

the stuff in my laptops? go kill yourself, and wtf are you talkin about, the same intel chips. THAT WHY YOU BUY ONE WITH AN ACTUAL GRAPHICS CARD! jesus. any comp with intergrated graphics suck.

 

[Christoffah]

I dunno, 1964 had a uninstallation method that used registry files rather than the typical uninstall file, and somehow they found out I used it, at the very time I did. pissed me off. By the way, of course I know about plugging in mouses to laptops I just mean, I dunno, I'd kinda feel weird playing a fps on a laptop... just wouldn't feel right for some reason!! Maybe I'm just really not used to laptops. Are those tiny finger-mice any good? I'll be, for sure, using a USB mouse with mine when I get it. i hate those touchpads.

I went into town today and as it happens the ONLY laptops I saw were VAIOs, quite strangly. They simply did not have any other makes on show in either of the stores. However the typical VAIOs I saw included 100gb hard drive, a gig of RAM, a Nvidea Geforce card... this has all gotta be alright for N64 emulation right??

Specs of the ones I'm now considering.... what do you guys think.

Sony VAIO VGNFS415S

Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology with Intel® Pentium® M processor 740 (1.73 Ghz and 533 MHz FSB) and Intel® Pro/Wireless 802.11bg
Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Home with Service Pack 2 (English version)
100GB (Ultra ATA / 100 4200rpm) hard disk drive
1 GB (2*512 MB) DDR2 SDRAM (shared with Video Memory), maximum 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) Widescreen X-black LCD screen with double lamp technology
NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6400 with TurboCache™ supporting 128MB (NVIDIA® TurboCache™ technology combines the size and bandwidth of video memory and dynamically available system memory for optimal system performance)
Double layer DVD±RW drive

£860 locally, £680 online via Sony


Sony VAIO VGNFJ3MW

Intel Centrino Mobile Technology with Intel Pentium M Processor 740 (1.73 GHz) and Intel Pro/Wireless 802.11 b/g
Genuine Microsoft Windows XP Home with Service Pack 2 (English version)
Hard disk: 80GB Serial ATA 5400rpm
Memory: 1 GB DDR2-SDRAM (PC2-3200 DDR2-400 CL=3) (2x512 MB, maximum 2GB with 2x1 GB)
14.1 inch WXGA (1280 x 800) LCD screen
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900 with up to 128MB Dynamic Video Memory shared with main memory
Super Multi Double layer DVD±RW drive
Built-in 'Motion Eye' Digital Camera (30 frames per second, 0.37 Mega Pixels) with Motion Picture Function (max. resolution (pixels) VGA/640480/raw data)

£730-755 locally, £665.96 via eBuyer.com (didnt appear on Sony's site)

I like how the first has a beast hard drive, nice sounding gfx card (I think?) and quite cheap (pricely locally though!), but the second is cool because it has a built-in web cam. Then again, I'd definately be N64 gaming more than using a web cam. What do you guys think?

 

[Clements]

The first one is much, much better.

Much better graphics card
Bigger screen
Bigger hard drive
Better DVD rewriter.

 

[Christoffah]

Thankyou very much for your opinion there Clements.

Would you say it's a decent laptop or should I look around a bit more first. Basically I'm going to be studying Multimedia (flash, Photoshop, InDesign) and want to play PJ64 in spare time. It will definately run PJ64 nicely though right? Given a laptop with the specs I mentioned on the first/second page of this thread could pretty much do it almost perfectly (see my YouTube link on page 2), it's gotta really right? Plus this laptop is £680, whereas my sister's was £620 - amazing difference for just £60!! but I guess hers is older.

Her specs:
CPU: Intel Celeron M370 1.50gHz
Memory: 512 Mb/Mo (2 x 256 Mb/Mo)
HDD: 80Gb/Go
WLAN: 802.11b/g
Graphics: Intel 915GM with up to 128Mb/Mo
OS: Windows XP Home Edition
Screen: 15.4" WXGA X-Black LCD

The one I want's specs:
Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology with Intel® Pentium® M processor 740 (1.73 Ghz and 533 MHz FSB) and Intel® Pro/Wireless 802.11bg
Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Home with Service Pack 2 (English version)
100GB (Ultra ATA / 100 4200rpm) hard disk drive
1 GB (2*512 MB) DDR2 SDRAM (shared with Video Memory), maximum 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM
15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) Widescreen X-black LCD screen with double lamp technology
NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 6400 with TurboCache™ supporting 128MB (NVIDIA® TurboCache™ technology combines the size and bandwidth of video memory and dynamically available system memory for optimal system performance)
Double layer DVD±RW drive



Thanks again for your opinion, sorry I suck at spec knowledge and such. My eyes are pretty fixed on that model right now. Why out of interest, is a "Double layer DVD±RW drive" better than a "Super multi double layer DVD±RW drive" ?

 

[Clements]

Whoops, it looked like the other was single-layer only, but it said 'Super Multi' instead.

 

[squall_leonhart]

the stuff in my laptops? go kill yourself, and wtf are you talkin about, the same intel chips. THAT WHY YOU BUY ONE WITH AN ACTUAL GRAPHICS CARD! jesus. any comp with intergrated graphics suck.

i probably would kill myself.. but i prefer to watch shit like you get slaughtered with submachine gunes... so i'l pass.

Acer laptops suck... period.

they have an extremely high return rate... almost as bad as dell....


...i still wouldn't buy that Vaio..... a 6400 is still extremely crappy, and it still makes heavy use of system ram as its a turbocache chip.. and they have problems fwih

 

[atticusg47]

i probably would kill myself.. but i prefer to watch shit like you get slaughtered with submachine gunes... so i'l pass.

Acer laptops suck... period.

they have an extremely high return rate... almost as bad as dell....


...i still wouldn't buy that Vaio..... a 6400 is still extremely crappy, and it still makes heavy use of system ram as its a turbocache chip.. and they have problems fwih

ok why dont you come do it yourself bitch

 

[Christoffah]

...i still wouldn't buy that Vaio..... a 6400 is still extremely crappy, and it still makes heavy use of system ram as its a turbocache chip.. and they have problems fwih

But remember, the very most 'graphically' challenging task I will do with this laptop is play PJ 64 (I just aim to re-finish old classics again; Diddy Kong Racing, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo, Zelda... etc). If an Intel GM chip can handle PJ64 *almost* perfectly with a slightly annoying jitter once in a while (see my video link on page 2), then surely a GeForce 6400 plus double the amount of RAM will manage it much more effectively??

Turbocache chip, meaning it shares with the memory? Yeah, I noticed it saying something like that... is this really bad? what is 'fwih'?

 

[Christoffah]

Whoops, it looked like the other was single-layer only, but it said 'Super Multi' instead.

Oh haha. So I take it the Super Multi is better than the one I'll probably be getting. But hey, it's a DVD writer at the end of the day, which I'm sure is of an acceptable standard. It's not like I'll be writing DVDs every month anyway.

 

[Clements]

The Super Multi part actually means nothing, looks to be marketing fluff.

 

[Doomulation]

ok why dont you come do it yourself bitch

Why don't you stop this stupid arguing or take it to PM. This thread's purpose is to HELP Christoffah and not to flame each other. :getlost:

Christoffah: The one laptop you are looking at looks very promising. Sure, it's an integrated card which leeches system memory for its own, but it's also not crap like Intel's. It will do find for n64 emulation I would bet.
The only really negative thing I see about it is the slow hard drive (4200 rpm). However, I think it is a small price to pay for this computer. If you ever want a better one, I'm sure you could simply switch it out with a better one.

Yes, I think you found a good deal there

 

[Christoffah]

In that case I'll make an order tomorrow then

I'd like to say thank you so much for everyone's help. When I make a big purchase I always like a lot of different opinions and it's always a big deal for me, so I really am thankful for every post that was made to help me with my decision.

Thanks again guys!!