Hello fellow Arkadians, I have asked this question on PlanetCalypsoForum as well, but thought I might as well ask it here too. Little introduction: I have been playing Entropia now for six or seven years. Few months after the first settlers set foot on Arkadia I followed. Then in july 2012 I got a nasty computervirus that blocked everything that had something to do with Windows. I got Ubuntu on my computer and liked it well. Problem is that I can't play Entropia under Ubuntu. Now I am looking for a laptop for Entropia (so that I can still use the good things about Ubuntu as well). I am a total nittwitt when it comes to computers, so I need a bit of help wich one to buy. I made a list of eight that look promising to me. (all links to Dutch sites). Lenovo Essential B560 Lenovo NZRDUMH Acer NX.M0DEH.001 Acer Aspire V5-551-64456G75Makk Acer Aspire V3-571-53236G50Makk Lenovo ThinkPad E535 NZRDUMH Acer Aspire V3-771-33116G50Makk Acer Aspire V3-771-32328G75Makk I am not looking for an ultra high tech laptop that can play Entropia on Very High Settings. Medium with some things at High is good for me. Please also look at the Calypsothread here. Greetings, Ardorj :dark::shrug::dark:
Personally I would not even look at anything that is made by Lenovo (IBM), acer or gateway. But that is just my personal opinion as I think they make crappy machines that are not worth anything. ASUS makes a great line of gaming laptops (Republic of Gamers) as does Alienware, even if they are owned by the D word. I do own an ASUS for almost 3 years now (ASUS G72jh) and play on high, it does get a bit laggy on very high but is still playable at that setting. I am quit happy with high to be honest.
I love my Alienware MX18 but it's a but higher spec'd than what you are looking for. Suggest checking out Asus. You can get some good deals on midrange laptops. My previous laptop was Asus.
asus and alienware for sure good stuff also IBUYPOWER has some decent looking ones http://www.ibuypower.com/IbpPages/Laptop.aspx
I just switch to a Fujitsu Lifebook NH532. It's great, quick and relatively low cost. It works well with Entropia and also for work. Good bang for your buck. Not as high tech as the ASUS or AlienWear ones, but still decent. http://computers.toptenreviews.com/laptops/fujitsu/fujitsu-lifebook-lh531-review.html Cheers -Wolf
ASUS or Alienware are the best, just make sure they have very good ventilation ducts! I know the high end Asus Laptops have dual fans to keep them cool.
Keep in mind when chooseing what to get that Planet Arkadia is properly optimised for most of the things they have implemented and playabilty here is far less resource intensive and reliable then other planets especially Calypso. So use Calypso as the minimum standard for play ability and you will have no problems anywhere else in game. What people can play with here on Ark may not be usable on Caly if its too low end spec'd
I've set my eyes on the Lenovo NZRDUMH, problem is that from what I can find it's all out of stock lol. And good to know Arkadia requires less then Calypso! PS. Alienware for sure is great, but out of my league.
I've got the ASUS G73sw and I'm here to give you a warning about it. For about the first month, it's amazing. After that, it starts going downhill. The graphics cards they use in their G73 series have known defects. They'll tell you the problems they have are just that they're not the best cards for what you're doing (which they say they ARE when you buy the thing) but it's an actual defect and they just continue to use them. It will become laggy and slow and eventually will not be able to process certain details at all on lower settings, then when you have it on high settings, it makes it lag a lot. It only continues to get worse over time and never evens out. The motherboards are known to have issues, and I've been finding out the hard way how bad those issues are. I bluescreen a lot because of the hardware problems, and I've found it's very very common with this model. The sound cards are total junk. The laptop has a built in subwoofer for "high definition sound," but it's really no better than the crap speakers in my old craptop. The sound card itself has some issues where the settings won't work right and your volume levels don't operate properly, especially the microphone. No matter what kind of mic or drivers you use, your mic will ALWAYS be way too quiet, causing you to have to turn up the "boost" and distort the input a lot. It will never go through clear that way. You can be understood just fine, but if you're like me and can't stand the distortion, it's bad bad bad. Another thing on the sound hardware is that the headphone and mic jacks become very loose very fast, and then it almost becomes unable to detect that they're plugged in sometimes. I could go on and on about the problems I've encountered after shelling out $1,300+ for this "high end" machine, but there's way too much to say. Even under warranty, they will only replace parts with the same defective models, even if a better model will work with it. So much for extended warranty that did nothing to fix anything. ASUS does make some great machines, but the G73 series is NOT a good series. I bought the SW when it was brand new and only had good reviews. That was because it hadn't been out long enough for the public to start seeing all the problems. Just make sure that whichever machine you buy, it's been out long enough to have accurate reviews to look at. Hopefully you find one that you're happy with. Good luck! Hope to see you in game soon!
