Lap top recommendations

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Go to ASUS's website, under products choose Notebooks.  Once there you can choose the performance level you seeking.  They have some that have scores on 3DMark06 in excess of 14000.  I am thinking if the system/laptop will score at 10k or higher you should be good to go with AH.

TD

Except 14k points = 2.5-3k dollars.

[Reschke]

Forgot to mention that her laptop has an Nvidia chip for the graphics in the system.

[TilDeath]

Except 14k points = 2.5-3k dollars.

Not always... retired laptops can be much less expensive they when they were mainstream.

[wrongwayric]

Yes it's an intel pentium dual core and so far has been the worst sytem i've ever had the pleasure to try to play AH on. 

I've had all AMD based systems with NVIDIA graphics up to this point and have never run into the problems i have with the INTEL system.

Sure intel might be faster ect. ...but what type of headache can i look forward to to make it work correctly?

I expect any system i purchase to be able to play the game out of the box, not spending 3 weeks just logging in because of bloat ware, norton garbage, ect. being installed on it.

I'm seriously looking into having it built to custom specs and skipping all the bloat ware hassels ect. that all the big box systems come with.

[Masherbrum]

You can nix whatever programs you want on start up.   If you are as brand biased as I think you are, why even bring it up for discussion?  Not trying to be rude, just stating fact.   It seems you had you mind made up from the OP and throughout, regardless of things brought up, you're sticking to your guns.

Home Theater is my serious hobby and I've helped many folks throughout the years.   I refuse to help those who aren't willing to hear a few brands and decide for themselves.   Some have "gone against me, because I didn't pick a brand they liked" and ALLof them have come back saying: "I f**ked up and I should have listened to you."   Which is why I only help folks that WANT to "learn, need assistance and are free of bias".   Folks that have bias are simply impossible to please.   

What I don't understand is why you just don't go out and buy an AMD Laptop?   

[wrongwayric]

Well as to why i don't just "go out and buy an AMD" is because i wanted the input. I'm not saying you can not convince me to try another INTEL but i am stating that i've had bad luck with them. I guess i should say that i would be more comfortable with an AMD based system as that is what i am the most familiar with.

I will say the the Pentium based laptop i have now was more of an impulse/price buy. It was to cheap to turn down and other than the sad performance with AH i really can not say i have much to complain about.

On the plus side, when i buy the new laptop my niece gets this one for free to use at school.

[Skuzzy]

Sounds to me like you are blaming Intel for all the bloat an OEM added to the computer.  I hate to tell you this, but OEM's also do that to AMD as well, but that seems to be a bit irrlevant.  Also note, you are talking about the old Pentium CPU's.  The Core 2 CPU's just blew away AMD and it took them over a year to come back with something close to competitive and they are still, clock-for-clock, slower than Intel.

The downside of AMD is the bug we (and other software companies) hit which preclude running on more than one core at a time.  It is a performance limitation.  It will exacerbate stuttering.  So, from my perspective, I cannot, in good faith, recommend AMD.  We have limited reports that AMD may have fixed the problem, but that has only been a few people reporting it.

I am not trying to convince you to go with Intel.  I understand preferential buying.  I would say go with AMD as well, because no matter how much better Intel is, you will find something wrong with it and that kind of misery is simply not worth giving up buying what you already want to buy.  I just think you have not been staying in touch with the advances Intel made in the CPU area from the old Pentium days and are using old out of date information to make a current day purchase decision.