Acer TravelMate 4654LMi ???

Hey guys, ive been lookin for a well rounded laptop that i could easily upgrade to make a good machine.. in my search i found the Acer TravelMate 4654LMi. if i upgrade the ram to 1gb, its a very good machine.. any thoughts on it?

 

What will you be using the notebook for? The only things I can see that could be better or could be a problem is the LCD resolution and the graphics card.

The LCD is only an XGA screen. This has a maximum resolution of 1024x768. If you're going to be using it for CAD or 3D modelling, you may want something with a higher resolution. You need to see the screen types before deciding because a higher resolutions scren (SXGA+) might make the fonts too small for you, but it's mainly user preference.

The graphics card is an Intel GMA 900 integrated video card with shared video memory. Mainly, anything with shared video memory is not a good solution for anything graphics intensive (CAD, 3D Modelling, newer games) as it takes away from system memory in order to meet its graphics memory requirements. So, if you have 512MB of system ram and 128MB of shared video memory, that will leave 384MB of usable system memory for your programs. This slows your system overall because of the reduced resources. This type of graphics may be good for general use and light game play, but nothing for anything very graphics intensive. I'd recommend getting something with dedicated video memory as this will provide the speed needed for graphics intensive apps/games, but it costs more money than a shared video memory system.

-Vb-

 

wow, thanks a lot for explaining that to me, i appreciate the time that it took, have any model suggestions? im in the 1k-1.5k$ range

 

Take a look at the Asus Z71v. It has the NVidia 6600 go card which is a fairly fast GPU.

http://www.discountlaptops.com/inde...odel_id=1141&category_id=39&category_theme=c1

 

Graphix,

You're welcome. Regarding suggestions for notebooks, I guess anything with dedicated video memory would be a good start. I'm assuming you're in the US, so I'm just gonna list a few US available models.

Try looking at:

HP Compaq nc6230
HP Compaq nx6125
HP Compaq nc8230 (15.4" Widescreen LCD)
Toshiba M40
Acer Ferrari 4000 (a bit out of your price range, but worth a look)
Acer Travelmate 8100 (same as the Ferrari, a bit expensive)
Acer Travelmate 4400 Series (AMD CPU)

These are just a few to start you off. A lot of the Acer models have shared video memory and the ones that don't are either out of your price range or have an AMD CPU in them (don't know if you have anything against AMD CPU's, but the model you listed had an Intel Pentium M CPU).

-Vb-

 

I'd toss in the IBM T42 with SXGA+. Might be able to find one of those on ebay for $1500. Just buy from a reputable seller.