Gaming laptops with pointstick's

I can't game with a touchpad and using a mouse is a pain when laying about. So that moves me into business models with inferior graphics. Currently I only find these:

Lenovo t60 x1400 15" CoreDuo
Lenovo z60 x600 15.4" P-M
HP NC8230 x600 15.4" P-M
Gateway M465-EB x1400 15.4" CoreDuo

Anyone know others? I prefer a 15.4" Core Duo and an x1600. Any word on Lenovo updating their z60's to include core duo and x1600? Is there info on Dell's new Latitudes or HP's core duo lines? Thanks in advance.

 

Are you sure you can play games comfortably with the pointing stick? To me the pointing stick is very good for navigation, but not for gaming.

A T60p has Core Duo and the 256MB FireGL V5200, which is essentially a Radeon X1600. It's available at 15", but not at 15.4". For games, 15" is probably better, since it's not widescreen. A T60p is very expensive.

 

Thank you for your response.

Yes I am quite good with the pointstick. I play WoW and many RTS and even Flight sim types with it. It is much more responsive than a touchpad and does give a nice bit of control. Of course a mouse would be better but laying in bed with a mouse just does not work.

Interestingly I was just looking at the V5200 card and it does carry those 12 pipelines and 256mb of memory. Unfortunately, there are no benchmarks out there yet. Judging from its predecessor the v5000 benchmarks I found here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2335&p=9

It may be a good but very expensive option.

I have even looked at oem barbones but unfortunately I have not found any that have the pointstick. If anyone else has suggestions or any info on upcoming models from Dell, HP, etc that contain a nice graphics solution please let me know. Thank you.

 

Yeah, the ThinkPad notebooks with the FireGL cards are not for the faint of wallet . . excellent notebooks, but a price to match as well.

You're not going to find anything but a business notebook from what I've seen with a pointstick; if you want a gaming notebook, you'll have to give up that option.

 

Thanks for the reply Chaz. Seems like 1600x1200 on a 15" screen would be seriously small on that lenovo t60p.

I wish no pointstick was an option but I tried playing WoW last night with the touchpad and it was a nightmare. Are there better more responsive ones? Anyone here use the touchpad for games successfully?

I am sure I could compromise on the graphics and play things at lower level it just doesn't seem too much to ask for an x1600/7600/x700 in a business/pointstick model. Too bad the rumors on t60's were not true.

 

1600x1200 by default would be small for me on the 15" screen, but you can fix it by increasing the DPI and playing with font definitions for Explorer/Firefox a bit. You only need to do it once, and you're good to go. For various tasks you will appreciate the hi-res screen. But as far as laptops with trackpoints go, the T60p has the best graphics card, by a margin.

 

Another thing to note with the 1600x1200 is that you could run it at 800x600 without scaling as each pixel would become 4 pixels. That way when F.E.A.R. 2 comes out a couple of years from now, you could still play it without either shrinking the viewable area or scaling the image (which can look like crap).

 

How about a wireless trackball?

 

Great idea. I would have to get used to it but no need for a mousing surface. I may just go pick one up today and try it out. Thank you for the suggestion.

That would certainly open up my options!

 

FYI- For kicks I just called Lenovo and the sales rep said that they should be moving to offering the x1600 in the T60 line. I asked when the z60 may be moving to duo core and he indicated that it would be some time as the line was just introduced.