How long has your gaming notebook lasted?

I agree with Kierkegaard (the forum user, not the actual philospher who was totaly nuts rofl) Asus is the best qualitative brand (according to the link in my signature), but if you buy a +-500 dollar laptop don't expect the same quality as their bussines line. And even if it was an expensive model, that just proves every brand makes bad models now and then. It also depends on how you use it, my acer is already 2 years old (must be a record for acer laptops ^^), I understand people think laptops are meant to be carried every day, but unless you buy an expensive bussines notebook, don't expect to get much more but laptophardware in weak plastic package.

 

My gaming laptop is at 3 years 4 months right now.
I bought a Toshiba P105-S9312 with a Geforce go 7900GS back in September 2006. Other than upgrading the RAM to 4gb I haven't done anything else to it and it still runs great. Only problems are the cracks around the hinges and the horrible AC adapter plug design.

 

Wow. 7900GS is still half way decent. Nice purchase. I'm hoping to get 3 years out of my Sager NP8662. Will eventually update to a quad core QX9300 most likely, and 8GB if prices ever become reasonable. Not worth it to update to GTX 280m, unless something more powerful comes along for MXM 2.1.

 

Better yet, give the computer to the Wingnut Juniors and Juniorettes and buy something groundbreaking, like and i7 coupled with a Radeon 5xxx or whatever nVidia does to counter ATI.

 

True. I need to get a job first though. But hope I can get that before year's end.

I do have an old Shuttle desktop though that they get. My 2+ year old likes to play with the keyboard mouse now. (Sempron 2400+, 1GB DDR, 80GB IDE HDD, Win XP, 6600GT - ok a little overkill).

 

I didn't know 2-year-olds had the hand-eye coordination for that, haha.

 

He's learning. I have a couple kids games that basically allow them to pound the keyboard and it does something. Roll the middle scroll wheel and it yells "Whoaaaaa". Both my 1 and 2 year old like it for about 15 minutes. Then they start trying to pull the keyboard out of the computer. They can't touch my laptop. And my 2 year old always says "Daddy's 'puter". Good boy.

 

At least it's not "Daddy's other baby". I can imagine the next big gamer clan will be the Wingnut clan. Start 'em early.

And man, your son (?) has some mean hardware for someone who probably just got finished potty-training.

 

The first thing I'm going to teach my son is how to AWP noobs in a Counter Strike pub.

 

Potty training? LOL. He sits on the potty with his pants on for 2 seconds and says "all done". I think I've got a long road ahead of me.

Sempreon 2400+ is mean hardware? LOL. It's like 5 year old technology. Just the 6600GT is a little overkill, but had it laying around, so used it. I may be able to move it to a system that supports 939 Pin Athlon 64 though. It's sitting waiting for RAM, HDD, and GPU. Already has Athlon 64 x2 4400+. Except the mainboard seems a little flaky with the USB. Guess I'll just have to add a PCI USB expansion.

 

My family's first computer was some AMD--I think--that struggled to go above 166MHz. I guess it's all in the perspective.

 

Well any machine that will garner less than $150 on eBay is far from powerful. LOL.

 

For 2 year old it is.

 

And since it's the oldest piece of PC hardware I own, I don't think I'm gonna go out and buy a Pentium 60 machine. Kinda like you have that old Buick sitting around when your kid turns 16. Sure it's probably more than he or she needs but you're not gonna go spend a couple grand on a car if you already have one.

 

Dell Precision M4400 with 512 MB 9600GT (fx770m).

Bought in dec 2008, will last at least till starcraft2 or diablo3 comes up

 

hp compaq 8510p. 2 years and still going strong

 

It should be powerful enough to run those 2 games decently.

I have a 5930G for over a year now ... it's my first laptop that could be considered as a 'gaming' one.
Mid range, but quite powerful. (specs in sig).
Undervolted both cpu and gpu, and overclocked the gpu by about 20%.
Temps under load don't go over 60 degrees C with all those settings (and of course a Zalman Cooler).

Am able to run any recent game decently, Dragon Age Origins is behaving more fluently with the overclocked gpu of course as is Star Wars force unleashed (though Force Unleashed bogs down the system after around 3 hours for some reason - temps were stable at 60 degrees C and all, so it's likely the game itself).

Aside from that, I think there's a possibility this laptop will continue to perform nicely for another 2 or 3 years (hopefully).

 

how do u clean vents?

.i play lot of MW2 multiplayer on it and mine is gathering some dust on the vents

 

I've had my 17" Sager with an x800 and a P4 for several years now, and it still works great for old games. I don't use it much anymore, though, because I have an XPS M1710 that still plays anything I've thrown at it.

 

March 2005 is when I got my XPS Gen2. Originally had a 6800 Ultra GPU, but upgraded to 7800 GTX when it came out. Recently loaded Win 7 on it, my kid has had it about 1 1/2 years since I got HP HDX Dragon.
He's playing Dragon Age and Fallout 3 at full res and medium settings. Had to replace the display about this time last year, but it's been going strong otherwise.

 

I'm not an expert, so don't blame me if something goes wrong, but all I did was open up the back access panel, and use compressed air to blow off any loose dust that I see (shouldn't be much). Then just spray the compressed air into the vents, and a whole bunch of dust comes flying upwards, out of the fan (I only have one, so if you have multiple exhaust vents, you would spray in all of them).

 

More than 18 months down, and still going strong

 

The thing is for people who bought a high end 8xxx nVidia series shortly after they were first released should be in good shape because all subsequent nVidia GPU's are just rebadges of the same tech with just slightly faster clocks.

 

Also, lodge something in the fan, like a paperclip or a toothpick, to keep it from moving.

Fan moving when it's not supposed to be moving = bad.

 

I've had my laptop in my sig since the 12th of August, although I didn't really start gaming on it until December. If I can get GTA IV to run on it, It can run anything else I could try throwing at it, but I'm not much of a FPS fan (yet).

I'm hoping to get 3-4 years out of it, if not more.

 

unfortunately your laptop would be hard pressed to run modern games in low/medium settings at your native resolution.
so getting 3-4 of gaming would be a near impossibility- unless you stick to casual gaming and super low settings and res.

 

I only use the native res for watching anime

The only reason I run GTA IV at 1920x1080 is because there's not much of a difference if I run 1280x720 or 1920x1080, I'm not a heavy gamer, either.

 

could work out for you then butmaybe 2-3yrs max

 

Got mine in december 2007 (2 years from now) , and still playing anything I give it smooth and nicely.

 

My AW will be 4 in a couple weeks, still going strong.
Granted, that's after one replaced mobo two years ago and a gpu upgrade last year.
Funny thing is I've got it tuned so well by now that it starts up Windows and most applications faster than my year old school computer.
Most recent game I have on there is World at War, and that is stretching what it can do at this point, so once nvidia releases the new cards I think I will finally have enough money to spring for a new one (not AW this time...).
For now, having been bitten by the mmo bug, I'm content to play LotRO on it, which is what it will continue to be used for when I get a new one as I will pass it off to my younger brother.

 

It will be 2 years for my M1530 in late February 2010! I have Far Cry 2 and DoW 2 loaded up on it right now. DoW 2 plays fantasticly and looks great. FC2 is obviously more taxing on the GPU but at Medium settings (1280x800) I am about average 30 FPS, even in gun battles with fire and explosions. And it still looks fantastic.