Opinion on HP DV5000z

I've decided to buy a laptop for general home use including light gaming (my wife wants to get the roller coaster building game). After a visit to Circuit City and Best Buy we decided that we really like the HP series with the 15.4" BrightView Screens. I was going to get the Circuit City special dv4305 with the Celeron M360 for $699. After reading this site it looks like the Celeron should be avoided if I want decent performance and any game playing abilities at all. I found a HP dv5000z for $729 +shipping configured with:
AMD Turion™ 64 ML-32 processor (1.8GHz)
512KB L2 cache
512MB DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 256MB); expandable up to 2GB
60GB hard drive (4200RPM)
DVD±RW/CD-RW combo drive with Double Layer support
15.4" WXGA BrightView widescreen (1280 x 800) display
128MB ATI Radeon® Xpress 200M w/Hypermemory™
It also has the quick play buttons for dvd and music as well as the remote control.

Will this work for something like the roller coaster designer game? Will the hard drive speed be noticably slow?

Thank-you.

 

What is the name of the roller coaster game? Most of those type games are fairly easy graphically from my experience. Probably this lappy will be fine for you. The 4200 RPM HD will be slower but you probably will not notice a big difference for the light usage that it sounds like you will be doing.

 

Thanks Lappyhappy. The game is RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Wild!.

 

The dv5000 pavillion is MORE than fine for the RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Wild.....the only concern is the widescreen, not sure how that plays out for the game.


The game shows it needs:
* Operating System: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP (Windows® XP recommended)

* Processor: Pentium® III 733 MHz or compatible (Pentium® 4 1.2 GHz or compatible recommended)

* Memory: 128 MB RAM; 256 MB for XP (256 MB; 384 MB for XP recommended)

* Hard Disk Space: 600 MB free CD-ROM Drive: 4X CD-ROM or faster (8X or faster recommended)

Video: Any ATI Radeon™ or GeForce™ 2 with 32MB or higher; or other video card with 32MB and hardware T&L (ATI Radeon™ 64 MB SDR or GeForce™ 2 Pro or other video card with 64 MB or more memory and hardware T&L recommended)*
Sound: Windows® 98/Me/2000/XP-compatible 16-bit sound card*

 

I would suggest going for 5400RPM drive

 

I would recommend buying at HP.com because you can customize. The above mentioned 5400RPM hard drive will offer much better system performance. HP.com only charges tax in a few states unlike CircuitCity. HP also offers a 30 day return policy. Good Luck.