Need help picking a basic gaming laptop

[r3claimer]

Oh wow, I was not aware people were still posting here. Anyway, I have made some choices with what I do with cash, and spending it on a nice laptop just doesn't seem to be smart. I came to this conclusion after remembering about the whole OnLive thing. This service will effectively erase my need for a more expensive laptop. I'm only going to be playing video games at home, where I will have a great internet connection, which is all OnLive will need. So I can buy a laptop that doesn't have a 1.5 hour battery life but that can still play great games. And at the projected cost of an OnLive subscription being comparable to Xbox Live ($50/year) I think this is by far the best choice. Of course I won't be able to game on the go, but I really don't care about that at all anyway. Of course, I'll want to see how OnLive's service is working out before I make the purchase, but I think it will do well.

And No offense intended Tedster, but if I wanted a desktop, I'd buy a desktop. But as compdata said, that hardly helps me if I need the laptop on the go. I'm about to be a college student and productivity is going to outweigh entertainment. That's why I love these forums though, you guys always find ways to make as few compromises as is possible.

Anyway, as far as Laptops go, there just isn't a good balance between Low Cost/ Battery Life/ Graphic performance. You have to sacrifice one to get the other two. I'm HOPING OnLive will be able to make this compromise unnecessary. We shall just have to wait and see.

 

[compdata]

I wouldn't put my bets on OnLive solving the compromise issues. Didn't know anything about it till you mentioned it, but reading up on the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OnLive) It is still very unproven and if you look at some of the requirements for connection speed it is pretty hefty - 1.5 Mbps for standard TV resolution. Maybe dorm connections have gotten better, but i remember keenly how bursty they were when i was there. You have a high top speed, but you are sharing it with a whole bunch of users so your data rate will drop pretty low sometimes. This isn't much of an issue for downloads, but would kill something like OnLive. I got the same sort of issue with broadband from a cable provider (through cable modem) as your connection is shared as well. I havn't seen this on FIOS yet but havn't tried anything like this.

Quote from the Wiki Article
"Matt Peckham from PC World stated that it might be technically difficult to transfer the amount of data that a high definition game would require; later on he mentioned that OnLive would need a "deterministic broadband". That is "a guaranteed, non-shared, uninterruptible speed", but "broadband isn't there yet, nor are ISPs willing to offer performance guarantees". He also mentioned concerns about the "mod community" being unable to create and offer mods since all the game data will be stored on the OnLive servers; as well as the fact that any games bought on OnLive are not actually owned by the user. If OnLive were to go under, all the user's games would also disappear with it. Currently, no widespread trial has been made to test the service so it is unclear whether it would work once live."

They also don't seem to think it will be in a playable state till 2013 at the earliest.