Hi, I've been doing a lot of research trying to prepare for buying a new laptop for school. I want it to be able to play the sims 2 and it's expansion packs as well as handle my shool work and iTunes library (less than 3,000 songs).

I think I've narrowed it down to two notebooks from HP, but one is substantially cheaper than the other one because it has an AMD processor and the other has Intel. I was wondering which one would be better for a Simmer/Student like me.

Also, I'm wondering if purchasing 4GB DDR2 System Memory is worth the price of putting it on my notebook for The Sims 2. If it's not neccessary and I could get away with 3GB DDR2 System memory it would save me a lot of money.

If anyone is familiar, I'm looking at a customized dv9700z Series notebook vs. a customized dv9700t Series.

Thanks.

The Core 2 Duo system is cooler running and thus the better choice. Also, more RAM is better for a laptop, since it increases battery life by allowing the HDD to be accessed less frequently.

As for The Sims 2, look for a laptop with either an NVIDIA GeForce Go or an ATI Mobility Radeon onboard GPU. An Intel Integrated chipset will not run the game acceptably.

Thanks for your input Rage, I'm wondering what you think about the 4GB vs. 3GB (is this RAM?)

It seems like having 3GB would be more than enough for the game and still allow me to do the homework and things I'll have plus the iTunes.

How quickly do AMD's get hot?

Yes, that is RAM. Get as much as you can without breaking the bank.
As for AMD CPUs, they get quite hot, even when idle, as far as I have seen.

Hmmmm. AMD is so much cheaper than Intel, though. I'm going to have to think about this a lot more. I don't want my computer to overheat because I wanted to save some money.

Thanks for your help Rage

If the laptops are what I'm seeing ( dv9700z and dv9700t ), I'd definitely pick the dv9700t one - its graphics chip is much better.

I was leaning towards that one, too. Thanks for your opinion and feedback on the graphics chip, too. I think I'm going to go with that one, but I want to try to keep the prie of that laptop down to 1300 or so.