FINALLY I'm getting a laptop for xmas

[Tanooki]

Ack: Might want to look into bitdefender free. Has no ads, just need to give a webmail to register it, and that's it. Nearly no overhead, runs quietly in the background with a very minimal UI to it.

isiolia: I know, but for the package of stuff she paid for she's stuck using what is there and it's not a corporate one like you said you have. Like Ack pointed out a great benchmark on that laptop is 2003 and earlier is totally cool and maybe better than a modern box. Quite a bit after that point works too, generally not the more foo foo eye candy 3D garbage, but safely put any PS2 era ports in the 3D realm would work fine completely (say like the GTA3 engine games.) I read someone else did get DOOM3 and its expansion going too but I question that on a 2GB max system so maybe it was a PC version with far more RAM.

Mas if you take his latitude laptop, it should be on par or a bit nicer with the laptop my wife has in her room other than the slightly nicer HD 4000 vs 3000 setup and +2GB of RAM to it as well. That thing ran most stuff I threw at it with medium or higher settings, even could run Civilization 5 at mostly medium settings smoothly, but the type of 3D engine the Call of Duty games use in how it does T&L it runs like utter garbage so it is hit and miss.

[noiseredux]

Jeez that is a great offer. Isiolia is really a generous dood.

[Ack]

Ack: Might want to look into bitdefender free. Has no ads, just need to give a webmail to register it, and that's it. Nearly no overhead, runs quietly in the background with a very minimal UI to it.

I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the heads up.

[samsonlonghair]

Isiola is offering up a pretty nice laptop - certainly nicer than mine. I recommend you graciously accept and offer him some kind of trade to compensate.

[mas]

Trying to keep an annoying story short here. Yes. Originally I looked to the laptop as it has 6MB in it but shares with the Intel HD3000. For Photoshop CC 2016 and 2017 it blocks the older Intel HD and pre-HD level chips entirely. She has a subscription to it, so we couldn't just go find an old copy of CS6 to get the job done so that option was void.

What I meant was that at least some Creative Cloud subscriptions (if not all) you can, in the Creative Cloud applet, go to Find Additional Apps, expand Previous Versions, and elect to install older versions. Looking at mine (via work) I can, for example, choose to install any version of Photoshop from CS6 to CC 2017. No discs, all part of the subscription.


Regarding upgrading the Latitude 2100, the chipset that those old Atoms used maxed at 2GB.
Again though, if expectations are kept in check, that's really not that terrible. My Pentium 4 had 512MB of RAM. My Pentium III's chipset couldn't even manage that much (I want to say it maxed at 384MB)...plenty of machines had 1GB or less in XP's heyday.

Tanooki and I have been talking and he's right for my case money is tighter than me winning the big one on a two dollar ticket. So I can't do anything till like mid January. Maybe I'll look at the cl ads for free and ask around from family for a free computer they don't use anymore.

The main reason I was asking if you really didn't have anything is that I'd be willing to send you one of my laptops, if it'd suit what you wanted one for. The one I have in mind is a Dell Latitude E6430, which I've upgraded a bit (16GB of RAM, SSD, etc) - still a solid machine, albeit one that's not suited for playing newer games (though some do run decently well at lower resolutions/detail). Older stuff should largely run quite well though.

More or less, not a machine I'm actually trying to get rid of, but one that still has a good bit of life in it that you'd almost certainly get better use out of than me (99% of the time, I just use it to watch Youtube in bed ). Let me know if it's something you'd like.

Well thank you very much for the offer but this morning I manged to get my mothers old accer laptop working again and from what tanooki says it's perfect for what I need

[Tanooki]

The Acer he ended up with is basically the same as the gifted family one likely to come, except this one has a slightly higher resolution screen (1280x1024 vs 1024x5something odd), and it has an N wifi setup (G in other), the RAM is DDR3/1600 vs DDR/800 too. Has all the parts needed except an optical drive, but you can get a cheap USB one for one of 3 ports on his netbook. It has a SD/MMC slot too so he can load up his everdrive. The intel GMA3150 in the Acer is slightly/somewhat better performing than the 950GMA inside the original one we talked about too. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-Grap ... 264.0.html

The system is ideal for DOS/Win/XP-7 games up until around 2003-4.

Acer Aspire ONE D255E-13639 - 10.1" - Atom N455 - 1 GB RAM - 250 GB HDD
https://www.cnet.com/products/acer-aspi ... hdd/specs/

It needs a 2GB memory chip, has 1 and 1 slot, but crucial sells it for $17 (I think shipped.) http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatibl ... -atom-n455)-ddr3

[isiolia]

Well thank you very much for the offer but this morning I manged to get my mothers old accer laptop working again and from what tanooki says it's perfect for what I need

Okay, it's your call.

The Acer he ended up with is basically the same as the gifted family one likely to come, except this one has a slightly higher resolution screen (1280x1024 vs 1024x5something odd)

Far as I can see with replacement panels and such for it, it still is 1024x600. Maybe it can output higher over VGA. Not sure. I have one sitting in my office, but no power adapter for it.

For the most part, that class of computers is held back by licensing (well, and probably cutting into higher margin segments). MS puts limits on what hardware qualifies for the low cost Windows licenses essential to selling them as low as they do. Hence why they were all pretty much specced the same - 1GB of memory, 250GB HDD, etc - that's all they were permitted to be sold with (and a sub 10.2" LCD was part of that too).

The only experience I have trying to run 3D-accelerated games on that era of Intel graphics is the GMA X3100 in my '07 Macbook. You really have to go back far to find stuff that runs well. Pre-3D acceleration is fine though.

[Tanooki]

Yup I'm familiar. I wish I could remember the model I had, but it was in that era a ASUS computer that ran the Atom chip, had 2GB (max) of memory in it, and one of those variety of GMA inside.

Of what it could handle 3D wise, all those yummy Saturn racing, Sonic/R, and Panzer Dragoon ports were solid gold. Shogo (on GoG these days) ran perfectly too. No issues running Quake 1 or 2 on it. The most taxing pushing it was Guild Wars 1 and it ran in a low/med mix up of settings and in low intensity areas 30fps was about it, the low point in a cluttered town hub 15fps. Any DOS era 3D was rock solid, and any DOS/Win98/XP/7 era 2D games were solid too. 3D otherwise post 2003/4 was a mixed bag depending on the 3D engine. I had that notebook for around a couple years before I stepped up around 5-6 years ago to that i5/hd3000 laptop before my current gaming beast 2 years back now.

Yes it had limits, but for my interests in computer gaming (which was DOS/98SE/XP era) stuff and even emulators for NES, SNES (zsnesdos/win), Fusion, various Gameboy, Final Burn Alpha and a few others it was enjoyable. I do recall even earlier versions of project64 with some tinkering ran pretty smooth in most cases.

He just wants those Saturn ports to Windows 95/98, DOS stuff you find on GoG and earlier Windows 9X stuff too, and that's really about it. The system also has a VGA port in the back, might be able if it can take an input to pop a Dreamcast into it with the VGA cable if it's not just an output which he brought up.

[fastbilly1]

Netbooks, specifically of the early Atom/GMA950 era, were Gameboys for PC games at the time. They could play some new releases (TF2 ran fine on them), but they also could play most games from the previous generation without issue. I have an EEE900a the first atom chip EEE they built. 9 inch screen, 1.6ghz Atom N270, 2gigs of DDR2, GMA 950, and a 4 gig SSD. Mine traveled with me for the better part of the last decade for a backup work computer. Many of the articles on this site were written on it. For years it ran Linux, ubuntu or mint, but now it runs a stripped down version of Windows 7.

That said, I still have it on my couch to play GOG games. When I went through Kings Quest 2-6 earlier this year, all were done on the EEE. I also played most of Fallout 1 on it and dabbled in Dreamcast emulation back in 2009. Believe it or not, it is still a capable portable machine with awesome battery life, hence the Gameboy of PC gaming for that era. However dont expect any netbook to run say Witcher 2 or Oblivion with any competency (or without extensive hacks - ej. Oldblivion). But if you want a PC for couch gaming while watching tv, it is hard to find a better choice. Right now I am running through TowerFall and Broken Sword 3 on mine.

[Tanooki]

Wow nice, very good that you found that much use out of it. Your experience seems similar to what I had said a few times. Mine wasn't that old, a bit newer in the line of those while they existed on the market, but it got the same level of output as far as capability goes. I worried at one point it was going to be a dog, but it instead was very very useful and ran a lot more than I could have imagined. I really was offput by modern PC gaming at that time so anything I cared about was already a couple years to 10+ old and it ran like a champ.