My netbook. Let me show you.

[nickfil]

I recently picked up a Acer AO532h netbook kind of on a whim. I asked for advice over here... http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopi ... &sk=t&sd=a and got a few conflicting opinons. Gave me a chance to think about what i wanted out of it. I wanted something to play old PC games on. Mostly from GOG, but also the odd game they don't have up already and some emulation. My other stipulation was that I wanted to be able to run photoshop. I wasn't looking to do extremely difficult things with it like motion blurs and stuff like that, but just easy strait forward coloring for work.

Now it is kind of difficult for me to be able to tell what is going to run on it. I'm not a PC guy. I've had macs since about 1998 so a lot of the hardware and PC side of gaming was over my head. I had no idea if i would rue the day i got the netbook because nothing would run, or if i would love it.

A couple people asked to post how it went for me so here is how the experience was for me. Maybe this will convince you to either pass or get a netbook.

First off- i've also never owned a laptop before. I picked up a 2GB ram stick for it, in an effort to try to eek out just a little more performance with it. The instillation was extremely painless. And... it did eek out just a little more performance, but not much. If i could go back, i don't know if i would upgrade it after all.

There were some games that i knew would run. Old emulators. SNES works beautifully and i'm using a sega saturn usb pad. It works very well, and is perfect because of it's low profile. Packs in with a netbook very easily. Scumm games work great. Of course quake 2, and anything similar works flawlessly. They run on anything.

Of course, onlive works great. Fear 2 runs like a dream on that tiny display. I might actually pick up some more games from them now.

Photoshop runs without an issue. You have to kind of be on top of toggling the pallets with the tab key because the display is so small, but in a pinch the netbook will totally work for me.

Fallout was the first game i bought from GOG.com It runs perfectly. Looking forward to sinking my teeth into the fallout world. Never played a single one of them yet. I'm also looking forward to getting into more games from GOG.

Torchlight works alright in netbook mode. The framerate is a little slow, but not enough to be unplayable. Just not as great as the beast that is my mac tower. Which is what i expected.


Audiosurf runs great. It is just a shame so much of my music is on another platform. Also... this game doesn't make a whole ton of sense to me? I gotta spend some time with it- learn how to make some good combos.


Puzzle Agent is one of those games that i just kinda assumed would run fine. It turns out that the game requires a little more resources than i thought it would. I thought that if torchlight would run, well fuck... a non action game with like 2 frame animations would be fine. However, it launches, but the framerate is so slow that it is unplayable.


Half Life is a game that i haven't played through. I know- embarrassing. I picked up the ps2 version a while back but it sits on a stack of games. I had to switch the video settings to 'software rendering' which is probably the least updated version of it to get a good framerate. But once I did, the game ran like a champ. Silky smooth. I look forward to playing through it.


Half life 2 Incredibly runs, but at a poor framerate. Not unplayable until you get into big open areas. It was a longshot, but i was hoping that the extra gig of ram might help that. Of course it didn't. I guess the fact that it ran at all is a testament to how well valve builds games.


Deus Ex runs beautifully. I tried to play the ps2 version, but got bogged down in the interface. None of it seemed to make sense or was easy to navigate. 4 minutes with the training room and i knew why. This is a game built for PC and you might as well not play it on a console. It doesn't handel the same. Looking forward to playing through this classic.


Grim Fandango ran without a single issue. I hear that on modern computers a duel core chip will cause the game to studder and crash. I haven't had a problem. Furthermore this is one of those games that I didn't think i was ever going to actually get to play. GOG and Steam never picked it up, and it looks like they never well. I can see why everyone loves this game. The voice acting is top notch and for what it is, it has totally held up. It takes the graphical limitations of the time and turns them into a style all it's own. I am absolutely counting my blessings that i actually get to play it.


System Shock 2 is another one of those games that i figured i would just never get an opportunity to play. Like grim it took some tweaking, but it is running perfectly on the netbook now. Looking forward to this classic. Maybe once i get through this game I'll finally be pumped to actually get through bioshock.


I'm very happy with it. I knew i had a backlog of old PC games that were classics, but i never really knew how much i had until i started digging. Looking forward to getting through them.

[J T]

Puzzle Agent is one of those games that i just kinda assumed would run fine. It turns out that the game requires a little more resources than i thought it would. I thought that if torchlight would run, well fuck... a non action game with like 2 frame animations would be fine. However, it launches, but the framerate is so slow that it is unplayable.

it on a console. It doesn't handel the same. Looking forward to playing through this classic.

In case you did not know this, Puzzle Agent actually has shitty animation that looks like incredibly crappy frame rates. It is quite possible that what you are seeing is actually the way the game is supposed to look.

It could still be off, especially if the audio and visuals don't match up, but just an FYI in case it's not your machine.

By the way, despite crappy animation, Puzzle Agent is a rather enjoyable game. The ending is one of the worst in gaming history though. It was such a lousy ending that it almost fully negated my overall enjoyment of the game. I have very mixed feelings about this game becauseI was loving it right until the end.

[nickfil]

In case you did not know this, Puzzle Agent actually has shitty animation that looks like incredibly crappy frame rates. It is quite possible that what you are seeing is actually the way the game is supposed to look. It could still be off, especially if the audio and visuals don't match up, but just an FYI in case it's not your machine. By the way, despite crappy animation, Puzzle Agent is a rather enjoyable game. The ending is one of the worst in gaming history though. It was such a lousy ending that it almost fully negated my overall enjoyment of the game. I have very mixed feelings about this game becauseI was loving it right until the end.

oh no no no. I get that puzzle agent has that style to it. And i actually really like the game. But what makes it unplayable on my netbook is that when i move the mouse across the screen it's frame rate is so laggy that might see it 3 times in the course of moving across. The main menu of 4 options was hard to navigate.

[neilencio]

Great choice. I have the same netbook and it's actually a very decent piece of hardware, and may even suffice as a desktop replacement except for the fact that Intel fucked up on the GMA 3150, it's the single weakest link of the netbook. Very poor acceleration, to the point that most HD videos will stutter like hell (for Flash videos, it's also the fault of Adobe, due to their shitty unoptimized code) and said graphics chipset's power consumption rivals the CPU. If it had better onboard graphics it can play more 3D games.

The total power consumption of the netbook is also awesome, I think I read that it doesn't exceed 25 watts even while charging, so even if you leave it on 24/7 it'd be only as costly as leaving a bulb on. Ideal torrent machine or file server.

[Pulsar_t]

Makes you wonder why AMD hasn't penetrated the netbook market yet. Their current offering is marginally better than Intel's, but with their frankly better chipsets for graphics it would easily be better than Intel. However with netbooks breaching the $500 mark they're becoming more like expensive, gimped laptops.

Intel's Atom is on par with a Pentium 3, from what I could tell.