A lot depends on whether the laptop (or netbook) has vents in the bottom and where they're placed. If the bottom of a netbook looks like ***this*** or ***this***, tilting the back up may make things worse for those vents in the front.

Netbooks may be thin, but they tend not to need additional cooling as much as regular laptops (especially not as much as gaming laptops) because they have low power processors and onboard graphics.

If you are worried about your Eee pc's temperatures, check ***this thread*** to see what temperatures are normal for an Eee pc.

I'll ask my nephew about this when he comes down.
btw, this morning I was debating with Mom about returning this netbook I got from Best Buy, and investing a few dollars more in that Asus Eee PC netbook that's on sale at Newegg for $319.99 but when I checked it's maximum screen resolution, I found it to be less (1024 x 600) than the screen resolution that I brought up my netbook to I got from Best Buy (1024 x 768), also that Asus Eee PC netbook I was looking at on Best Buy's website that's sold out has a lesser screen resolution (1024 x 600), so it looks like I might be able to run photoshop in the netbook that I bought, but not in these others had I got them instead - and being able to run photoshop for 2 -3 hrs at the mall means more to me (in addition to gaming/movies) than longer battery life.

Edit 2 - Our PC/mac-savvy neighbor, David, came by Tues. and I asked him about returning this new netbook for the one with the longer battery life and told him about the screen resolutions - David told me that "keep this new netbook that you got," because although it has a shorter battery life, it's a better computer than the others I saw with the longer battery life.


EDIT - Tested Bryce on my new netbook earlier today. It installed and ran very nicely, no problems!

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Having fun with my new netbook - I put photoshop on it this past Saturday/Sunday and yesterday I was doing movie screenshot captures and photo editing on it all day yesterday for a comic book project on the mac (will transfer these pics to my mac after they're completed) - kept me as quiet as a mouse, I'm happy, I'm in my glory, and Mom's happy.

Cheers!

Note to Jenny100 - I checked that thread that talks about the Asus Eee PC netbook temperatures you linked me to Jenny, but I'm not too worried as of now. However, on the last page of that thread someone mentioned playing Halo on an Asus Eee PC netbook.

- System requirements here -

CPU
"Halo" requires a central processing unit that runs 733 megahertz or higher; for the best performance, a CPU of 1.4 gigahertz or greater is recommended.
RAM
At least 128 MB of random access memory (RAM) is needed to play "Halo," but at least 512 MB may be required for good performance.
Hard Drive
Halo requires 1.2 gigabytes of free space on a hard drive to install all the necessary data to run the game. It is a good idea to have some extra space for patches and screen shots.
Video Card
"Halo" requires a display adapter or video card with 32 MB of memory, but more advanced video cards will result in better frame rates and performance.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer play on "Halo" for the PC requires a modem with at least 56.6 Kbps or a local area network. Faster Internet connections will result in a better online experience.

I thought Halo was one of the newer games that require a 3D card - not that I'm going to play Halo on my netbook, but this is "just for the record" - about what these netbooks are capable of gaming-wise.

Did you want to play Halo?
The ***first Halo game*** was released for PC back in 2003.
According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA
the Intel 945 has some 3D ability, but I wouldn't expect it to work very well with current games, or with every game that requires 3D. Intel 945 chipset is a GMA 950 type graphics (check the chart on the wikipedia page). The Wikipedia also says

No, I was just using it as a measuring stick for some of the XP AG's that I have in my collection. Will I have to do extensive googling into the system requirements of some of my older Win XP AG's (this sounds sort of overwhelming) dating from 2000 - 2003 - 05, or might there be a handy list of AG's that I can google from this time period that have similar system requirements as does Halo?

I understand that Halo is a shooter, and that shooters are more demanding hardware-wise than AG's.

I don't think you can directly compare the requirements of Halo with those of current (or even older) adventure games. Some of those older shooters were made so they could be run in software mode -- so as long as your computer was fast enough, and had enough RAM, the game didn't need much of a video card.

The main consideration with running older adventure games on your netbook is going to be whether they're compatible with Intel graphics drivers... and that's not something you're going to find on the specs. You'll just have to test the games themselves and see what works. You may even be able to find a few adventure games newer than 2003 that will work. Look for those that don't use many special effects and have low requirements for graphics. For example, games like Barrow Hill, Shadow of the Servants, or the Carol Reed games have a better chance of working on your netbook than the latest Sherlock Holmes or Ankh games.

My nephew came down today, I asked him about the netbook getting hot, and he said not to worry about it, and Mom said that they put warnings on all products, even stepladders.

Anyway, I think it's time to celebrate -

To sum it all up - I was actually I was thinking of buying 2 computers - a new netbook that has a bigger hard drive and a better keyboard plus a desktop PC tower. For the past 2 - 3 wks (as of last wk in January) it has been bugging me how I'm going to get these 2 new computers in Feb., but the problem solved itself - I went to a brick and mortar Best Buy and got myself the Asus Eee PC netbook that has the full sized keyboard and a 160 GB hard drive (the other netbook - a Dell Inspiron Mini has a skimpy keyboard with the F keys combined onto the regular keys, a left "alt" key only and a 16 GB hard drive which was filling up too fast.) So I took some of the money that I had in my savings towards a new desktop PC and I used this to buy that Asus Eee PC netbook with Windows XP on it, and come Feb., I'm going to continue saving towards that new desktop PC which I might get in May/June.

I'm planning on using this new netbook to run DOSbox, VPC, VMware Player to play my old DOS games and my Win 95/98 games at the mall, 3D modeling with Bryce and photo editing in Photoshop (until I get mac versions of Photoshop and Bryce).

That's 1 down, 1 more to go, folks!

For Photos see:

It's the Asus Eee, all right

Best Buy is discontinuing these with XP

Full sized keyboard


Glad I nabbed this before it slipped away into the past!

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**Latest update**

My 2 computer-savvy nephews came in today, we had a discussion about this new PC with Mom and one of the nephews got online on his mac, to Tiger Direct and he put together an order of all new PC hardware* -


New PC hardware to order in a few month's time - Yay!


right down to a new motherboard - but we're going to wait a few more months before the other nephew actually orders this hardware (which he's going to put inside the Dell Dimension's tower after cleaning out all the old hardware) since I'm getting a mac version of Photoshop for my mac this weekend.

Now that I'm getting this mac photoshop, I can let myself go, creating all kinds of projects with these screenshots I'm acquiring, as previously I had to restrain myself when using my Windows Photoshop in my new Asus Eee PC netbook to avoid a too-rapid filling up the hard drive.

*this screenshot only reveals part of the hardware we're
going to order.

The price of all this hardware will come to around $500 (and I can put Win XP on that new hard drive!), whereas buying a new PC (with Win 7 ) would come to about $1000.

Are you not ordering from eCollege then?
Your cost on that screenshot doesn't include XP. Or do you have a retail version of XP which is transferrable? If you have a Dell version of XP, it isn't made to work with non-Dell hardware and will probably refuse to install.

There's nothing wrong with building your own, but I'd suggest getting a new computer case.

Is your old Dell not working any more?

I agree with getting a different case - the airflow in those old cases can be very poor with tiny fans etc. A 700 watt power supply for a very basic computer? That's overkill by quite a large margin. Newegg has a good power supply calculator... Newegg PS Calculator With the components listed, it suggests a 274 watt power supply. So getting a 450 watt or something like that would still give you lots of extra power.

The old Dell just won't play new games, but I've never understood why she wouldn't keep that old Dell to play old games on - they tend to play better with the older hardware. Right now she's having numerous problems trying to get old games to run on new hardware - games which would play on the Dell.

As much fun as emulation is, I have to agree - playing on the original hardware can certainly make life easier.



Even more interesting is that the motherboard doesn't support SLI - so there's absolutely no need (so far as I can see) for such a large PSU. It's not going to hurt, but without SLI I just don't see the need.

Not unless she was thinking of upgrading a faster video card later on. I'm a little surprised she didn't choose a faster video card since she plays genres other than adventure games.

I think she wanted that motherboard/processor combination to save money, and didn't choose an SLI motherboard for that reason.

Most of the new cards I've seen have had lower power requirements these days (especially those from the Radeon HD series) - 500 watts should be fairly adequate for most.

I'm surprised at the choice of card as well -

I don't know that much about the video cards, but isn't the 9500 considered a pretty poor choice for gaming in general?

It is a slower card by today's standards.

Even when I plug in a video card such as the GTX 260, the PSU calculator only comes up to 445 watts. If it were me, I'd invest more in the video card and less in power supply wattage that isn't needed anyway.

And I just reread the post and saw cruise said a new PC would cost $1,000... Huh??? I configured an HP with a Core i-3 processor, 4 GB RAM, 640 GB hard drive and a 1 GB GTX 220 video card for $690. WAY less than $1,000 and yes, it has 64-bit Win 7.

At ecollegepc, one configured with XP SP3, a Core i-3 processor, a motherboard upgrade, 4 GB RAM, 1 TB hard drive, the 1 GB GTX 220 video card, a Litescribe optical drive and a 460 watt power supply is $742. Again, WAY less than $1,000.

She buys (or considers) so many, it's hard to keep up