Oh - I thought he bought a 17-incher, weighty laptop so that his grandkids wouldn't be tempted to steal it from under him in case they want to play some of these neat PC games on that 3D screen. I didn't know it was a 15 incher, 6 pound laptop. I thought since Inland is a guy instead of a lady, he'd have the extra muscle in his arms to be able to effortlessly carry around a heavy 17-incher laptop whereas a woman would likely get tired out carrying a heavy 17 incher around, right?

I'm a 63 year-old retired lady and I regularly pick up and stack fifty to one hundred 80 lb hay bales working down at the horse farm. A little old 17" laptop would be a breeze!

Wow, that's cool, Drac! But, do you have someone helping you pick up those bales or do you do it yourself?

I do it myself unless someone else can help. But we handle the bales alone.

Oh? But haven't you been doing that all your life, Drac?

As for me, I just received 2 more desktop PC's to get my hands-on experience with today; this PC

Practice PC # 4

I was able to carry it atop my shoulder while squeezing through this area

Squeeze area of our garage

of our garage, and I don't recall, but I believe I carried this PC through this area

garage to cellar where old secretary stands

and through this area

cellar to stairs by old secretary

but once I reached the bottom of the cellar stars, I had to "walk" the PC up the stairs by placing the computer on the next step up, stepping onto the lower step immediately below the step with the computer atop it, next lifting the computer onto the next step, going onto the next step up, again lifting the computer onto the following step, going onto the next step, etc, until I had the computer in our hallway that leads to our living room. I then repeated this with this computer

Practice PC # 5

getting it up the cellar steps in the same way, and I don't recall if I carried each computer 1 at a time, or if I walked each computer over to the area of our living room near the stairs of our dormers, but I do remember that I was out of breath by the time I finished bringing the computers upstairs. So I rested, got in the internet (here at GB), posted, followed some of the links in this thread, searched Amazon/ebay for XP laptops, then by that time I was rested enough to walk both of these computers upstairs to my office, 1 computer at a time.

I hope you guys don't think I'm a 97-pound weakling, or that I'm frail, do you?

I asked Mom this question, and she told me "you're not frail. You're strong."

I was just teasing you, cruise!

Who said I bought it just for me:) The grandkids got the old HP 17" laptop (something about needing extra mobility - at the ripe old age of 7). I still use my AR190G for gaming on the go.

You're going to have issues finding your exact requirements - all laptops/PC's have problems, none are perfect. But for pennies on the dollar, I'd probably take the chance.

I think you are getting side tracked again cruise02, but I agree with Draclvr, a 17" laptop is a piece of cake. Other than that, since we are completely off topic, I regularly unloaded 30 bags of hay cubes a month, 50 pounds each. Hay too if I needed to use that. I used to be a 98 lb strong lady, oh about 40 years ago.

Me too, just teasing!! Hope you find something soon though.

@Inland: first, I accept the fact that you said I am going to have issues finding my exact specs.

second, what do you mean "for pennies on the dollar," you'd take the chance - take the chance of what?

third, I saw a laptop on Craig's list with a 2.8 GHz CPU, Win XP, ATI - should I consider buying it?
P4 @ 2.8 GHz laptop on Craig's list

EDIT - I just emailed the seller of this laptop, telling him I'm considering buying it.

I have another seller who I contacted, (this is not the seller I mentioned earlier in this thread) who's waiting for me to get back to him regarding whether I want to buy his laptop a Lenovo T-400 IBM think PAD, and it has an Intel graphics accelerator - is this a GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator)?

Intel GMA is Intel's current line of graphic processors.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_GMA

You don't want Intel graphics if you want to play games on it.

P4 @ 2.8 GHz laptop on Craig's list

The 345M doesn't seem to be all that great a card for games according to ***this***.

You might also want to check ***this***. I don't know what games you're planning to run on it, but it seems the drivers for this model have some problems.

Jenny, I wonder if this one would be a good buy -

Asus 16" gaming laptop on Craig's list

I haven't contacted the seller yet with a "buy" proposal - should I?

I know it has Windows 7 on it, not sure if it has XP drivers or if it has Optimus technology - if it has Optimus technology, I don't want it. If it does not have optimus technology and it does have XP (32-bit) drivers for it, then I want it.

Here's another laptop where I've been corresponding with the seller about these past few days - should I buy it?
Levono ThinkPad

In his latest email to me the seller told me it has Nvidia graphics accelerator card, and he says on his Craig's list listing that it comes with XP, a 300 GB HDD. I don't know if $600 is justified for buying this laptop, should I decide to buy it - what do you guys say?



Ok - I'm planning running games like Nikopol, Perry Rhodan Immortals of Terra, Star Wars KOTOR 1 & 2, Jazz & Faust etc. on it.

I'd have him check that one out - I've only seen Intel and AMD options for the T400.

Here's their data sheet -

LENOVO THINKPAD T400 AND T500 NOTEBOOK

As to the price - it depends. Here's a similar T400 for a bit less. It's currently running Windows 7 but it will support XP.

Lenovo Thinkpad T400 - Make Best Offer

Here's another with XP -

ThinkPad T400, 2gb mem, 250gb hard drive ,t9400 duo2

They're well known for quality in the business world, I've never attempted to do any gaming on one.



That T400 you're looking at would have run you several thousand dollars, so purchasing one used for much less is sometimes worth a chance, even if the specs don't match those you've defined.

I think this is going to be all about patience and compromise.

Why not - aren't they good enough for gaming?

Inland, I told you that I do not like to bid on stuff - I'd rather go with the "buy-it-now" auctions. That way, I can't risk losing it to a higher bidder - did I not say this a few posts (on page 2 of this thread) ago (or didn't you read my post carefully - you may have missed it)?

I didn't miss it, which is why I stated: "I think this is going to be all about patience and compromise." Sometimes you have to do things that you may not want to do in order to get from A to Z.

Lenovo is a business machine, not a gaming rig. However there's no reason it shouldn't run the games you're interested in.

Now let's address the patience part - Games like 80 days and Jazz and Faust are well known for having issues. I'm not that familiar with the others you've named. I don't want to see you purchase an XP rig with the expectation that they'll run perfectly and then have buyer’s remorse when they don't (which is typically followed by a string of why did you recommend this threads). Games can be quite challenging at times, there is no perfect setup, no perfect rig. There will always be issues. Generally most can be overcome, but it requires patience, which is a lot cheaper than new hardware.

I've been trying to keep up with all these posts, cruise, and I think Inland and Jenny have been more than patient with all your questions regarding all these different models of computers and switching back and forth by you trying to get information from them that you could just as well have found out yourself.
Your somewhat sarcastic remark to Inland (above) was being ungracious at best. "...did I not say this a few posts ago..." after all their help.

Or maybe it's just that I am very appreciate of any and all help I receive here on Glitches.

Assuming the video card is good enough and you have compatible drivers and there are no problems with the aspect ratio of the game. The T400 is a widescreen model and some older full screen games have issues with that.


Which card? In a business-oriented laptop like the Thinkpad it might be a Quadro rather than a Geforce.

Gee, I didn't think of that. I certainly don't want a quadro.

EDIT - found these laptops on ebay -

Dell Latitude D630 laptop w XP - has quadro - don't want

Dell latitude D620 w XP - has intel extreme graphics card - don't want

Dell Prescision M65 w XP

Dell latitude D820 w XP

Jenny/Inland - could you please check these out?

I lowered my wanted specs to instead of Pentium 3 GHz/2.5x GHz, to Core 2 Duo 2 GHz, hard drive size to HDD Capacity - 150 GB or more, RAM - 1 GB, Video card - would a ATI Radeon HD 4730 play games such as 80 Days and Jazz & Faust as well as other XP-only-friendly games?

Is your Google broken, cruise?

None of those models support IGP's with discrete memory. The Quadro line of graphics processors are more business oriented, so avoid them for gaming.

No, but I guess I just don't know how to use it to search for a laptop that I want - help would be welcome, Drac.

I took your hint, Drac, and tried typing these keywords in my google home page search bar:

laptop+xp+nvidiaGeforce8800+15+inch+sale

without quotation marks but I got a lot of listings that looked like they were remotely related to what I was searching for, or listings for laptop sales that I wanted that were based in India, Pakistan, craig's list in Houston, Texas, etc - why is that?

Also, Inland/Jenny, is the Geforce 8800 one of these defective video cards?

EDIT - then when I tried using quotes around these keywords in my google homepage search bar, I got this page:

google ads for XP laprtops -cheap!

but I would hesitate to deal with the people who run these kinds of ads b/c I believe there might be a catch to these offers of a cheap XP laptop, and I'd end up paying through my mose.

How about Googling each one of the computers you listed instead of asking someone else to do it for you?

You are wise to be careful.

cruise02 if you managed to locate them on eBay you can do it anywhere. Just click on the link you posted here, then highlight the information on the eBay sale, copy it then paste it into your Google search bar. You should get a number of hits to go through for others the same. I don't think anyone here has the time to do all this searching for you. If you find something that might be worthwhile looking at, then bookmark the page, maybe make a Bookmarks folder called "XP laptop". Don't be in such an all-fired rush to obtain something, you must learn patience. You already have some good advice as to what to look for, follow it.

Not as far as I can tell. The 8400/8600/8700 were the ones I read were affected.

Go to the Wikipedia page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_Series
and scroll down to the technical summary table below the Geforce 8M heading. The 8400/8600/8700 were based on G86M or G84M while the 8800 was based on G92M. They mention the problem with G84M and G86M cards in the wikipedia article, but don't say anything about the G92M used in the Geforce 8800.
Nor have I read anything anywhere else about the problem extending to the 8800.

However I think you'll have a hard time finding an 8800 in a 15" laptop. Mostly they came in 17" laptops. The Wiki article mentions some models that came with an 8800, and the only 15" model was the Alienware m15x. There is currently one on ***eBay***, but it's already outside your price range and you said you don't want to bid anyway.

Exactly - most of the smaller types don't support higher end graphics processors.

Ok, Inland - I'll consider this one, but when you say it'll support XP, do you mean I'll be able to find all the XP drivers for it if I wipe the hard drive and install XP on the entire HDD? Does it have that optimus technology? Will I be able to use it for gaming?