Laptops for developing

How much are you looking to spend? You haven't specified an amount, so for all we know you could throw an infinite stack of money at the problem. :)

Edit: Also, what exactly do you mean by an independent study? Will you be developing a game from scratch based on UE3? Bear in mind that the requirements may vary greatly depending on the type of game and the design choices you make.

The only laptops I saw worth being qualified as "gamer" (with a good video card and 1080p screen) are the one from Sager and the Asus G series.

Moving to hardware.

I develop on the Alienware M11x. It's actually pretty handy as it has two different level graphics cards in it that you can swap between on a button press, which means you can test your games on two gfx cards very easily.

I have code which also runs on PS3 performing quite nicely on it.

Thats cool. I want to spend a max of 1500.
I am going to be designing levels using the Unreal editor kit and learning
how to use UnrealScript.
Also will be using C++ with DirectX thats all.

@Westie007 what types of things you were able to develop on your M11x.

I just checked it, 1366x768 resolution and 335M gfx card... not that good.

Got any particular reason for wanting a laptop? As I'm sure you know, the cost/performance ratio is much lower for a desktop than a laptop. If you need to use it in class, why not pick up a cheap, somewhat small laptop or even a netbook, and do your development on a desktop computer?

A laptop is portable.
I know desktops are good but I am not home most of the time.
I enjoy working on a laptop and I can work with it everywhere.
I am getting alot of mix answers here.

I've been developing a PSN game on it for a while now, it's more than enough to handle anything a hobby game developer can throw at it and obviously I'm using it professionally as well. The laptop can run Left for Dead 2 at max settings over 30 fps and handle Modern Warfare 2 pretty well.

It's a small laptop, only 12 inches, so it's a nice portable dev environment.

Obviously it's not the most powerful gaming laptop, but it's size is a massive advantage for me.

Of course, it depends on what you want.

I bought the M11x because it was small and portable, has good battery life and can play DirectX 10 games pretty well at 720p resolutions.

It's also not too small to make programming fiddly.

@Dunge: It's a 12" inch laptop. You'd be pretty hard pressed to beat it's specs...

[Edited by - Westie007 on August 5, 2010 2:49:27 PM]

The best you can do is to take the battery off every time it's fully charged and you are in a place where you can keep the laptop plugged to the wall.

Batteries life is determined in Cycles. 1 Cycle equal 1 discharge + 1 charge.

Charging you battery when it's half empty won't damage the battery itself but will make you run thru cycles twice faster, thus, it will kill your battery twice faster.

Never, never, keep the laptop plugged in with the battery in fully charged for a long period of time..... This is the mistake most people make, it prematurely kills the battery.

_________

Funeral Insurance| Funeral Cover

Quote:

Original post by svr2112 The best you can do is to take the battery off every time it's fully charged and you are in a place where you can keep the laptop plugged to the wall. Batteries life is determined in Cycles. 1 Cycle equal 1 discharge + 1 charge. Charging you battery when it's half empty won't damage the battery itself but will make you run thru cycles twice faster, thus, it will kill your battery twice faster. Never, never, keep the laptop plugged in with the battery in fully charged for a long period of time..... This is the mistake most people make, it prematurely kills the battery.

This used to be the case a long time ago. Todays laptops include circuitry to always use the mains power if the laptop is plugged in instead of using the battery. I have Asus and Toshiba laptops and they both do this. Even my netbook does this. So taking the battery out is pointless since while plugged in the laptop doesn't use the power from the battery, and the battery will lose a slight charge (due to the nature of lithium batteries) whether it's connected to the laptop or not. So just leave it in and forget about it.