Spring break is coming up and that means that I have a week of being home on a crappy dial up connection because I live in the boonies and that is the only option. I play World of Warcraft pretty heavily and dial up works for daytime play but for raiding I am going to need a better connection.

My plan is to take this laptop to a coffee shop or whatever and use the wireless connection on raid nights. I was going to get a laptop in the near future anyways so I am combining my needs with this. I am looking for a laptop that can play WoW with a decent framerate. I looked through the guides and other gamers posts and picked up some good suggestions but I was hoping to get the most current information possible.

I admit that I know very little about specs and even less about brands besides the mainstream ones. I don't plan on doing any digital editing or stuff like that. Just wordprocessing while on the road and some gaming when I am away from my desktop. If I could keep it at or under 1000 dollars that would be best. College students don't tend to have large sums of money laying around.

Any suggestions would be really appreciated here. Details are good because I might not know the abbreviations for companies or parts. Thanks in advance and sorry if this is the wrong forum for such questions.

Quick summary of what I need:
Cheapish - 1000 or under if possible
Gaming with a decent framerate
Wireless capability (I know nothing about this)
I dont think I need a large hard-drive because anything large will be on my desktop.
Graphics card that is good for World of Warcraft.
edit- forgot to mention that screen size really doesnt matter to me nor does weight since I won't be really carrying it around that much.

You're going to have to get a bigger budget to get something half way decent for gaming.

I think HP has something with an x700 thats pretty decently priced. I'm not sure on that though.

I dug deeper and found a WoW forum where this laptop was linked.
http://www.pctorque.com/builder.php?type=89

15 inch display
Pentium M (740) 1.73 GHz 533 MHz
512MB RAM 533DDR2
Intel GMA 900 Graphics (Shared Memory 128MB)
40GB 5400RPM PATA

To me this looks like it would work and is right at the 900 dollar mark. The only question I have is the operating system. It says that it doesn't come with one installed. Does that mean that they ship like the windows CDs with it and I install it myself or what?

Any opinions?

Intel GMA900 wont run WoW too well at all. I dont know why that would be linked. Plus you'd want to upgrade the RAM.

The laptop does not come with an OS you need to order it and they install it for you.

If you can find one of the following:

eMachines M6805/08/10/11 or Gateway 74xx

it'd be perfect for you. You should be able to get a used one for $700/$800, or maybe less depending on model. (They've all got the same graphics card, which is what matters.) I still have my M6811; it's a 15.4" widescreen, wireless, dvd burner, Radeon 9600, *blazing fast* Athlon 64 processor (I am a computational physics student, and my 2-year-old laptop is faster than the machine they gave me to do computations on!), 2:45 battery life, etc. It runs Guild Wars, HL2, etc., on high settings.

The Radeon 9600 will run World of Warcraft well, but it won't run newer games (Battlefield 2) at high settings. I'd imagine, though, that it's simply the fastest machine around in its price range; when the things came out they were remarkable for being near-top-of-the-line machines but only costing $13-1400 or so.

Thanks both of you for the replies. I will look into the eMachines. A friend directed me to a deal at dell where you get 400 off a 1400 dollar machine which hits my price exactly. Messing around with his advice got me this.

Inspiron 6000 Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
15.4 inch WXGA LCD Panel
1GB DDR SDRAM 2 Dimms
128MB DDR ATI's MOBILITY™ RADEON X300 PCI Express x16 Graphics
40GB 5400rpm Hard Drive

and this for wireless since I had a few dollars left to spend to get it to 1400.
Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Internal Wireless (802.11 b/g, 54Mbps)

Once again any thoughts on this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115196

It's 1099 rather than 1000 BUT if you live in the right state you won't pay tax, so it would work out in the end.

Would play WOW just fine.

You might look at used laptops.

For example, mine would run it just fine (not selling it) has over a year of warranty left and would probably go for 7-800. Finding used laptops with transferable warranty is not difficult. I've seen several for sale on here that would run WoW just fine.

I am really leary of buying stuff online anymore. I used to play Everquest and when I quit I sold off my char and my platinum using Paypal. The buyer did a credit card chargeback and got his 500 dollars back and kept my million platinum. Paypal told me sorry we cant do shit for you because there is no proof of transfer.

Since then I really haven't wanted to get duped again so while I would love a used laptop, getting it from an anonymous individual probably won't work for me.

However if you know of a site with a great reputation that sells used laptops let me know for sure.

That acer of Newegg is probably the best for the money. And newegg is one of the most reliable online computer dealers in the world. You wont need to worry about being cheated.

There's a big difference between selling everquest stuff online using paypal, and buying a computer (a real object) from someone.

The Acer is a bit cheaper at www.zipzoomfly.com And they have the slightly faster 4404 version with 1.8 ghz CPU. It would be a very good choice for what you want.

http://www.ibuypower.com/ibp/store/c...r.aspx?mid=126

You can save yourself a buck with this

(be warned, most problems people get is they have to wait much longer to recieve their laptop from this company)

lil off topic, Did you sell your SK and plat to same person when you got scammed? We have a new SK in our guild with your name, just wondering if it's him.