Good Wimpy-Laptop Games?

I have one of those hockey-puck X360 controller thingies. In W7-64 you basically have to reinstall the driver every time you use it (takes only a minute though). It should work on the Mac since I will be booting into XPP, but the driver might be weird...of course a third-party (Logitech?) controller should work too...or a mini-mouse...hmmm....
 
I haveb a logitech controller than has an XInput switch on the back, and has official Microsoft backing. Very nice.

The F310. There's a wireless model and vibrating models(heheh) for both wired and wireless.
 
I.S.T. said:
I haveb a logitech controller than has an XInput switch on the back, and has official Microsoft backing. Very nice.

The F310. There's a wireless model and vibrating models(heheh) for both wired and wireless.
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My local Microcenter has the wired vibrator :))) model in stock...I think I'll pick one up since there are a ton of games that can be played with a controller (albeit not so nice as a kb/mouse for many)...
 
For many games I wouldn't dream of touching them without a controller. Not because of crappy implementation of keyboard/mouse controls, but because the gameplay just doesn't suit that control option. Off the top of my head, Psychonauts is one.

Edit: I can think of some with crappy controller controls or keyboard controls too. On the controller side, Serious Sam: Double D. On the keyboard side, Flatout: Ultimate Carnage.
 
I've only played a little Psychonauts so far, but it seems to play as well with M+KB as any adventure game.

Btw, has anyone mentioned Minecraft yet? Maybe not Mize's cup of tea, I dunno, but it ought to be fairly light-weight in its system requirements, even though I read it's written in java... :oops:
 
Grall said:
I've only played a little Psychonauts so far, but it seems to play as well with M+KB as any adventure game.

Btw, has anyone mentioned Minecraft yet? Maybe not Mize's cup of tea, I dunno, but it ought to be fairly light-weight in its system requirements, even though I read it's written in java... :oops:
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My 13 year old son in a (mine)crack addict. It makes me afraid.
 
It sounds very intriguing to me; building stuff has a big personal appeal, although I'd wish for a more high-resolution world. Everything made out of blocks ~1meter to a side is really crude...
 
Is that the version with 256MB or 512MB in the 9600GT?

If it's the later, the laptop can run pretty much anything with lowered settings.
It seems like everyone is just suggesting netbook/sub-notebook games (not that some of those indie games aren't good), but a 2.6GHz C2D + G96 is still far away from those in performance.

That said, anything with the Source engine (half lifes, dead space, portal, etc) should run really well. Bioware games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age are spectacular "time wasters" that should make that flight really short and usually work well on lower end machines (on medium/low settings).


And if performance is still not good enough, there's the trick of using powerstrip to create lower resolutions in games like 1024*600 that should raise the FPS quite a bit from the standard 1280*800.


BTW: When using windows, the macbooks won't let you use the IGP, windows only detects the 9600GT. I don't know if you have the chance to plug the laptop somewhere but battery performance will hurt a lot if you're using the discrete card only.


Finally, you should really get rid of Windows XP. Driver and game support for that OS has halted for quite a while now and it may bring lots of problems (not to mention lack of DX10 support). Win7 also has better battery management.
 
Is the only way to use wireless 360 pads on a PC still by using that ugly-ass huge corded puck-like thingy MS sold a couple years back? I've not seen it available in stores for ages. I wish they'd just make a tiny USB dongle like cordless mice have these days.
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Yes, you can't buy them individually. The official wireless receivers always come packaged with a controller.
 
It's the 256 MB version unfortunately. The only reason to plan to game with it is that I have AC power in my seat. Interestingly it seems you cannot buy a 13" laptop with anything better than a 6630 GPU...I would seriously consider a new laptop if I could find something in 13" better than a Sony SA series. 15.6" is just a bit big at times (like trying to think about using a mouse to game in economy on an airplane).

Anyway, I'll get rid of XP eventually, but the bootcamp/parallels partition was only there for a very few specialized apps...I did successfully update the nvidia display adapters.
 
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Mize said:
Interestingly it seems you cannot buy a 13" laptop with anything better than a 6630 GPU...
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Probably because you can't fit a big enough battery into a laptop of that size to make a more powerful GPU meaningful. Cooling it might be an issue too.

I suppose if manufacturers dropped the optical drive it would be possible, and that seems to be happening, with the popularity of portables like the Macbook Air and similar copycat devices. I wouldn't be the least surprised if the 2012 Macbook Pros lacked optical drives for example.

Then, if one does that, there's the fact that batteries are quite a bit more expensive per volume unit than optical drives... Hmm! :LOL:
 
Just a follow-up now that I'm back from a week in China. Man, Beijing's air is the worst I've ever seen/breathed!

Anyway, I took a small wired mouse and found FPS games only marginally fun owing to the limited area for the mouse which leads to limited accuracy and speed. Played some LFD2 and it was okay.
Then I played Civ IV and probably 5-6 hours of it. Works great for killing those 28 hours to and from Detroit to Beijing (I'm not from Detroit but that's where my long haul originates). Also watched a season of Lost. Hate to admit it but I really like this supernatural soap opera :) Oh and watched Priest which was pretty stupid and predictable but fun...and read a bit of "All the pretty horses"

Glad to be home again.
 
Nice to have you back. :D Personally wouldn't visit Beijing or any other major far-eastern city if they paid me to do it; I only have one set of lungs...

Saw some news coverage from Beijing late last year regarding the air, and the smog was so thick it looked like friggin' fog! It was totally unreal.
 
They call it "icy smoke" when the cold air inversion compresses the smog into a thick ground layer like fog. One day last week they closed five of the six ring roads and stop airplane take-offs owing to visibility in the early morning. Once the sun heats the ground a bit it lifts to more normal levels. I go there because my company there needs me at times and keeps quite a few people employed here in the US owing to the amount of equipment we export to them...still, I wouldn't go if it weren't for that.
 
Has anyone here ever bought a windows (7) laptop and nuked the OEM win install and done a virgin win7p install instead?

I had this crazy idea of getting a 13" Sony SA series laptop. The trouble is that the SSD versions are stupid overpriced and only come with a proprietary SATA cable for Sony's SSDs and the HDD ones are w7home with bloatware. So, in theory, I'd get the HDD version, pull the HDD for a backup drive, drop a Samsung 256 GB SDD in it and bump the RAM to 8GB. I'd need w7p, not home and I'm never all that keen on upgraded OSes.

The end product would be an i5-2430M, AMD 6630 GPU/Intel HD3000, 13.3" 16x9 matte screen, 8 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD for about $1500 (or $1700 with a 512 GB SSD).

I'm pretty sure I actually WON'T do this as my MBP is only 2.5 years old, but I started getting bad blocks on the HDD so one starts to window shop. I'll probably just replace the HDD with an SSD.
 
There shouldn't be any problems replacing the OS; I can't imagine any manufacturer being crazy enough to try to lock you into what you're initially sold.

Pretty sure I'd not buy a Sony though myself, as you mention they're awfully fond of proprietary shit, and they're often (very) overpriced as well. That lappy you mention is even more expensive than Apple's i7 macbook pro model, unless it's a quad-core in the Sony it's not exactly what I'd call value-for-money. Sony's design is often top-notch though (IMO, anyway), and the build quality is good too (again IMO). I would go with a HP or something however if I was gonna buy a PC laptop; something from an experienced, dedicated computer manufacturer rather than a general home electronics maker like Sony.
 
The trouble is that Sony appears to be the only 13" or smaller laptop with discrete graphics worth buying (no thank you 310M, 330M or 520). Also, I have had horrible luck with HP over the last few years. I tend to lean toward Asus, but, again, nothing 13" or smaller with decent discreet graphics. Too bad the MacBook Pro 13" doesn't have a 6630 or better :(

Also, none of the i7 mobile chips are quad-core, are they?

Edit: oh and the Sony has a second "sheet" battery that make it a bit thicker but give gobs of mA hours. Turns out you can order it with an i7/2.8GHz for not a whole lot more.
 
Grall said:
There shouldn't be any problems replacing the OS; I can't imagine any manufacturer being crazy enough to try to lock you into what you're initially sold.

Pretty sure I'd not buy a Sony though myself, as you mention they're awfully fond of proprietary shit, and they're often (very) overpriced as well. That lappy you mention is even more expensive than Apple's i7 macbook pro model, unless it's a quad-core in the Sony it's not exactly what I'd call value-for-money. Sony's design is often top-notch though (IMO, anyway), and the build quality is good too (again IMO). I would go with a HP or something however if I was gonna buy a PC laptop; something from an experienced, dedicated computer manufacturer rather than a general home electronics maker like Sony.
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I found one OS locked back around 2003. Funnily enough it was Sony Vaio laptop :p.

My friend brought it from U.S.A. to Poland but wanted fresh copy of Windows on it. It originally had Windows XP MCE US edition, but it didn't want to accept any Polish or English Windows XP Pro SP2. Simply black screen at boot. Eventually I got around it by installing OS on similar specced lappy and ghosting it onto Sonys drive. Worked perfectly fine!
 
I bagged the new laptop idea and bought the Sammy 256GB SSD instead. Should get me another year or two out of this MBP and by then I'm hoping for some slim 12-13" with a good GPU to be available.
 
To me, Sandy Bridge graphics is just about good enough to be useable in many games if properly adjusted in the graphics settings menu, at least on OSX which alledgedly has a better driver than windows.

Ivy Bridge's integrated GPU is said to be like 40% faster than SB's and IB is just a few months off, and of course if you wait another year or two there'll be even more powerful chips out there, so the need for discrete graphics in portables is fast coming to an end. Anyhow, any external GPU will absolutely murder the battery during actual gameplay (at least in a 13" form factor), so there's not all that big a point in having a discrete chip in there IMO.

Of course if you only plan to game where you have access to a socket for electricity then maybe it's worth re-prioritizing, but part of having a laptop is the additional freedom it brings, so I personally would value battery life over absolute performance...just for the times there isn't a power socket available.
 
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