Because gma sucks. I want something that can last 6 years and has a dedicated video card (my cousin has a laptop with an intel GMA and it sucks badly at autocad and google sketchup which is what I'm going to use it for). I'd happily buy a macbook pro if it fits my budget (it's still undefined). My friend's HP started malfunctioning 5 or 6 days after she bought it. Don't recommend me an HP.



Go!

Q1. What's your budget?

I'd say 700 usd because everything imported costs the double here

iirc GMA is great for video but terrible at games, and autocad and google sketch rely more on the CPU. i may be wrong, whatever, but why a laptop? you may want to wait until your course begins, there's student discounts usually and other people in your papers could recommend one for you.

iirc GMA is great for video but terrible at games, and autocad and google sketch rely more on the CPU.

It's ok at 2D  autocad but it's not that good at 3d autocad or sketchup

i may be wrong, whatever, but why a laptop? you may want to wait until your course begins, there's student discounts usually and other people in your papers could recommend one for you.

Judging from previous experiences with my sister carrying a desktop around sucks a lot

Anything with the Nvidia Ion graphics card might suit your desires.  Netbooks have them these days and I would think that laptops do as well.

That ASUS laptop would be pretty good. Apparently the low end 300 series in notebooks are just rebranded 200-series cards, but it should still be a pretty good card.

Anything with the Nvidia Ion graphics card might suit your desires.  Netbooks have them these days and I would think that laptops do as well.

I don't think a netbook could handle AutoCAD very well considering that atom processors and 10" displays aren't really suited for that kind of stuff

yeah autocad and matlab are PURE MATH and arm processors pick up a lot of their speed through optimisation for lazy programmers. there are laptops comming out with core i7's in them but i doubt you can get those for under a grand. you might want to stave off buying one and wait for an engineer to drop out and buy theirs real cheap!

also if you're at a university there should be computers everywhere that can do autocad better than your laptop could. if you're doing it for school it may even be advantageous to rely on their computers, settings, and software.

yeah autocad and matlab are PURE MATH and arm processors pick up a lot of their speed through optimisation for lazy programmers. there are laptops comming out with core i7's in them but i doubt you can get those for under a grand. you might want to stave off buying one and wait for an engineer to drop out and buy theirs real cheap!

also if you're at a university there should be computers everywhere that can do autocad better than your laptop could. if you're doing it for school it may even be advantageous to rely on their computers, settings, and software.

this is very true.  In fact, I hope this is true if your going to a decent university.  you aren't going to be able to do autoCAD stuff on your laptop nearly as well unless your budget is somewhere over 1200 or so dollars, and you are wiling to spend money on something with a workstation graphics card in it .

I think I'll live with a gma until I can afford a proper machine...

I got an lg R480, how do I put osx on it for improved battery life?

google hackintoshes

I got an lg R480, how do I put osx on it for improved battery life?

OSX86

How do I know if it has the drivers I need before I install that?

How do I know if it has the drivers I need before I install that?

http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page browse around here and look for your chipset

It wouldn't work so nevermind but tyvm

Also climbtree you're wrong it does suck at autocad. But sketchup is fine.