I might be purchasing a laptop sometime in a few months. Can I get one that runs FS2004 and the NG well? I don't see any laptops on the market that offer new-tech video cards, such as the Radeon 9700 PRO that I have in my home system. Does anyone here run all this on any laptops out there and if so which ones do you like? Is the performance just not nearly as good as on a home system? Should I just not even consider running on a new laptop? thanks for the advice...Peter PC12 James

Peter,The problem with laptops is their LCD diplays. LCD monitors in general have much higher response times than CRTs, where it's basically 0. What this means is that a lot of LCD displays cause "ghosting" when it comes to playing videos or games (or flying sims ;) ) An LCD with response time less than 15 could do, but still wouldn't be as good as CRT and very expensive. So I think that at the moment it's best to stick with CRT when it comes to computer flying.Hope this helps...

Hi Peter PC12 James,I am running fs9 and pmdg737 on a sony vaio FR215S, I bought this one about 5 months ago and it set me back about

Hello,i

I'm running FS9 on a Dell Inspiron 8600 (1.5mhz centrino, 512 ram, 15.4 WUXGA with an Nvidia 5650 gpu). I brought this specifically with the knowledege that I would be running FS9.While the graphics card I have is apparently inferior to the ATI 9600 Mobility, which now comes standard in the US model (would be interested to hear peoples views on that), my frame rates sit somewhere between 11-20fps. This is at 1900x1200 resolution, all settings turned up to maximum and Ultimate Traffic installed. All and all I am pretty happy with that and obviously these vary from moment to moment depending on clouds, rain, traffic, ground detail etc. Clouds seem to eat up the most frames, so if you fly on a clear day you can expect about 15fps at least I think.BUT, these framerates are only possible with the default FS9 aircraft. Sadly, trying to run PMDG 737, even in the 2d cockpit, knocks about another 5fps off at least, and is worse in the virtual cockpit. This is pretty frustrating - 5fps isn't much, but when you are clicking along at 13fps in clouds, this makes a big difference. I'm not sure why the PMDG 737 has such a big performance hit over the default aircraft, but I wish it was something that could be looked into.Sadly, on a notebook LCD, to run at lower resolutions requires "interpolation" which further reduces image quality with a fuzzy appearance. That said, it looks beautiful on the WUXGA widescreen, so much so that there is absoultely no point in using any kind of AA at the highest resolution. I think if you are used to running the 737 on a desktop at 30fps you will definatly notice the drop in frame rate. If however, you go for the top notch mobile graphics card (apparently the ATI m10) and are used to slightly lower graphics performance anyway, you will probably find it perfectly playable in slightly lowered detail settings.Cheers,Dave

Hi,I am running FS9 and PMDG 737 on a Fujitsu Siemens AMILO D 7830 with P4 2.4,512MB,ATI MOBILITY RADEON 9000 with 64MB,without any problems. I have locked the FPS to 30 and usually get around 25-30 even during online flights with MP aircrafts and weather.No problem with the monitor at all I am running the sim at 1024*768 at 32bit without any problmes. The laptop was bought 4 months ago.Chris Makris