An oppertunity has come up through my employer to be able to purchase a computer without paying up front for it. It is a Government Initiative to make it easier for everyone to have access to a computer by making the purchase tax free with other "incentives"....a bit simplistic I know but suffice to say that the company buys it and you kind of "lease" from the company who take a certain agreed amount of your wages every month for 3 years.Anyway enough "waffle" my question to you is which of the following specs would be best for using FS9 on :-Option 1

Hi Ian,I hesitated to reply to this because I know practically nothing about laptop components. However, seeing that noone has replied to you, I thought I'd take a stab at it. Note that the following view has not been tested AT ALL and are basically guesses (not even sure if they're educated guesses!) based on what little I know. Anyway, here goes:I took a lot at this review:http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=pm780The review is of a Pentium M 780 but there are benchmarks there of a Pentium M 760. There's also no benchmarks of the Mobile AMD Athlon 64 3400+ so I can only estimate. I'm going to assume that a mobile 3400+ is the same as a desktop 3400+ and I see that in most benchmarks, the desktop 3700+ *JUST* beats the Pentium M 760. Thus, I would venture to guess that a mobile 3400+ would give basically the same benchmarks as the Pentium M 760. In other words, it's a tie in terms of CPU.The other big difference would be GPU. I don't know the mobile Radeon chipset at all but based on the specs on the ATI Web site, it seems neck-and-neck with the GeForce Go 6600. In other words, a tie there too.So, at the end of the day, I'm guessing (emphasis on GUESS) performance would be about the same. I'd therefore suggest you make your choice based on the other laptop specs i.e. screen size and battery life, which seem quite different. An extra hour of battery life from the Intel machine and the extra 1.6" screen size on the AMD machine can make a world of difference in terms of mobile experience. If you will mainly be connecting the machine to an external monitor, then I'd go for the extra hour of battery life on the Intel. If you will be using the laptop screen, I'd go for the 17" screen on the AMD.Hope this helps.Edwin

Edwin,Thanks for taking the time to look into this and do some searching.Like yourself I have no idea about laptop's :-hmmm but I kind of thought they might be of similar "scoring".I don't know if having hyper-threading on the AMD machine is benificial or not (as far as FS is concerned) but I have heard that the Intel is best suited for your "regular" games but the Athlon is better suited for FS which appears to be more CPU intensive. Have you heard this? I am leaning towards the big screen AMD machine as it will be mainly used in the house therefore the weight is not really a concern...incidentally did you notice the dimensions of the 2 options...the larger screen laptop is actually smaller than the the 15.4" screen in all 3 dimensions :-hah Just have to go and convince "she who must be obeyed" that this is actually an investment with no capital outlay...despite the fact we have 2 pc's in the house already! Will let you know how I get on!:-zhelp

Hi Ian,I think you're confusing two very different technologies, both of which have Hyper in their names. AMD has HyperTransport technology, which involves the bus (the "pipe" connected to the CPU) and Intel has HyperThreading, which simulates two CPUs.On the desktop side, AMD is better than Intel at basically all games, FS9, Far Cry, Half Life 2 etc. included. On the laptop side, Intel's Dothan (the Pentium M) is very highly regarded, unlike its desktop Pentium 4 counterparts, which have been largely ignored by hardware enthusiasts). As mentioned in my original post, I think both CPUs would be neck-and-neck. In a way, I may lean a bit towards the Intel simply because Intel seems to have a more proven track record in laptop chips - AMD just hasn't gotten its mobile Athlons 'out there' much (and I wish it did!)But like I said, I'd expect performance to be about the same so if I were you, I would base the purchase decision on the battery life vs. screen size tradeoff.Enjoy your new notebook and please keep us posted on how it goes (whichever system you end up choosing)!Edwin

Ta much Edwin, will do. I didn't realise there was a difference in "Hyper" technologies...will go searching for info!