A Good Quality Laptop for playing Visual Novel games mostly?

[Celestine]

Hey does anybody know any good quality laptop that cost around 250$ to about 300$ that can play the visual novel games with direct x9?

I wanna buy a laptop that's for windows. Because I think my poor computer can't handle the pressure of all the data on my computer. Plus I'm tired of reformatting it again and again.
Also possibly one where if you plug it in the laptop itself doesn't get overheated.
Plus one with a mic jac too.

I'm not so good with this sort of thing.

[LVUER]

$250-300 is enough to get a decent 14" notebook. Look for Acer brand. They are one of the better cheap brand. You could also try Asus, but they are a bit more expensive.

If you already have a copy of Windows 7, buy a notebook without OS in it, you could save about $70. Choosing AMD over Intel also could save a bit more cash (and invest more on Video card instead).

[lordcloudx]

Any modern entry-level laptop should be able to play the latest visual novel games since even netbooks have no trouble handling them. I'd recommend an Emachines laptop, which is both cheap and functional.

[dstarsboy]

Wow, visual novel games aren't that graphically intense... any crappy laptop should work. Heck, even a net book will likely play them fine.

[LVUER]

Oh yeah, forget to say that. I could play all modern VN on my crappy 11-years old notebook (no dedicated video card and only 512MB DDR1 RAM). So a brand new notebook/netbook, no matter how crappy it is, should be able to play almost all kind of VN.

Or are you referring those 3D simulation game as VN too?

[Celestine]

Actually more so like those puzzle games that have some graphics. And some Hidden Object/Simulation ones.

[OtomeWeekend]

any laptop would do the deal actually. As long as it has a big memory or if not, has a big memory RAM(<---this is the thing I've bought to enhance the speed of the loading of games.)

[InuoeK]

Most modern laptops/netbooks come with an external mic jack.
They (netbooks) should also be sufficient in running visual novels, since vn's doesn't require demanding hardware.

[TsukiShima]

Does it really matter?

I play VNs everywhere.

[LVUER]

Anyway you don't have to worry much about your notebook/netbook spec if you only want to play VN (with some minor gameplay). Almost any current notebook/netbook should be able to play those VN without any problem.

My notebook is 11 years old but still able to play Raidy 2 just fine (Raidy is a VN with 3D dungeon and RPG elements).

[Celestine]

Thanks for your advice LVUER I looked up the specs you mentioned.

[LVUER]

Errr, you mean my old laptop spec? Don't buy that, it's very old and very crappy by today standard (losing to even cheapest netbook you could find on the market)... it was one of the top spec laptop 11 years ago though -_-;

BTW, forgot to tell you that I just bought a new netbook several months ago. It costs me about $290 (Acer Aspire One). It's 11.2" display, Dual Core AMD C-50 1GHz, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 320GB HDD, 256MB ATI Radeon HD6250.

I buy it over the cheaper ($240) version which use Pentium core processor because of the bigger display and stronger graphics processing power (the pentium version only have 10" display and no dedicated VGA card).

This spec, is strong enough to play heavy 3D sim-game (Custom Maid 3D) that my old laptop can't play (it lacks some kind of shading or texturing i-don't-know-what-is-it, so I can't run it). I bet it's also strong enough to run Blender and Photoshop 7, which is exactly the reason why I buy it.

[DragoonHP]

I bet it's also strong enough to run Blender and Photoshop 7

And you will win that bet without a doubt...
My old PC was 256 MB RAM and 1.7 GHZ Pentium 4... but still both of them worked like a charm...

[IceD]

If you're looking for a good, yet powerful all-purpose netbook to handle such tasks, including visual novels and less demanding work I can recommend you the Asus Eee PC 1215N.

The main features are as follows:
- 12" WXGA (1366x768) 16:9 LED-backlit screen, which has some really good parameters, including angles of view and picture quality
- Powered with a dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, with a 1.8Ghz speed; despite two cores, it supports multithreading with 4 threads (each core handles two threads).
- Optimus-driven NVIDIA ION2 GPU and Intel GMA 3150 chipsets (Opimus technology decides which card will work depending on different needs for GPU power - 3d games, demanding applications - ION2, internet, documents, windows, basic apps - Intel GMA).
- from 2 up to 4GB's of DDR3 memory.
- A 250GB/320GB/500GB HDD working with 5400rpm + 250GB/500GB online Asus webstorage.
- USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and Bluetooth 3.0 as well as WLAN 802.11b/g/n.

Since I sell netbooks and laptops and I'm a tester as well, you can rest reassured - It's really one of the best available netbooks on the market right now, sporting enough power to rival with good low-tier laptops. The design is neat. ION2 is a really decent budget GPU with enough power to run even most of the newer (not the newest ones, they won't even execute on this one, and even if they will, you get 1-12FPS at most) titles on lowest details and lower resolutions quite well (20-38FPS), with much older games playing well in mid-max details on native resolutions. It's able to playback 1080p HD H.264 movies (720p with ease), as long as you know how to use DXVA (K-lite Codec Pack is the best one for this); You can watch your favourite animu and movies without any problems at all

All of Visual novels and japanese SLG games, such as 3D Custom Maid work great without any problems at all (I've tested a few titles - from older and less demanding ones as Clannad or Planetarian to those really demanding ones, such as Quartett or Girlish Grimoire Little Witch Romanesque, which run on full GPU acceleration when possible. The same goes with Ren'Py - I haven't got any problems running Ren'Py made visual novels on this netbook (even Cradle Song preview worked quite well, despite it's bloated graphics). Multitasking on this netbook isn't an issue (just be sure not to open way too many apps or overload the CPU with some very resource-demanding apps as it may choke the system). You can surf the net, download files through P2P, listen to your favourite music and work on documents or program in Ren'Py simulationously without any problems.

It's only disadvantages are the materials it was made from (not that they are prone to brake fast, not at all; it just isn't aluminium casing, like in their other cheaper models), it's keyboard design and execution (some say it isn't made very well and is prone to deform while in use) and overall 3D performance, which could be much better if not for the CPU, which is a bootleneck for the GPU in this case... but we don't buy those to play killer 3d games on them

The prices range from 300$ up to 499$ for the newest models in series. Be sure to check out if it really has those 3.0 USB ports instead of 2.0, because older series were ported only with 2.0 standard.

I'm planning to buy this one soon (or it's successor, we'll see about that) - it's more than enough for me to work, have some fun and manage my hobby-driven needs with ease. You should buy this one as well - you won't be dissapointed, believe me.

[AxemRed]

dual-core Intel Atom D525 processor, with a 1.8Ghz speed; despite two cores, it supports multithreading with 4 threads (each core handles two threads).

Each core "handles" two threads, but executes only one at a time.

Also, despite having two cores and a 1.8GHz clock rate, the Atom D525 is one of the slowest processors on the market...