And that is surprising how? All Intel-based Macs are 64-bit capable, seeing as how Apple only started making them after 64-bit support became commonplace.
*snip*
I was thinking of a long-overdue upgrade to Snow Leopard. Lion can (probably) wait ... at least until I have enough money to double my MacBook's RAM, if it lasts that long, but by then Apple would most probably have released Mac OS X 10.8 or get eaten up by possible financial woes.
Actually, the first round of intel MacBooks were 32 bit only. For example most of the 2007 Core2Duo series, with GMA950s. The chip can do it, but the motherboard is 32 bit only.
Well, State's College of Engineering now requires students to have a laptop. That means it would be pretty much pointless to bring/get a new desktop.
If I have to have a laptop, I want it powerful enough for gaming in my spare time (if I have any.) I want to be able to at least play games like EVE Online.
Right now I'm looking at some Alienware laptops. Considering the budget constraints, I'm going to say the M14x is the best option. But I don't know if its graphics card is good enough.
I've looked at EVE Online's system requirements and I've looked at this page but that doesn't really tell me anything as far as graphics cards go. It'd be nice if you guys could give me some help.
Alienware is overpriced and owned by Dell. That right there makes me avoid them like the plague.
Just recently I bought 2 laptops on behalf of friends. One was a 600$ CDN Acer 15" with an AMD A8 processor and a 6600 series graphics card that crossfired to make a 6740G2. The other was IIRC 900$, was a 17" Acer with an i5 and an AMD 6850 (and a second hard drive bay for later expansion). Both of them needed one modification: a second 4gb stick of RAM, to round them up to 8gb. Both are perfectly capable of running, for example Skyrim on Medium/High on the 15" and High on the 17", with very little to no lag.
Short version: There's no need to spend out the nose for a gaming laptop anymore, unless you want something flashy to increase your e-peen. And any company that implies otherwise is lying through their teeth.
EDIT: just realized this gives you no idea as to what Nvidia cards are like. Essentially, if you want to game seriously, you want a 560m, and a 555m should be fair as well. on the AMD side, those two above perform quite well, but the 6850 in that Acer is slightly hampered by DDR3 RAM. It still runs really well, but would benefit from GDDR5.
Also: Asus makes good laptops at reasonable prices, and aren't as likely to get stolen as Alienwares. Acers are admittedly cheaper, and I haven't had any issues with them, but the build quality is higher on an Asus.
