Ideal legacy laptop

[wylven]

Greetings. I've been out of the EQ/EQemu scene for a while. I'm interested in getting involved again, but I've long since left the PC world. I work on a Mac, with OSX & Ubuntu in my professional life, and I really don't want to use the same machines to play EQ; I try and keep work things for work.

That said, I'm very interested in purchasing a machine that I can dedicate to EQ/P99. In concert with whatever obsessive thing it is that keeps me from setting up EQ on my work computer, I'd like to get a second-hand legacy laptop that's capable of running XP and EQ adequately—perhaps even with the performance users expected back in 1999-2002.

I know Vaios have always looked decent and felt sturdy. I used to have a decent Dell Inspiron back then, but that was custom. Can someone in the community recommend a legacy laptop that was both physically dependable and capable of running EQ?

I'm aware of the video card pitfall for machines from that era. I'm also aware of the various Centium processors that handled games like EQ poorly. For these problems I'm willing to look at a newer machine, perhaps as late as 2005-2006.

It's a tough, picky question, I know. My thought is that someone might have had the ideal laptop for EQ, from that era. And that eBay will have a decent one to scrounge up.

[Yawn_God]

Come on, admit it. Say you loved those 5 minute load times. SAY IT.

[wylven]

It's true.

[Mcbard]

From this era I'm a fan of the dell Latitudes. I would definitely go for an 05-06 era laptop as the client P99 uses is a little newer than an actual classic client, and so you may want some slightly higher resources. I should also add that my fiancees old Toshiba Satellite runs the client just fine, and it has utterly terrible specs. She bought in 2004 and it only has integrated graphics but runs fine. Get's a little hot at times though!

[wylven]

The old black Latitudes are definitely my inclination, since I can't find many Vaios with the right video hardware from that era.

Anyone have an old Latitude model number that I can work from? There's a strain of silver/blue business Latitudes that are cluttering my eBay searches.

[Apex]

Latitude d630 and the d830 are my favorite

[Thulack]

Dell Latitude D600 i have can run current EQ so can easily handle classic. Can usually find on craigslist for 150-200 dollars.

[fishingme]

HP dv8000 17inch widescreen can find one on craiglist for 200-300$ prolly cheaper on ebay. nice dualcore machine

[Humerox]

The laptops from that era sucked for EQ:

Hello,

Unfortunately, EverQuest was designed to run with a desktop computer. We
do not support running the game with a laptop because the hardware
compatibility problem with these systems. Due the lack of driver support
by the chipset manufactures, we are not able to add support for most
laptop video and sound cards to EverQuest. Because of this we are unable
to provide you with technical support for your laptop. You can check our
website for a complete list of compatible video cards and sound cards
that we support at:

http://everquest.station.sony.com/support/audio_video/index.jsp

Regards,

Michael Turner
Sony Online Entertainment CSR


Barring that...maybe an old Inspiron 8000, or HP 6000/8000. They were about the best back then, iirc. You can pick up an old Inspiron 8000 off e-bay for less than $100 including shipping.

[Tux]

Come on, admit it. Say you loved those 5 minute load times. SAY IT.

A funny thing about EQ is I really haven't noticed load times improve nearly as much as you'd expect with new hardware. On relatively higher end workstation running windows 7 it still takes noticeably longer to zone in EQ then it does to boot up the computer.

[Bockscar]

You'll have a hard time finding a computer as bad as what most people played EQ on in 1999. I seem to remember sporting a 300Mhz Pentium II with 128mb ram and a Voodoo something-or-other card. I tried playing p99 on a netbook last year and it ran better than what I remember from back then. It's even possible to play the game on a damn cellphone nowadays - not too well, mind you, but that should give you an idea of how enormous the gap in computer power is between then and now. You simply won't find a computer anywhere near as primitive as they were 10+ years ago unless you go to a museum.

Pretty much any laptop from 2005 or later should run the game without any problems at all. Finding a used one for sale that hasn't had its hardware worn to shreds might be the challenge, and since you work with Macs and Linux and shit in your profession, I'm guessing you're not flipping burgers and can afford something proper. I'd just buy the cheapest laptop they have in the store. That way you can use it for other things as well, and it won't look like something dug up by archaeologists.