Project Lore

It's been nearly four years since I put my last laptop to pasture.  Although my trusty HP Pavilion dv5000 has treated me very well, it is showing its age thanks to Wrath's slight bump in system requirements.  You may recall that many Apple machines were nixxed as supported systems thanks to their choice of Intel's GMA950 on-board video solution.  It turns out that the once sexy card in my dv5000 (ATi Xpress 200m) is on the cusp of inadequacy.  The hulking laptop can still play WoW at an almost acceptable framerate, so long as I don't mind a level of detail dating back to years gone by.  A laggy and crappy looking 1024x768 presentation just doesn't cut it for this gaming snob. The age and capabilities of the dv5000 isn't the only reason that I have begun shopping around though.  The laptop market has become the new focus of computer companies high and low thanks to consumer desires.  It's a radically different market than it was two years ago thanks to the influx of R&D dollars.  And lately, an entirely new market has sprung forth, the "Netbook" line.  If you aren't a technogeek, fret not, a Netbook isn't some new toy or technology that you will be forced to use or follow (hello Twitter).  It's a sub-category of the laptop market that combines the wireless connotations of the internet with a very small laptop. I know what you're thinking.  How can I expect a netbook, a machine designed with low battery consumption in mind and target capabilities of e-mailing and websurfing, to run World of Warcraft?  It's quite simple really, if you check the latest line of netbooks, nearly all of them sport a mobile version of the GMA950 that is superior to the original release.  So getting barebones support of WoW is certainly not out of the question.  In fact, some models sport GPUs on the level of the Xpress 200m, but fail in other aspects.  As consumers its our job to tell companies what we want, and although I am just one customer, I am one customer that can explicitly tell you what he wants and knows how realistic those requests are. So ASUS, Acer, HP, Samsung, Apple, are you listening? Because here it is:  I want a netbook that can run games from five years ago at a good clip.  I want a netbook with a 92%, or larger, size keyboard with a minimum resolution of 1024x768.  But, it must remain capable of a solid battery life (4+ hours).  Why not just get one of your beefier - weight and power - laptops?  Because that isn't what I want. Let your engineers play with the integrated chipsets from Intel and the mobile versions of discrete cards from Nvidia (hello ION) and ATi.  Lord knows they want to, tinkering is in their nature.  I understand that the battery will be eaten alive while playing those games, that isn't the issue.  Just make use of the mobile chipsets that disables the power hungry components of said devices when they aren't in use.  The flash videos on ProjectLore.com do not require 3D rendering components to be on.  Oh, and I certainly understand if this mild "gaming" netbook is a bit more expensive than the other offerings. My request is not outlandish or unrealistic in any way.  This episode of wishful thinking can be realized if some company puts in the research to create a netbook that is superior to a better-than-average laptop from four years ago.  I would never want to "upgrade" to a laptop that can't actually do something the old guy can.  I'm chomping at the bit for my desires to be realized simply because we are so close to that point.  As it stands now the ASUS EE PC 1000HE is in my sights with its stellar battery life and 2GB max RAM, but that GMA950 pisses on my excitement.  Why couldn't they have rolled with a X3100?!^one*() Sorry for the ++nerd in this post, but the topic has been on my mind a lot lately.  I will be doing some serious traveling over the summer and obviously my laptop - whichever it may be - will be coming with me.  While any machine will allow me to write and browse the web, how could I live without my WoW?  Just look at pixiestixy.

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