Lap top for age creation...what do you recommend?

[Atheni33]

Question for techies. I'm traveling a lot this summer for work but I want to get a lap top that I can still use blender with. I really don't know what is compatible with what. I know there has been a lot of problems with Vista but I can't find a lap top that doesn't use it. I'm currently building one through Dell which I have an open account with, so I will get one through them. I'm staying away from the 64 bit, I was told that it doesn't run the older software and I still need to run URU. I need a really really good graphic card and a lot of ram. I would like a second opinion on this lap top. It's a lot more money than I initially wanted to spend and of course the sales person stated I won't do much better.

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[D'Lanor]

Personally I would not buy a Dell because you pay extra for the brand name. However, if you have made up your mind to get your laptop through Dell then this is a system that will easily run Blender and Uru.

[Atheni33]

Thanx for your prompt reply D'Lanor. I'm not to happy with Dells quote ($1200)and I wanted to go with them because of the 0% interest for 12 months. But I keep thinking I can build a better machine for that but I don't know anything about hardware and I'm not to thrilled about the graphic card which is the only one they are offering?!? And the monitor resolution seems really low to me. This is my first laptop and there are a lot of variables I have to deal (over heating, weight, battery, limited options) with that I've never dealt with before, but I really need one. And the age I'm building on my current computer is huge, and it's no where being done. When I rendering it in Blender it gets really slow, I know it's my processor, graphic card and ram is just not handling it any more. *sigh* I was thinking about Alienware which has powerful laptops but... are a little pricey.

[ddb174]

The only insurmountable problem you could encounter is that Uru doesn't work at all with some video cards(e.g. integrated Intel Graphics chips), but it's an ATI card on that spec, so it should work fine. It really doesn't take much otherwise to run Uru and use Blender. (I don't know if Blender even uses hardware acceleration.) I did it with an 800Mhz machine with 192MB of RAM, but that takes some patience.

As for Vista64, I believe people have been able to run Uru/Blender with no problem on it. (Besides the well-known change folder permissions problem, which you need to set.)

[Jojon]

Being the economic sceptic I am, I tend to rather go without a product, for whatever time it takes and save up to buy it properly, in one payment, than jump on any so called "0% interest" schemes... If it's electronics, you usually get a generation shift twice every week, in the meantime, too. ;)

[Atheni33]

I have my laptop now and I went to the Blender site to download the software and it wasn't available for 64 bit? Can I use the new 32 bit release instead? If so should I install it the same way as URU/CC. Lastly what version of python should I use or does it even matter with 64 bit I think I'm currently using 2.5.2 on my old computer, but I forgot where to installed it. There was soooo much to install initialy for making ages and now I have to do it all over again on a different computer and I've forgotten most of it. Sorry for all the questions. I haven't been keeping up with all the new releases, it's been a while since I've worked on anything in blender.

[D'Lanor]

Well, I just noticed Blender 2.49 is out now. I don't think anyone has tested it so feel free to be our guinea pig. Blender 64 bit is also available but only as a zipfile download here. It says it is still in development stage but PyPRP uses none of the missing features mentioned there.

Python 2.5.4 is the latest Python version that 2.48a supported.

Edit - From the 2.49 release notes: "Python 2.6 compatibility (now supports python 2.3 - 2.6)". Note that using Python 2.6 will have no advantages for PyPRP so I would stick with 2.5.4.

Edit 2 - I installed Blender 2.49 (the 32 bit version) and my ages exported fine. So it should be safe. I am still using Python 2.5.4.

[Atheni33]

D-Lanor - I installed URU/CC, Blender 2.4.9 32bit and it seems to be working fine with python 2.5.4..no major problems so far with Vista 64bit..*whew* . Once I decipher the instruction I'll install Blender 64bit. Curious to see how it will measure up.