It's a Dell Inspiron 15.6" AMD Turion X2 RM-75 Dual Core 2.2GHz Laptop with 4GB RAM, 250GB HD and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 (512MB)Dedicated graphics Card. It has Windows 7 Home Premium on it. They want $329.99.

The one I have now is a Dell Vostro 1500, 1.86GHz, 1.5GB RAM, with a NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card and Windows XP.

I usually only play BigFish games and the odd adventure game but no FPS's or online games.

Is it a good choice just for an upgrade from the one I have?

The 8600M GT is a faster card than the Radeon HD 4330. The 4330 would probably be fine for most casual games, but expect to have to turn down graphics settings in the game menu if you play an adventure.

Thanks Jenny100. I went ahead and ordered it simply because of the faster processor and almost 3 times the RAM, not to mention the hard drive is 3 times larger too. That will allow me to take some of the things filling up this laptop and I can use it for the adventure games and the new one for the casual games and online stuff. I'm hoping the new one will speed up some of the games I play on facebook like frontierville which runs quite slow and choppy on my present system.

I'm just wondering what kind of problems I'll have with Windows 7 after having XP for so many years...

If an online game is slow, it may be due to your Internet connection.

Hmm, don't know much about the internet connection I use other than when I put my cursor over the little screen thing in the bar it says Local Area Connection, speed 100Mbps, status connected...Is that good or is it slow? I know downloading is fast. A typical 100MB game from bigfish takes about 5 or so minutes.

The LAN speed is only the speed your network card can support. It has nothing to do with your Internet speed, which is a small fraction of what your network card could support.

To find out your network speed, go to a bandwidth testing site such as
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
or
http://www.speedtest.net/

But even that won't tell you what the speed between your computer and the facebook site is. If their response is slow, or they don't have enough bandwidth to adequately support the number of users playing their games, there's nothing you can do on your end.

Ok I tried one of those sites. I get 6.05Mbps download and .65Mbps upload. That sound kind of low to me, at least the upload part does but I don't upload anything.

Though with this laptop I notice some time between screens on casual gaming that seems to long too. Is that the RAM and/or processor speed?

Can you believe I have a College Diploma in Information Systems? Of course I graduated in 1993...LOL

When you're playing an online game or interacting with the Internet in any way, you are uploading something. I don't know if that's what's causing the problem or not, but your upload speed is fairly typical of what ISP's provide to home users.


You have way more than enough RAM for any casual or adventure game. Unless you have a virus or something eating up your RAM space, RAM is not a problem.

However since you have a laptop, your processor may have clocked down to save power. Check your power settings and make sure you're playing at maximum performance and with no power savings. Try to play with the AC adapter connected or the laptop may downclock if the battery charge goes below a certain level.


Yes things have changed a lot since then.

I got this http://www.speedtest.net/result/1302746190.png while having Gardens of Time open on Facebook. I am running Roadrunner Turbo now cause I was having problems with buffering on movies. If it is a FB game, post which one and I can try it for you. I know there have been some glitches in some of their games lately. I wasn't sure if the problems are with FB games or BFG.

The main game I have actually stopped playing because of the lag is Frontierville. It's my favorite but it just takes too long to do anything and it's a bit choppy. Sometimes farmville is like that but not always so I figure that has something to do with too many people playing at the same time. I also get it a lot of the time on Petville but I don't play it that much.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with hawkavonpuka!

Ok I will give it a shot and let you know.

Edit here: I started the game and it is playing smoothly. Of course I just started so maybe there is not that much information stored. I will keep at it anyway, am sort of stuck in Gardens of Time since I need "gold". Cute little game though, need to find you on FB and add you as a friend. I will PM you my FB name if you don't mind.

Don't mind at all! I just PM'd you my name so you can add me. 8)

See your PM again. Thanks