Laptop advice needed pls :)

[Valdemar]

Hi there,

my oldest turns 12 in a month, and the mates are beginning to get laptops for presents, so he has expressed a desire for one as well.

atm he is getting by on a variety of my old ones, but he would like his own.

his needs currently is school work, which is basically office in varieties, net based gaming and a few ore demanding titles that so far hasn't worked properly on our old laptops, namely FM 11, which had 3D for the showing of the matches, and which never worked on the Intel card in my laptop.

I'm being offered the two machines below. budget wise I'm considering the last, seeing I don't normally spend 3500 DKK on presents to a 12 year old However, I'm aware that I need the machine to be slightly futureproof, and I suspect that the budget one is too weak in that respect.

That his father will be envious if he gets a better machine than me is a completely irrelevant issue 

The machines:

Acer Aspire 4830G
14", Intel core i5, Nvidia GeForce GT 540M, 4GB, 750GB, DVD, webcam, Win7 Home Premium, 3G modul indbygget
9 mdr. garanti + 1 år reklamation
3.500,- (normal pris ca. 6.500+)

Acer Aspire 5741Z
15", Intel Pentium P6200, Intel HD Graphics, 2GB, 250GB, DVD, webcam, Bluetooth, Win7 Home Premium, 3G modul indbygget
Ingen garanti men helt ny
2.000,- (normal pris uvidst men sikkert i retningen af 3.799)

Comments very much appreciated.

V

[Valdemar]

Additional question.

For some reason he is very much in love with my old AoK (Age of Empires II expansion, age of kings) which is an older game.

Is there any way to run that under Win7 that both machines will come with?

V

[Arvoreen]

If these are your 2 choices, and you want to 'future proof' at all, then the only viable choice is #1.

[Berkut]

How do the various Intel and AMD laptop processors map to one another?

For example, what is the equivalent to the Intel i3/i5/i7 on the AMD side?

[Valdemar]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for all the advice.

If I buy the most powerful one, will it run Civ V?

V

[Syt]

Shouldn't be much of a problem with option 1. Option 2 . . . does it only come with an Intel HD gfx card? If so, I'd stay away if any halfway modern 3D gaming is to be done on it.

[Valdemar]

Thanks Syt  i bought the most powerful, that is no 1

V

[Lucidor]

I like the Acer Timeline series. Very sleek looking and actually has all-day-computing from one charge of the battery. (Screen lowered a little, no BT, no 3D, but still around 6-7 hours for me now after 2 years.)

Congratulations!