good for gaming

There are two ways to make a laptop good for gaming. The first way is to buy a laptop designed for gaming. The second way is to not buy a laptop at all.

When you read a review, look for the term "gaming laptop" or "gaming PC." When you see that, you can safely ignore that review. Almost every laptop is good enough for gaming, except the ones designed for it.

If you insist on gaming, buy a desktop. Gaming desktops have bigger monitors because monitors are so big now. They also have more RAM, because RAM is relatively cheap. They also have more storage, because hard drives are still cheap.

The bigger the monitor, the more powerful the video card. The ideal video card is a nVidia GeForce 9800GTS. But most laptops have nVidia GeForce 7600GTS. The nVidia 7600GTS is good enough for most games.

The nVidia 7600GTS has 256MB of video RAM, compared to 512MB for nVidia 9800GTS and 1GB for nVidia 8800GTS. 256MB is enough for Quake 3 and most other games.

RAM is cheap, and lots of it. The nVidia 7600GTS has 4GB RAM, compared to 3GB RAM for nVidia 9800GTS and 4 GB for nVidia 8800GTS. You can get 6GB for US$100.

We all know that laptops are good for many things, but are they good for gaming?

To find out, you have to get down to specifics: what kind of games do you want to play, how will the laptop hold up to them, and how much money can you afford to spend?

It's helpful to look at two classes of laptops: portables, which are designed to be carried from place to place, and desktop replacements, which are designed to be left on your desk.

Laptops are portable.

how to tell if a gaming laptop is good

Laptops weigh less than desktops but cost more than desktops. That makes them a compromise between size and weight. You can carry a laptop around, but you'll be carrying extra weight.

Laptops have smaller screens than desktops. But because they take up less space, laptops have room for more powerful components. You can use a desktop replacement as a desktop, but you wouldn't want to use it as a laptop.

Laptops are very fast, but they have fans. That means they generate heat, which has to be vented. Portables have fans that exhaust the heat out the rear, but desktop replacements have fans that exhaust the heat out the front.

You can get laptops with about 10 hours of battery life, but desktops have much longer battery life.

You can carry a laptop, but you can't get a desktop replacement in a laptop bag.

Laptops can be replaced by battery or power cord. Desktop replacements must always have plugged in.

Laptops have small, hard keyboards. They're good for portability, but they're bad for the touch typing skills you need for games.

Desktop replacements are usually better, but laptops are good enough that most people won't notice the difference.

Laptops have small hard drives. You can carry more, but put them in an external drive and you'll have to carry.

In 1980, when Steve Jobs introduced the first Apple Macintosh, his customers had a simple choice: buy a Macintosh or a Tandy.

The Mac was good at some things, the Tandy was good at some things. The Mac was faster, the Mac was bigger, the Mac had a better keyboard. The Tandy could do the Mac's job for less money.

But the price was right. The Mac was a new kind of computer; the Mac's customers were people who liked new computers.

People buy computers for lots of reasons. Some buy them because they have to; others buy them because they want to.

The Macintosh was a new kind of computer, and Steve Jobs knew that. He knew that his customers were people who liked new computers.

So Steve Jobs was smart enough to know that the Mac would not succeed unless it did something the Tandy could not do. The Mac's customers would not buy it unless it was better in some way.

The Mac was a new kind of computer; so was, for example, the iPod. When you buy an MP3 player, you don't just want it to play music. You also want it to look good; you want it to have some extra features; you want it to feel cool. You want it to do something that the MP3 players you already had did not.

And so on.

The Macintosh was a new kind of computer; so was the iPod. We know, for example, that the Mac's customers wanted a real keyboard. But Steve Jobs knew that his customers wanted something more.

That something was beauty.

Beauty is not a necessary feature of computers. Designers make computers look ugly because they need to make them work