Laptop. what do i need ?

[SOAA]

Bought one of these for my lad earlier this year.

It happily runs a fairly recent Farming Sim, and GTA 5 (with mods so he tells me)

We had it for around £300 when we bought it, was a bargain really

 

[wessie]

Yeah, I’ve had a look at refurbed stuff but I think I’m restricted to newer ones as it needs a gaming graphics card apparently.

you might notice that the most recent recommendations for a refurbished HP & Dell do not have graphics cards. They have graphics processors which sit on the main motherboard and share the mobo's memory etc. Separate graphics cards are only really needed for top end systems.

 

[stever1]

@stever1 one option is to run a virtual machine on your Mac, I know you didnt want to mess with your mac, but this just runs as an app on top of your existing Operating system. This doesnt change anything regarding how you boot or your hard disk etc its just a program running on your operating system that then runs windows. I use parallels for this to run some windows based programs on my Macbook pro which is about 9 years old without issues.

Worth a try for the entry cost, and can be convenient being able to spin up a Windows instance and it doesnt stop you running other Mac applications at the same time.

https://www.parallels.com/lp/virtual-machines-for-mac/

Will this parallels thing allow the machine to run 32 bit games.

 

[Pukmeister]

Spurred on by this thread, I just treated myself to a refurbished 2020 HP Probook 450 G8 16Gb for £299 on Backmarket.

With an 11th Gen core i5 and Iris Xe it should easily run my old classic games, browse the web and stream video content, I'm not trying to play performance-heavy games or apps.

I'm finally retiring this faithful old HP Pavilion DV6157ea I've had since 2007 that has served me well once the new kit arrives.

 

[stever1]

I’ve just been on the parallels site. It won’t work as I have an M2 chip, not a silicon version.

 

[Pukmeister]

Not according to what I just read.......

KB Parallels: Parallels Desktop and Mac with Apple M2 chips compatibility

Parallels Desktop 19 supports assigning up to 128GB of RAM and 18 CPUs to a virtual machine on Mac computers with Apple M-series chips.

kb.parallels.com

It says at the bottom, compatible with any silicon Mac for both CPU and GPU.

Parallels Desktop for Mac: Run Windows 11 on Apple silicon

Run Windows on your Mac in a virtual machine. Excel, AutoCAD, QuickBooks, legacy and in-house apps. Microsoft-authorized. Offline, no VDI needed. Try free now.

www.parallels.com

Seeing as your machine has Apple silicon not Intel silicon, it should work ???

 

[Pukmeister]

Why not have a free trial with nothing to lose ??

Free 14-day trial of Parallels Desktop for Mac | Apple M1, M2, M-series compatible

Get our latest version with over 20 powerful new features to boost performance and your productivity. Optimized for Apple M series chips and the latest Mac release.

www.parallels.com

 

[stever1]

I made a decision today, I’ve bought an MSI laptop,

 

[wessie]

I made a decision today, I’ve bought an MSI laptop,

3 pages of procrastination and you go with the cheap one in Argos I mentioned in post #6!

 

[stever1]

3 pages of procrastination and you go with the cheap one in Argos I mentioned in post #6!

I went for the MSI cyborg i5 3050

 

[wessie]

I went for the MSI cyborg i5 3050

there's posh

 

[Pukmeister]

I went for the MSI cyborg i5 3050

It should play your old games at max chat !

 

[stever1]

It should play your old games at max chat !

Yes it seems to, I’ve just had a couple of happy hours killing things

 

[Pukmeister]

I kinda wish I had bought a newer/faster/shinier laptop now, but the added expense isn't worth it for the type of strategy games I play which don't need as much clout. Enjoy the new toy.

 

[er-minio]

It says at the bottom, compatible with any silicon Mac for both CPU and GPU.

It uses the ARM build of Windows.
You can also use VirtuaBox (I do, once or twice a year, as mentioned above) for free, excluding the Windows license.
But forget running games in emulation

 

[Pukmeister]

Just had a message from DPD telling me they missed my (new laptop) delivery and will try again tomorrow (with a nice photo of my front door), followed by a second message saying my delivery is due today.......fucking useless !!!

How am I expected to plan to receive a parcel or divert to a neighbour if they only send the notification after the attempt to deliver ffs !!!!

 

[Posh Pete]

I made a decision today, I’ve bought an MSI laptop,

It'll be made of chipboard ad you'll have to put it together!


Oops! Sorry, that's MFI !

 

[karlp]

I’ve just been on the parallels site. It won’t work as I have an M2 chip, not a silicon version.

I am running some industrial windows programs via Parallels on a Mac with M3 chip

It has an 8 gig HD and 64 meg ram though

All works ok

 

[Pukmeister]

Maybe I should have just hacked my way through upgrading my 2011 15" i7 based MBP to MacOS "Big Sur" or "Monterey"and then ran an emulator instead of buying a new Windows machine?

I might have a go anyway for shits and giggles when bored at work, nothing to lose as its so old its unsupported now. (If all else fails I can wipe it and put a version of Linux on it, or smash it with a hammer.)