FS9 Laptop advice for a member

srgalahad

srgalahad

Charter Member 2022
0ldduff, a member of the SOH has been in hospital for the last few months. He's gotten to a point in his recuperation that he's now been moved to a long-term care facility and is getting back to living.

Part of his life was FS9 and he wants to get back into it but his old system is impractical due to space considerations ( desktop box, monitor etc.) so he's been thinking that he should switch to a laptop so we're on a quest to find one that will work:

-New
-decent video and processor suitable to run FS9 with some addon scenery and moderately complex payware a/c (he has these already)

He's already got all the peripherals and with a bit of work we'll have a desk that will work in his accommodation.

While it's unlikely that he'll want to join the battle to set up and run FSX we've short-listed machines that would handle it but reality says that if we can save a couple of hundred $$ by backing down the specs a bit and still handle FS9 it would be helpful.

Any suggestions are appreciated but I'd really like to hear from those who actually have FS9 running well on a laptop.

Rob
 
Hi,

I had a Siemens/Fujitsu Amilo laptop, which worked well with FS9 for a while, but because the video card was in with the motherboard when the card went on the blink (as it did!!) that was the end of the laptop. So it's worth checking if the one you think of getting has a separate video card. Fs9 seems to use a lot of computer power and generates a lot of heat; I used to run the laptop on a cooling deck, but even that couldn't stop it going into terminal decline.

Andy.
 
Agreed Tom. He's seen my laptop which is FSX-able (at least one other member has the same system)
http://ca.asus.com/en/Notebooks/Gaming_Powerhouse/G75VW/

However, we're trying to 'tone it down' a bit so he doesn't have to break the $1000 mark which is what the G-75 would do.
I haven't pushed the ASUS long and hard to really test the cooling but it's never even felt uncomfortably warm after use -even with a 2Gb video card and he'll be able to run a cool-pad or probably have shorter sessions anyway.
 
Its probably going to be real hard to find one below $1,000 that you will not regret buying.

My G72gX does a great job on FS9 and FSX but finding one now is hard. It also seems that people who are selling them think they are worth what they paid for them and simply put they are not.

The G73 should work and I know the G74 I bought my wife works well.
 
I agree that the $1000 benchmark is likely going to be tough to squirm under. And even if you do then you end up with trouble down the road.
The biggest concern with Laptops has to be the cooling in the long run. Heat literally kills the lesser ones and while they might be good to run a short demo session once in a while they will not survive a daily beating from an hour long FS session.
By the time you do get to that point the warranty will have been expired and as we all know changing hardware on any laptop is a whole different ball game from the PC desktop counterparts.

Even more importantly than with a Desktop spend as much as you possibly can without having to resort to eating Spam for a month.

Cheers
Stefan
 
Try the Zalman Notebook cooler -- either NC2000 for larger lappys (15"-17") of the NC1000 for smaller (13").

They are quiet and speed is adjustable, well built of aluminum and you can actually set one on your lap. I actually have some plasitc kitchen cutting boards that I set on my lap, then the cooler, then the laptop.

The Zalmans run off the PC USB port and provide one or two extra USB ports. It would be nice if they were a little cheaper but mine have lasted and stayed quiet -- well worth the investment in your laptop's health.

http://www.newegg.com/Zalman-Tech-Co-Ltd-Laptop-Accessories/BrandSubCat/ID-1647-319

I've run MSFS on laptops since FS98, my current systems are a 2005 Toshiba Satellite and a 2007 Sager NP5792. I'd recommend descrete video both for Sim performance and less load on the system. The Toshiba is an Nvidia 7600 and the Sager an Nvidia 7800. Those are not top-of-the-line video cards but I did max out video RAM and they look good and are pretty well adjustable for frame-rate and image quality.

You might consider checking into a good used laptop that'll run FS9 and you may get in under $1K. To run FSX I think you're looking at higher/newer specs in order to be happy with the performance.

Full keyboard and the keypad are pretty important. Some of the USB number pads I tried didn't work correctly with the usual FS keypad commands.

I eventually went to a USB X-Box controller (a gamepad) for a "joystick" and that has worked OK. Even works for Helos :D A joystick on USB would also help out if there's no num pad on the system.

Java
:wavey:
 
Some I7 based laptops do even FSX Accel very well. A plurality of my time is spent on the road and I do a lot of flight dynamics development, as well as photography on my ASUS laptop. Since I am on the road the flight controls suffer, I have a break apart Saitek twistie stick with dual throttles which does the job but is no rapture of experience.

Cheers. T
 
I've got one of the Acer 'Aspire' series, 15", 1.6 Ghz dual-core processor with separate ATI graphics; and 1GB ram, it runs fs passably well if I don't 'max' out all the sliders, and some sceneries do tax it considerably; but then it wasn't bought for solely running FS

I use a usb game pad configured as joystick, but like fliger747 says, while it does the job, its no
rapture of experience
Click to expand...

ttfn

Pete
 
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