I am writing in hopes of getting advice on purchasing a laptop. My old laptop (Panasonic CF-27) apparently does not meet the minimum requirements to run MoI. It is therefore time for me to upgrade. Since I am on a budget, E-Bay is my likely source. I would appreciate some feed back from current users of MoI stating which laptop, make and model, and video card, if installed. Of course, any other thoughts are always appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I had no issue with a Toshiba AMD Dual Core 1.7 ghz with 2 Gig Ram and 120 Gig HD. It had an ATI 1200 series video card. While it was okay for MOI, it really was tough on Blender. I would highly recommend that you look for a laptop with a discrete video card such as an NVidia 8400. I just a brand new Dell Vostro 1500 with an 8400M go for $520. Not bad for a machine that would really run MOI smoothly.

Hi JP - that model was definitely a great laptop for its time, but I think that it is about 10 years old or so? That very much predates the time that 3D graphics hardware was generally available on laptop machines - the video system on that laptop (no 3D graphics acceleration available) is the main thing that prevents it from working with MoI.

I'd recommend focusing on 3 pieces of information when you're shopping around:

1 - Age of the system - try to generally stay within models that are not more than 3 years or so old.

2 - Graphics hardware. Basically any type of ATI Radeon or nVidia GeForce graphics systems will work well. If it has "Intel integrated" graphics system, that is not quite as good, however pretty recent versions of these, like GMA 950 (I think that is it) and above do actually work pretty good so it is not really a total deal breaker, but be wary of Intel video sets from systems that are more on the older side.

If the video system says something other than ATI, nVidia, or Intel, then definitely stay away from it.

3 - system RAM. I'd say shoot for a minimum (more is better though) of 512MB for XP systems, and 1GB+ for Vista-based systems. Unlike the video though this part can usually be upgraded.


It's difficult to recommend any particular make or model since there is a really wide range of them that will be fine.


If you find one that you are interested in, please feel free to post the laptop model or specs here and I can try to give you some feedback on it.

- Michael

MoI can be run from a USB thumbdrive, so if you have one, you can try running MoI directly on the machine of your choice!

jonah

My only advice is look around the net to see if there are people complaining about video driver updates for the model(s) you're interested in.

I typically try to stick with NVidia for both my desktop and laptops. I have an ASUS G1 and I loved it cause it has a Shader model 3 NVidia Go 7700 w/512Megs but I was having problems in MOI experiencing freezing and program hangs. I recently found an enthusiast site that had drivers for it and so far (fingers crossed) I haven't experience those hangs yet...

I'm almost at the point of saying stay away from laptops when it comes to high-end CAD apps cause usually the OpenGL drivers are lacking and you're stuck depending on manufacturer update schedules (if they even have any!)

The DirectX drivers are usually more on point since most high end "gaming" laptops would be stupid not to have up to date DirectX drivers! But if the majority of your apps are OpenGL (Cinema 4D, Lightwave etc) then like I said, you're stuck!

I think I've seen mention of laptops now with replaceable graphics assemblies? Not too sure about that but if you can swap out the graphics similar to a desktop that would certainly be the way to go but then again I think you'd be at the mercy of the manufacturer UNLESS there is a laptop graphics standard now that I'm not familiar with...

Another issue is the default Vista installations ("You can have any color you want as long as it's BLACK...") - if you can get XP installed, IMO, I'd say grab it - I'm dying to get Vista off my laptop (without any success at the moment...)


Good luck!

-Will

Hi I have got an Acer Travelmate 4283 with Nvidia GO 7600 128 RAM and core 2 duo 1.6 T5500. I make complex design with moi.: cardesign and architecture too. However viewport of Moi is not optimized yet and sometimes my models' moving not smooth but I think That my configuration is enough this app.