Business/WoW capable laptop

[AntiFreze]

So my girlfriend is in the market for a laptop. She is an efficiency analyst for a print company and is getting sick of her desktop at home. The laptop would need to run the office suite (which any laptop should be able to do). She also plays WoW though (nothing really more intensive than that).

What would be a good recommendation on a laptop? She was looking to spend $600-$700. Her current rig has a 7600GT, Athlon X2, 1GB DDR2ram in it and she'd like to replace that system and just get a docking station. Any advice would be appreciated.

Oh, and she's the kind of girl that would like a cool/professional looking laptop.



EDIT: cause its monday and im tired

 

[AntiFreze]

Do I need a radeon HD 2600 or a Geforce 8400 or above to accomplish this?

I was planning on a core 2 duo or X2, 2GB of ram. I just cant find benchmarks for games.

 

[erikistired]

office suite, not sweet.

i ran wow full screen (1440x900) on my mbp, which has an ati x1600 in it, 2.33ghz c2d, 2gb ram. i couldn't crank the details, but it didn't bog down even in the vashj fight, which is notorious for chewing up frame rates. i got a pretty solid 30 fps (i think it dipped to 20ish in some instances, but still well playable). i would definitely suggest the 2gb of ram or more, wow loves it.

edit: the dell 1330/1530 xps seems to be pretty popular these days, might check one of them out.

 

[AntiFreze]

How is this: Dell Inspirion 1520 (and ill toss another gig of ram in there from newegg later)

SYSTEM COLOR: Midnight Blue
PROCESSOR: Intel® Pentium® Dual Core T2330 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
OPERATING SYSTEM: Genuine Windows® XP Home
DISPLAY: Glossy, widescreen 15.4 inch display (1280x800)
VIDEO CARD: 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT
MEMORY: 1GB Shared Dual Channel DDR2 at 667MHz
HARD DRIVE: Size: 120GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
INTERNAL OPTICAL DRIVE: CD / DVD writer (DVD+/-RW Drive)
WIRELESS NETWORK CARDS: Dell Wireless 1395 802.11g Mini Card
INTEGRATED WEBCAM: Integrated 2.0M Pixel Webcam
BATTERY OPTIONS: 56Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
SOUND OPTIONS: High Definition Audio 2.0

This system is $849

 

[Aikouka]

Looks kind of like my M1530 except it has higher resolution screen. I play wow on it just fine with the 8600M GT. It's nothing fancy but certainly works.

 

[Rottie]

1.6Ghz is reaslly slow for today standard and bad for future new softwares but for how long she will plan to keep laptop?

 

[AntiFreze]

she's hoping to get 2-4 years out of it. But really no new games, just office suite work, watch dvds, surf the net. We can always upgrade the processor, right?

 

[Aikouka]

Oh wait, I noticed that it's a Pentium Dual Core not a Core 2 Duo... my bad. Personally, I'd try switching to a C2D if I were you.

 

[erikistired]

i would spend the extra to get a c2d.

edit: for heat purposes if nothing else. wow makes my laptop get uber hot.