My business travel is picking up substantially. I'm debating purchasing a mid range (800 or less) laptop because of this. Work would, I'm sure, provide some antique POS that'll run excel, but if I'm traveling a week or so every month, I'd like to be able to have a personal machine with MY software, and most importantly, MY Steam account! It'll also be used to stream videos from Hulu and Amazon Prime, 2 things that'd get me fired if I did it on a work PC.
I'd like to be able to play at least some games--L4D2, Plants vs Zombies, etc. I don't expect to run Battlefield 3 on a laptop, given my budget (and practical considerations--who wants to lug a 17" DTR around?)
I'd like a screen size of 13-15", and a decent resolution (higher than 1366 x 768 is prefered). What sort of mobile graphics would I need to run games like I want to play on that laptop? Battery life is not a huge concern--airports have outlets, so do hotel rooms. But I'm not up on mobile GPUs at all.
Also, is Lenovo good? And is Acer decent?
It'll be a few months before I get one, but at the rate I'm traveling I'm thinking a mobile PC is a good idea...bleh