AACW on a laptop? 14-hour flight...

[Dunhill_BKK]

G'day all, does anyone play AACW on a laptop? I can't imagine it's much of an energy hog, other than display?

I'm thinking of getting a laptop to take on a 14-hour flight and subsequent travel and this would be a very good chance to get in a really good session of AACW. Am I going to get to play for the 9.5 hours an Asus Eeepc 1000HE suggests it might get on power saving mode?

[Comtedemeighan]

I play on a laptop all the time but I usually have it plugged in

[Dixicrat]

G'day all, does anyone play AACW on a laptop? I can't imagine it's much of an energy hog, other than display?

I'm thinking of getting a laptop to take on a 14-hour flight and subsequent travel and this would be a very good chance to get in a really good session of AACW. Am I going to get to play for the 9.5 hours an Asus Eeepc 1000HE suggests it might get on power saving mode?

You've undoubtedly considered everything I'm going to say, but just in case you haven't...
1) I strongly recommend at least two spare batteries.
2) Try to sit in a darker part of the plane, so that you can dim the screen!
3) Ensure there is no CD/DVD/BluRay in the tray
4) Turn off sound
5) Turn off the display, during the end-of-turn resolution
6) Establish a hardware profile for "aerogaming" that reduces your power demands by ignoring peripherals and unused resources

There is readily available shareware online which can be used to kill, suspend, defer, or force various OS processes. Alacrity is my favorite, but there are others. Basically, Alacrity and programs like it are designed to optimize your machine for gaming by suspending threads of loaded processes and background applications while you're gaming; and when you exit the game, they resume. (Be aware that such software is generally slightly technical, but not intimidatingly so.)

How do you like your EeePC? I've been thinking about buying one for my mum, so she can send and receive email and so forth. Reviews that I've read look good, and the price is a winner. If that's not enough, both mum and my wife think they're "cute". Basically, they seem too good to be true. What's your opinion?

[Dunhill_BKK]

Thanks for that Dixicrat.

I hadn't thought about limiting software, I've used it before to get a bit more out of my desktop for flight sims, so I'll be sure to use that.

I'm in Australia, so I don't have the Asus Eee PC 1000HE yet. We only seem to have gotten N270 chips so far, and I'd prefer to hold out until I can get a N280. Some say it will add about 5% to battery life, and with a 7-9.5 hour estimate that is significant. I am thinking about getting a spare battery, but with a 9.5 hour life, one might be enough.

There are lots of good reviews, but I'm looking at this as a as a specific type of netbook. I want something to download images from my camera and provide a bit of entertainment for me and the missus during travel. I don't need to process much of anything besides AACW and maybe a few other things.

It does seem to be very much a netbook aimed at the ladies, I was surprised to see the Vogue forums pop up in my search for reviews in Australia. Not the usual suspects of overclockers and other geeks.

[Pocus]

Our games need at least 1024x768 to run...

[Dixicrat]

... Some say it will add about 5% to battery life, and with a 7-9.5 hour estimate that is significant. I am thinking about getting a spare battery, but with a 9.5 hour life, one might be enough...

I've determined how to convert the manufacturer's claims of battery life into an estimate of actual battery life: divide by two, and take the square root of the result.

In all seriousness, manufacturer's claims are often wildly inaccurate for laptop battery life. I bought my wife a DELL Inspiron 9600 laptop for Christmas. It was touted as having a 4 hour battery life, but in actuality, it's battery life is roughly a half hour when she's running a game like Half Life 2.

I've come to the conclusion that manufacturers determine their battery life statistics by running the machine with a "blank screen" screen saver running on a display that's dimmed down to "1". Oh... and that they use an actual hour glass for timing, rather than an analog or digital timepiece.

[Dunhill_BKK]

1024*768 ....missed it by that much...1024*600...Bugger

I assume there is no workaround for this?

But wait, there is a hack to get the Eee PC's working in 1024x768. I hope this will be right..

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Dunhill_BKK]

It seems that 1024*768 are possible in the Eee PCs. some say the option is available scaled right out of the box, and other have used drivers to force the use of this resolution.

I hope this will be OK.

[Doomwalker]

Dunhill, I play on a laptop, plugged in though. Without a plug, I would get about 15 minutes play time.
My thing is the lack of a mouse while I play. I love the roller on top, and tend not to play much when i don't have it. It makes life so much easier when searching through those huge stacks when I have them. Granted you have the buttons on the sides for when you don't have the mouse. I myself, just have to have my mouse.

[Gray_Lensman]

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[Dunhill_BKK]

Wow, AACW cuts your time in half. For some reason I didn't imagine AACW would use so much power. That was just a hunch on my part though.

[Brochgale]

Wow, AACW cuts your time in half. For some reason I didn't imagine AACW would use so much power. That was just a hunch on my part though.

Yip it uses a lot of power - I play against nephew and he uses a laptop at downtimes in his work to make his ACCW moves more than once the battery flagged out on him. Battery power just sucks? He tries to make all his moves in about 25 minutes. As his lunch break is for one hour, half his lunch break is basically wasted?

[Pocus]

Wow, AACW cuts your time in half. For some reason I didn't imagine AACW would use so much power. That was just a hunch on my part though.

All DirectX games use a lot of power. That's DirectX!

[Dunhill_BKK]

Maybe I can bribe the stewardesses to run a cord from business to economy to power my laptop?

[Doomwalker]

Maybe I can bribe the stewardesses to run a cord from business to economy to power my laptop?

I can see that one now. I wish you best of luck.

I was thinking, you may not get much playing time. Depending on who is next to you, you may end up with some new recruits to the AACW community. I know when I saw it being played, I had to play and then wanted it in my collection. My brother was not too happy about me booting him off his game to try AACW for myself.

[Dunhill_BKK]

The missus will be next to me so no worries there.

I think I will use a 133Wh external battery and a regular 15.4" laptop. I'm not going to mess about with any netbooks. So no worries with screens sizes or time.

Unless of course they don't let me bring the battery on board, better check that.