When a laptop computer is fair game

Web posted March 29, 1999

By Joseph Gelmis
Newsday

If a guy who's packing for a vacation pauses at the sight of his laptop computer and seriously considers whether to take it along, it doesn't necessarily signify that he's a workaholic. He could be one of the growing legion of travelers for whom a laptop is not only an office-on-the-go but a portable gaming machine.

At the start of this year, there were nearly 40 million mobile computers in use, according to Dataquest, which estimates the number will almost double by 2002. The majority are used as portable workstations. But high-end laptops packing the fastest processors and 3-D graphics have begun to double as entertainment centers.

With a properly equipped laptop, the savvy traveler not only crunches numbers, writes reports, does research on the Web, and communicates via fax and e-mail, but plays state-of-the-art computer games, listens to music CDs and even watches movies recorded on digital video discs.

Only the luxury laptops provide this kind of versatility. But 3-D graphics cards and DVD-ROM drives will, sooner than later, become standard in entry-level laptops, following the same pattern as CD-ROM drives, sound cards and fax/modems, which were initially introduced as optional features.

For a satisfactory gaming experience, you need a high-end laptop, like Dell's Inspiron 7000 D300LT, which Computer Gaming World magazine recently awarded five stars and described as the only laptop designed with gamers in mind.

Dell is a top-quality product from one of the world's largest computer makers. Available only via telephone, (800) 953-5621, or online, www.dell.com, Dell's desktops and laptops come in a variety of configurations, allowing you to assemble a machine for your needs.

The laptop I used sells for just under $3,000. (For $200 more, Dell offers an optional DVD-ROM drive.) Under its sleek matte black hood was a Pentium II 300 MMX processor running Windows 98, 64 MB RAM, 4 GB HD, 3-D surround sound and hardware wavetable (for good-quality MIDI music output), 24X CD-ROM and floppy disk drives, a 56Kbs modem, 2X AGP 4MB ATI Rage Pro 3-D video, and a huge 15-inch active matrix (TFT) liquid crystal display.

No need to dock your laptop to a desktop monitor. The Inspiron 7000's display offers the same screen size as some 17-inch desktop monitors. Better yet, composite and S-Video outputs on the back of the laptop allow you to play computer games or watch DVD movies on the biggest TV screen and best sound system in your house.

These amenities add heft as well as power to the Inspiron 7000, which weighs about 9 pounds. For long trips, one battery will be drained by several hours of use. Figure on buying a second backup battery.

All other things being equal, it's the laptop's 3-D video technology that determines how good a gaming machine it is.

Dell's Inspiron 7000 series is equipped with the ATI Rage Pro -- which is better than the 3-D chipsets used in most rival laptops, but not the best available -- pumped up by the latest and fastest motherboard design, an Accelerated Graphics Port, or AGP, which exponentially speeds up the rendering of a game's graphics.

Twitch games make the biggest demands on video capabilities. Genres that require more thought or exploration tend to have less cinematic graphics and to proceed at a relatively leisurely pace.

The most immersive new games in the ``Myst'' graphic adventure tradition, ``Starship Titanic'' and ``Grim Fandango,'' looked gorgeous on the Inspiron laptop. And strategy games ``StarCraft,'' ``Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri,'' and ``Myth II: Soulblighter'' benefitted from the Inspiron's high-resolution 1024-by-768 pixel screen, displaying more territory than a lower-res PC would.

Movie-like 3-D action games, and sports, flying and driving simulations require the fastest processors, massive memory and storage capacity, and the proper 3-D graphics card.

Not every card will play every game equally well. Even though Microsoft's DirectX software (currently in version 6.0) theoretically enables all games to be played on any 3-D card, video quality varies tremendously.

Action-gaming benchmark ``Quake II,'' for instance, was designed to look and play its best in conjunction with 3Dfx's Voodoo series of chipsets, which use a video protocol known as Open GL. ``Quake II'' looks muddy and sounds distorted on the Dell Inspiron 7000, because the laptop's ATI Rage Pro card was optimized for another protocol, Direct 3-D.

However, other cutting-edge shooters I played on the Inspiron 7000, including ``Star Wars'' spinoff ``Jedi Knight'' and ``Unreal,'' looked terrific and performed perfectly.

Minimally, you've also got to have a headset (the laptop's speakers are tinny, but the digital sound source is topnotch) and a mouse -- or, better yet, a gamepad. (The Inspiron's touchpad is not accurate or fast enough for gaming.)

At this point, the only gamepad specifically designed for use with a laptop PC is the Gravis Stinger. You can also use a USB gamepad (Gravis makes one) which works with factory-installed Windows 98 operating systems, used in Dell laptops, or Macintosh G3 iMacs and desktops.

The $40 Stinger plugs into the PC serial port, a feature of every laptop, and can function as a joystick, gamepad or mouse. Smaller than a DiscMan, it can be manipulated easily with both hands during a flight, even if you're in the middle seat and have no elbow room whatever.

Ergonomically well-designed, easily programmed, the Stinger worked like a charm on all the games except ``Half-Life,'' where it oversteered the character I played and through whose eyes I saw that alien-haunted world. The gross movements made it impossible to interact with any precision or to survive attack.

To sum up, the Inspiron 7000 is pioneering the future of laptops. It's a superior all-around laptop, about 80 percent effective with the lineup of games I played on it -- which is, actually, about par for the variously-configured desktops I've played these games on.

Granted, laptops cost more than their desktop counterparts, age faster, and are less easily upgradeable.

But things change fast in the world of computers. The high-end PC laptop I used will soon be displaced by a Pentium III successor. And the current generation of laptops will cost less.