Lagamorph

I've found that Sony do tend to be overpriced at the lower-spec end of things, but when you start getting to high-spec Sony usually have very competitive prices. Not just with laptops, but with TV's and things like that.

Well it's not completely 100% set we'll buy that, not if it's no good for games playing anyway. I just wanted to make sure that it was before we went ahead and spent 2 grand on something, only to later find out it doesn't do what we wanted it to. If it was no good for what we wanted then we'd forget about that one and look for something else.

Ok, my brother is getting a laptop for christmas to completely replace his desktop, and I've been put in charge of choosing which one. My parents and my brother have both completely ruled out Dell, and there's absolutely no way I can change their minds on that. Like I said, the laptop is to be a total desktop replacement, and needs to be good for everything, including gaming. The best I've seen is a new Sony one coming out this month, the basic specs are, CPU: Intel® Centrino® Duo mobile technology with Intel® Core™ 2 Duo processor T7200 (2.00 GHz and 667 MHz FSB) and Intel® Pro/Wireless 802.11a/b/g OS: Genuine Microsoft® Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005 (English version), Windows Vista™ Capable and Premium Ready* HDD: 200 GB Serial ATA 5400rpm hard disk drive (2 x 100 GB, RAID 0 and 1 supported) RAM: 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM (2 x 1024 MB), maximum 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM Monitor: 17" WUXGA (1920 x 1200) widescreen X-black LCD with double lamp technology (And I'm told it's also a High Definition Screen) GFX: NVIDIA® GeForce® Go 7600 GT with 256MB dedicated Video Memory Blu-Ray Drive: Blu-ray Disc™ Drive (up to 50 GB of storage) TV-Out: Hybrid TV Tuner & remote control Camera/Mic: Built-in 'Motion Eye' Digital Camera (30 frames per second, 0.37 Mega Pixels) with Motion Picture Function (max. resolution (pixels) VGA/640*480/raw data) and built-in microphone Keyboard: Hi-gloss black finish; UK QWERTY keyboard The website for the laptop is http://shop.sonystyle-europe.com/SonyStyle...d=LEC-LP05NAVUK and both my mom and my brother really seem to like it. So is it going to be suitable for what we want? We've always liked the Sony brand, and we wont be getting it off the net, there's an actual Sony Center store near to where we live, and we'll be getting it through them.

Western Digital are notoriously unreliable, and have a habit of breaking much sooner and much more easily than Seagate ones. If you ask me Seagate Barracuda Hard Drives are the very best you can get. Ultra-reliable. I've had my 160GB one for nearly 4 years and haven't ever had any problems with it, and I've had a 40GB one for close to 6 years, and no problems with that either. That WD may be cheaper there, but you'll end up needing at least 2 or 3 in the same lifespan of a Segate one.

Well it doesn't matter now, I managed to get my grubby hands on a 360 by turning up at a different store (PC World in the UK) only 45 minutes before it opened ^^;; But thanks for all the suggestions guys (or the same suggestion several times anyway )

Like I said, I'm too busy to build my own right now. University is taking up too much of my time since I'm in my final year.

Since my local GAME store has shafted me out of my Xbox 360 (Only just now being told that there's bugger all chance of it arriving before christmas) I'm getting a new PC for christmas. Normally I'd build it myself, but University is too busy at the moment (and I'm just lazy) so I'm looking for possibly somewhere on-line to get a good gaming system for around the £1000-1200 mark. This is in the UK too, so No US sites please. My list of features is, MUST HAVE 7800GTX Graphics card. I know Processors at the moment kinda bottleneck them, but it's pretty much future-proofing for the graphics MUST HAVE at least a 160GB Hard Drive. Not too worried about the type MUST HAVE a Creative Sound Card. Not really bothered which one, as long as it's creative. MUST HAVE Dual Layer DVD-RW drive MUST HAVE at least 1GB of RAM MUST HAVE a case that's pretty good for cooling. The system will probably be on for long periods of time, so I don't want it to overheat. No OS is required. I've got an (official) XP disk and an actual Licence key already. I'm more likely to get an XBox 360 this side of christmas than buy another copy of XP. PREFERABLY an AMD 64-bit processor, but I'm willing to go Intel too if the rest of the system is good. I'm not really bothered about Dual Core at the moment though. So far I've found 2 on-line, one from Dell and one from Overclockers, and my local PC shop is putting together a price for me. The one's I've found online so far are, Dell XPS System Processor - Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 640 with HT technology (3.20GHz, 800MHz fsb, 2MB cache) MotherBoard - ? RAM - 1024MB Dual Channel DDR2 533MHz (2x512) Memory Hard Drive - 160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache160GB (7200rpm) Serial ATA Hard Drive with 8MB DataBurst™ cache DVD - 16x max. DVD+/-RW (Dual Layer) Drive Floppy - None GFX - Single 256MB nVidia® GeForce™ 7800GTX graphics card Sound - Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Music card,PCI w/Dolby Digital,7.1 speaker surround and THX certification Keyboard & Mouse - Dell cheapo ones. I've got a Logitech MX5000 set so I don't want a keyboard/mouse with it. Speakers - None, don't want any OS - Windows XP Home Case - Dell XPS case PSU - ? Price - £1,239 This one might be a bit overbudget really, but I suppose I can call them up rather than use the website and see if I can get a bit more off by not getting the Keyboard & Mouse and Windows XP and see what else I can get. Overclockers Ultima system Processor - AMD Athlon 64 3700 San Diego (Socket 939) Dual DDR400 CPU Motherboard - Asus A8N-SLi Premium nForce4 SLi (Socket 939) PCI-Express RAM - GeIL 1GB (2x512MB) DDR PC3200 CAS2.5 Dual Channel Kit Hard Drive - 250GB Western Digital Caviar SE16 16mb cache SATA-2 DVD - Pioneer DVR-110 16 x 16 DVD±RW Dual Layer ReWriter Floppy - Mitsumi FA 404M 7in1 USB 2.0 Floppy & Media Drive - Silver GFX - Leadtek GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB DDR3 PCI-Express Sound - Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4.0 Keyboard & Mouse - None Speakers - None OS - None Case - Coolermaster Silver WaveMaster Case PSU - Tagan TG580-U15 580W ATX2.01 Easycon SLi Compliant Modular Silent PSU Price - £1,115.08 Right now I'm leaning more towards the system from Overclockers. It just seems a little better, plus it's cheaper. I'll post up the system my local PC shop gets for me tomorrow, since that's when he'll have a quote for me. I've asked him to keep it under £1,000 for me, so we'll see what he comes up with. In the meantime, anybody know any good online places to get a PC in the UK with around this spec for my budget?

then it was probably a geforce product Uh....no since it was an actual ATI card

My brother has an ATI 9600 and it runs with absolutely no problems on his machine

A lot of us that are having problems have Nvidia cards. I have a 6800Ultra and it's still crashing. I don't think the type of video card really makes much difference.

Go here Blurry, http://www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?d3dx9_25 and try downloading that dll file

Hm.....from what I can see....a lot of the problems seem to center around when the game tries to save. It looks like that's where the problem is.....ok that doesn't really help us get any solutions to the various problems we're all having, but at least we seem to be getting closer to a possible cause. When the game crashes for other people, are you getting error message boxes or anything? Or is the game just suddenly crashing and you're brought back to your windows desktop with no error messages or anything like I get?

Y'know I never expected this thread to go on this long, lol. Looks like we've identified a major issue with the PC port of Fable here....

Somehow I've managed to complete the game, for some reason it's stopped crashing quite so often, but still crashing none the less. We all seem to be having different, yet similar, problems with the game and with very different hardware. Like Guundar said, it's probably some kind of error with the actual game. Hopefully there'll be some kind of patch released for it or something...

Very good points. The 17" was something that was putting me off and keeping me from just saying "Yes I'll get that one" and the X700 does have some whack behind it, more than the Go 6200's in the Sony ones anyway, and the Acer one is the cheapest of the lot (And unlike the Sony ones places actually have the Acer one in stock, heh) Plus there's the fact it only ways 3kg instead of 5kg that the one with the 6800 weighed And I would be using the wireless since we have a wireless network in the house, and wireless access points at University I believe