My parents have agreed to give me $2500 Australian (aprox. 1530 Euros/$1890US) to spend on a laptop. Your probably thinking that I would be far better off if I spent it on a desktop because laptops are less upgrade-able, you spend more for <= the same amount of power, etcetera. But for my circumstances, a desktop would not be viable.
Why is as follows:
When my parents were building a house (about 20 years ago), they found that it would be far too expensive to get mains power brought in, so they bought a few solar panels and used them + a car battery to power the lights and a few other things.
A few years ago they separated, but they get along well enough that although I live with my mother (in the house they built) I spend quite a bit of time at my father\'s house (it\'s about 15 minutes drive away too).
Recently-ish my mother bought a new solar panel (I think its a 60watt, but I\'m not sure) and a big battery (I think it can store about 200 amp hours), so there should be enough electricity to power a laptop for a while.
Some of the things I\'d like too use it for are:
Schoolwork (for which I would use OpenOffice, which is hardly demanding)
Blender 3d (3d modelling/animation/other stuff, needs CPU and ram the most)
Games, including Planeshift, Deus Ex (othe first one), GTA 3, and various small/2d ones. It would be good if I could play Oblivion with it, but if I can\'t, I\'m sure I\'ll cope
Also, I would like to run Linux on it (probably dual boot with windows)
I was thinking along the lines of:
3000+ CPU, doesn\'t have to be AMD (although I think I might prefer it to be), just has to be that sort of speed
1 gig of ram, plenty for games I might be able to use more with Blender, but 1 gig should be enough
GeForce Go 6600, 128mb
battery life, at least about 4 with text editing/web browsing type things
Assembling it my self would not be a problem (I could probably do it my self, but if I could\'t, my father probably could) and I think it might even be preferable if it costs about the same (and more definitely if it costs less)
If I have to I could probably spend a little more, but keep in mind that my parents are, although not particularly poor, not rich and it would be good if I could give them some money back.
Other forums where I have asked for help:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=18&t=150404&st=0#entry2568220http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=468472#468472Advice and recommendations are welcome, telling me I should get a desktop instead will cause a great deal of annoyance and possibly flaming.
