Hi all,

As you may, or may not remember, I'm a pretty enthusiastic PC gamer, but my current "rig" is a work-intended laptop from 2004. It runs everything older than itself well enough, but I've been drooling at stuff like the Orange Box, Europa Universalis III, Supreme Commander etc. recently, and none of them agree to co-operate with my screen-driving-3d-thingamajig. I think it's made out of wood, and (even worse) integrated. The whole thing literally starting to fall apart isn't helping one bit. =P

I've been doing some window shopping, and the Acer Travelmate 5720G looks like my thing. However, I'm fully aware of how bad I am with computers, so I've been showing the specs to all my friends, and asking if it looks good to them. You're next!

A few reviews here, here, and here.

The specs copy/pasted in a horribly messy manner:

2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 7300 2GB 667MHz DDR2 RAM 160GB hard disk G GSA-T20N DVD writer ATi Mobility Radeon X2500 256MB graphics 15.4in 1,280 x 800 TFT Realtek HD audio S-Video, D-SUB, DVI-D 4 x USB mini-FireWire ExpressCard/54 PC Card slot Bluetooth IR 802.11a/b/g WLAN Gigabit Ethernet 1.3MP webcam 5-in-1 card reader Windows Vista Home Premium 1yr C&R (includes international travellers' warranty) 360 x 268 x 45mm 3kg

Now I realise this isn't the most powerful computer out there, but I'm working on a budget (could get this one for 880€), and don't really care about having the best graphics on the planet. There's a zillion games from the last few years that I've been dying to play, and lots of upcoming stuff like Starcraft II and Dawn of War II that should work on even slightly slower hardware. I want to get a laptop, because I'm probably leaving the country as an exchange student next year, and I do a lot of travelling anyway.

Does this model seem like what I'm looking for?

I'm slightly worried about how it comes with Vista, but have figured it might not be so bad. The reason I really hate it is that everyone else hates it, but realistically it's going to be the most supported OS in a year or two, and going from a 512mb XP machine to a 2GB Vista one should actually be an improvement. I also wouldn't have to get a 360 for Alan Wake. =P

There are some other things I'm not crazy about, like there being no external dial for volume, the speaker cables plugging in at the front, and how the screen is the same size as my current one, but otherwise this seems to be a solid package.

Oh boy, this looks more like a rambling blog entry than a request for help on a forum. Anyone bothering to read all of this and say something has my deepest gratitude. <3

tl;dr: thinking about buying this. does it look any good?

I absolutely think you can trade up, even in that price range.
GPU, HDD and RAM seem to small/slow to me, even for rather simple tasks, and Acer usually costs a lot because of brand name!
Look around a little, the laptop market has been growing incredibly in later years and prices aren't even half of what they were 2-3 years ago for any model.
Its a nice enough PC, and Acer are known for building quality, but I'd hang back and scour the market, you could end up saving a lot by switching brands and even get a much faster one for the same buck!

In terms of graphic cards I think that the 8800GT is the best when it comes to value for money. It's a 512mb card with great clock and memory speed and I know that it runs Crysis comfortably so you can't go wrong there. As far as the other specs that you listed they should do the job though like I said I would highly recommend the 8800gt if you can get it.

edit- I would also recommend that you stay away from "brands" as while they are ok they are overpriced. You would do well to take a computer savvy friend with you and go to a trusted local computer shop where they can build a rig for you from the ground up.

Doesn't Acer have a reputation for being cheap, almost too cheap to be any good? I've asked around a bit, but all the people I know seem to think there are no 8800-cards for laptops, and building one from scratch is a pain in the ass anyway. =/

The 8800 GT doesn't exist for laptops, so that's easy ;)

Gotta say no to this laptop. I believe the x2500 is a 1700 rebranded, it can play the Orange Box/Europa Universalis III but you NEED a beefier CPU for SupCom. Price for this laptop looks terrible to me but I don't know much about the pricing in your country so someone else has to help out on this. It also doesn't help when I searched google for it and the title for the first result was "Acer Travelmate 5720g -biggest mistake ive ever done pcwise."

I'm not very good with price conversions (since I live in the US), but I had asked ssj12 about a new laptop (when mine died two weeks ago), and he recommended Acer as pretty reliable, and pointed me to this laptop. the processor could be better, but it was actually better than my old computer since it was a Core 2 Duo instead of the original Core Duo. Also, my old computer ran SupCom pretty well, with a less advance graphics card (that had 256MB RAM), and the 1.83 GHz processor. It's also a pretty nice price. I haven't tried SupCom on this new computer yet.

Though I'm afraid I can't say if you'll be able to find something like this in Europe.

Read my sig and build up from that if you want something more powerful.
the CPU/MOBO/Memory is really fast.

If you want more of a high end gamer system. Get the SLi mobo/video cards and more memory.

Other than that, my system cost me $995 (a month ago) and is absolutely fantastic.

 It's a laptop.

oooohhhh. my bad. Better read the whole op next time. :) *walks away in shame*