Hi
I am working on a cross platform MMO and doing some testing of client and server using jMonkeyEngine as client and RedDwarf as server (hopefully).
I need a new laptop (have a desktop already not here though) and was contemplating getting an Acer W500 Tablet (AMD 6250 graphics which arent THATTTTTT bad i suppose for just a workstation) instead of a Laptop with say a Geforce 555m or comparable GPU (and between 4GB-6GB RAM)
The tablet is a little cheaper and I felt might be better for testing my mobile apps with (and force me to work within the constraints of that client type)
SHould I just get a laptoipo because of the more than 2gb ram and better GPU or should i…
my budget is less than $600
Are you using this for development or just for testing?
The requirements are very different between those two…
Well, for development I really don’t recommend less than 8GB.
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@shirkit said:
Well, for development I really don't recommend less than 8GB.
+1
If you were just running the game, maybe 2GB would be fine but there's much more that goes into development. You'll likely have an IDE or two open, a zillion browser tabs, GIMP or Photoshop, maybe Blender, etc. That's a pretty good workload, 2GB may hamper you more in productivity than it helps in testing.
RAM is important… but if it comes between RAM and a decent GPU… go with the GPU. My dev system has only 4 gig in it (and only 3 available because of 32 bit Win XP) and I usually don’t care about it. But I have a near unnatural love for my graphics card. 
…and if you can’t go with SSD then at least get a fast hard drive. 7200 RPM minimum. In the long run that will also make more difference than lots of RAM. Sadly, laptops always seem to have the 5400 RPM drives in them back when I was looking. But I would never buy a laptop for a dev workstation anyway… but that’s just me.
well to save money and also because right now i will mostly just be coding basics and trying to drum up investment (maybe a model here and there or some decent terrain patches here and there just for testing
yeah i guess you could say this is my testing, marketing (i do that too) and coding (mostly coding, little in the way of heavy graphics and such for the next few months)
anyways the point is … i got frustrated trying to find a decent notebook with a 540m or 555m gpu (and for some reason i neglected ebay altogether) so i ended up getting the acer w500 tablet … i always get hung up on content and in reality i need to focus on engine dev for quite some time (matching jmonkey to reddwarf will be hard for a relative noob) i think given those requirements i can squeeze by with 2 gigs for now…
i will run into problems when im trying to use datasets from openstreetmaps however… and that will suck…
Wait, you want to do an mmo, by yourself, in a few months, with a two gig laptop? That sounds like a long shot to me, but hey, who am I to question your otives? 
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I strongly recommend that you start off with something very simple and get that working before you try and do anything else. Doing that will teach you a lot about what to do and what not to do for when you start your main project.
For example even just MMO tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses, whatever you call it) with a 3d display of the board would teach you a lot about comms, server, client, 3d, etc…and you will find that to already be a much bigger project than you expect.
oh no im just working on one phase of the mmo on the laptop… not doing a whole game… lol been working a few years and just wanted to do some testing with jme… nothing heavy duty for now… primarily in java with light and i mean LIGHT heightmap terrain painting
yeah dont worry i know all that stuff im not a noob just gettin in… i simply have little experience with jme… i plan on spending two months to do a small demo that one of you guys cloud do in about three weeks… no worries
then little by little ill do one system at a time
in reality my MAIN concern is to try to work on my graphics a bit during this time… not much just a little…
i want to see if i can make any progress implementing a spherical terrain
im giving myself a few months as well just to work on that
and then maybe subcontract one of you guys to make me an editor … but well see thats a bit far in the future
after five years of having the plan of using a more developed framework/engine and then financing a “real game” with that money… ive decided to just wade into making my own game piece by piece (with the content itself being a separate issue) … so i guess you could say i just want to slowly put together a usable mmo framework over the next twelve months
BASIC and usable but usable nonetheless for … lets say
at least basic hack and slash com,bat connected to a mmo server… thats it… nothing super rockstar
but the next two months i want to spend getting comfortable with jme3 making sure i understand the basics (vehicle editor, bullet native, shaders and terrain) and then ill spend some time connecting RedDwarf server to it;… Then ill slowly start working on more pieces after that
finally i want to implement some algorithms for planet rendering … and thats my plan for the next nine months
im hoping if im lucky i can pull it off… then ill worry about combat mechanics and auction house and inventory etc etc
hopefully by teat time ill have the rest of my content planned out (missing some pieces now because i made the switch last year to use blender instead of maya… trying to do all open source apps now so i can do a tutorial series for the game (actually sorta have at http://underworldmmo.wordpress.com) but my new site is http://neopangaia.com