Top gaming laptops 2009

MSi GTUS MSi might be better known for their general use computers, but this Taiwan-based computer hardware manufacturer also offers a number of powerful gaming options with their G-series laptops. You can find gaming notebooks for just about every level of play with the G-series from MSi, but the GTUS is ideal for some serious MMO action with its sleek design, touch-enabled media interface, and built-in surround sound speakers.

Naturally, few things can compare to your home's World of Warcraft lair, but when you are on the go and need your fix of some Horde on Alliance action, the MSi GT is an effective way to go. Why It's Good: You save a bit of money by going with the single 2. While the system might be pushed to its limits by more recent MMOs like Warhammer Online, it's more than enough to get the most out of older games like World of Warcraft and The Lord of the Rings Online, both of which are still just as popular and enjoyable as ever.

The slower processor will definitely shut this system out of a significant portion of the PC gaming catalog, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of other options available.

The staggeringly addictive games World of Goo and Plants Vs. Zombies have very modest requirements and will run beautifully on this system. Customers who order from iBuyPower are offered a host of component customization options, ensuring that players get exactly what they need. For the case of a Fallout 3 player, the default Battalion CZ achieves the preferred specs right out of the box, but for those looking for a little extra storage space or juice can make some adjustments at their discretion through iBuyPower's customization process.

Why It's Good: It's no surprise that Fallout 3 is a bit of a system hog. With everything that the designers and artists have packed into the game, you need a lot of horsepower to get it up and running in all its glory. Fortunately, the Battalion laptop has more than enough muscle to handle rendering the massively detailed areas to refereeing the combat. The good news is that all this power can be leveraged in other areas to bring the best out in many game in the PC catalog.

Games like Left 4 Dead or Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War 2 will run fantastically on this machine with a nice balance between the framerate and overall visual quality. Alienware M17X The brand-new M17X is the flagship of Alienware's uber-high end gaming laptop line, and is designed for breathtaking high-definition visuals like that found in Crysis.

Featuring Alienware's signature dark and ominous design aesthetic, the M17X not only pumps out impressive graphics, it also exudes all sorts of personalized cool with its user-controlled backlighting and matte black or silver finish. Why It's Good: The full Gig of video RAM should be more than enough to get Crysis running at its full potential, with all the lovely shadows and foliage turned up as high as they can go.

Better still, the system should be meaty enough to handle almost anything that comes out in the next year or two, even in the graphically heavy shooter genre. According to Best Buy's Blue Label program, the features its customers wanted most in a laptop are longer battery life, a thin and lightweight design, but with a roomy screen, and a backlit keyboard--all backed with "superior" support.

The HP Pavilion dvnr hits on all of these points, and it looks good doing it. Actually listening to your customers seems to be a savvy move if the Pavilion dvnr is any indication. It may seem as if Hewlett-Packard is arriving somewhat late to the Netbook game with its Mini , but the company's business division has offered a similar system, the Mini-Note PC since the spring of this year. That model scored points with the best Netbook keyboard we've seen and a solid metal construction, but the wimpy VIA processor and a higher price than other Netbooks kept it from being a top contender.

The good: Adds SD card slot and reacquires FireWire; lower starting price; same solid unibody construction and giant multitouch trackpad. The bottom line: Previously known as the MacBook, Apple's basic inch aluminum unibody laptop has been promoted to the "Pro" series, all while adding features and cutting the base price.

The bad: Odd resolution loses a few pixels; no mobile-broadband options yet ; awkward mouse button placement. The bottom line: HP offers a premium version of its plastic Mini while keeping the price down, making the Mini the Netbook to beat. The bad: Thicker and heavier than the previous model; still near the upper end of the Netbook price range. The bottom line: Asus hits nearly all the marks in the HA, the latest version of its iconic Eee PC, highlighted by a 6-hour-plus battery life.

WoW is still chugging along with its traditional subscription model, but games like Destiny 2 are constantly changing the shape of their monetization model to see what works. As long as we leave loot boxes behind, I'm happy. I'm a big fan of this dour brand of premature PC gaming funeral bell. Here's a bit from a CinemaBlend article calling on PC gamers to accept the inevitable:. The same story cites the growth of digital sales, so it's a weird take even for the times.

No need to retroactively flinch, though. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a defensive 'PC Gaming is fine' editorial hanging out somewhere in the PC Gamer mag archives. And if it exists, I'm sure it's airtight. Now the moribund conversations have shifted to VR, an expensive platform for a niche audience with tech that, at times, feels too bulky and far-fetched to ever find safe footing.

Sounds familiar. Everybody was making an MMO, or had already tried and failed. With retail sales of traditional PC games dying down, and microtransaction sales up, WoW was the golden goose of videogame profits.

It was and still is a cutthroat scene. The original Defense of the Ancients Warcraft 3 mod was killing it, one of the biggest free-to-play 'unofficial' games.

I remember seeing it start as a palette cleanser between Quake matches at LAN parties, only to become the main event among my groups a few months in. The success of DotA caught the eye of the industry at large and birthed a new genre and, eventually, two of the biggest games in the world: Riot's League of Legends and Valve's Dota 2. League of Legends was just coming onto the scene in I remember passing Riot's tiny booth at PAX and thinking it looked like garbage.

Mobas were already huge, but they were about to get much, much bigger. Elsewhere, off in a quiet corner of the internet, one of PC gaming's biggest seeds was planted. The earliest development build of Minecraft released on May 17, Here's an AnandTech forum thread lamenting poorly ventilated basements full of chunky CRTs and comradery.

With the advent of always-online DRM, the gradual proliferation of high speed internet, and console services like Xbox Live steering multiplayer gaming towards remote play, the culture and industry practices were bound to change. I worked in a university IT office where LAN parties were a weekly, sometimes nightly norm, so the news hit hard.

Sure, it was possible to play together in the same room via Blizzard's servers, but it's the principle of the thing that mattered: PC gaming was supposed to be the malleable, open-ended platform, not an altar to corporate control. But we didn't wholly reject online multiplayer, we just wanted it all.

PC gamers are picky bastards. As for online gaming, there was a time before Discord. I know, it shouldn't feel like ages ago. In , online comms weren't so simple, except they were depending on who you asked.

VoiP lived through Ventrilo and Teamspeak, barebones applications that required hosting servers locally. To connect and talk, you'd need to know each server's network information, plugging in network addresses and passwords rather than clicking on a server invite link.

Ventrilo is still looking old as hell I miss those ugly grey boxes but Teamspeak's since gone the Discord route, at least visually. This all feels strange to write, as if I wasn't using these programs regularly a few years ago, now describing the act of hosting and connecting to private servers as some arcane process. Just another testament to how quickly PC gaming changes. If we weren't talking to people while playing, we were dinking around at work and talking to internet strangers about gaming.

For the better part of the '00s, Reddit wasn't the go-to for new gaming communities, aggregate news, or meme generation—Digg was all the rage, functioning a lot like Reddit does today, aggregating memes, news, and discussions based on user voting around specific interests, PC gaming included.

Reddit was mostly focused on tech news aggregation site until , when it introduced subreddits. Hardware-heads hung out on Reddit before then, but it would be a few years before gaming culture at large truly wormed its way in, though Digg's botched V4 redesign scooted things along.

Aggregate site comment sections were still new blood and plenty of gaming forums still housed vibrant communities, just as many do today. Will VR finally catch on? Are more launchers in our future? What new genres will sprout up? How will new technology change the games we play? How much better can graphics and simulations actually get? Will Riot become the new Blizzard?

How will the Steam and Epic Store showdown shake out? Let us know what you think. As for us? Hard to say, but we'll be trying anyway. Stick around PC Gamer through December and into the new year while we continue to reflect on the last decade in PC gaming in order to make informed, perfectly accurate don't quote me on this in 10 years predictions about the next decade in this lovely hobby.

My bet?