Best gaming laptop for 2009

Set up conference calls for free, record calls, even switch phones in the middle of a call. Ma Bell, eat your heart out. Full review. More info Check prices.

Changing focus points on the Ds is extremely easy—and the camera takes excellent photos, too. Video output contained impressively smooth images; and the built-in microphone picked up audio well in a crowded environment. More info Video Check prices. Twitter social media service, free We loved Twitter enough last year to include it on our Top list, and it has only grown stronger since.

More info. A 14mm-thick metallic-yet-rubbery case, a touch-inductive panel alongside the screen that lets you summon on-screen shortcuts, and an inductive-charging base station highlight this status symbol for business travelers. Whereas Google emphasizes a stark, quick-loading design and a list of highly relevant search results, Bing organizes its search results into Search Categories—subdivisions such as Web, Maps, Images, and Health. Full review Video Check prices. Amazingly, I find myself battling my wife—and the in-laws—for control of the mic.

Want a smaller TV? Full review Check prices. Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, prices vary With Windows 7, Microsoft hopes to put the bad press from Vista behind it.

Windows 7 smooths out a number of Vista annoyances User Account Control, anyone? Intel Core i7 processor series, prices vary When Intel launched its Core i7 line of chips last fall, desktops powered with these Nehalem-based processors quickly began to dominate our charts of top-performing power PCs. Early tests of the Core i7 laptop CPU point to similar results. And you can overclock some of the chips to an insane 6GHz or more; just make sure that your cooling is arctic.

Full review Video. With 2GB of onboard storage room for average-length books , this reader has everything but the faint rustling of paper pages turning. Text is crisp and tight, and the screen technology is noticeably better than in version one. The device charges via USB, and you can use it as a mass-storage device.

The Facebook site is a cross between your personal digital scrapbook, and a running discussion with your friends. On Facebook, you can post pretty much anything about yourself, from songs to photos to movies to religious beliefs, and then invite your friends to check it out.

In any case, Facebook has undeniably changed the way human beings interact with one another in the 21st century. With the credit-card-size Novatel Wireless MiFi and a wireless broadband plan, you can create your own hotspot wherever network coverage exists. This ultracompact Wi-Fi router lets up to five users share bandwidth from a single mobile broadband account via standard Wi-Fi utilities, without any special software—a real money saver for small groups of travelers.

Test videos we shot with the Zi8 had stellar image quality in well-lit settings. The only things holding it back are its sometimes-slow interface and controls. Otherwise, it runs circles around the pint-size competition. Full review Check prices Download. The many different partnerships, licensing agreements, and rivalries among content companies can sometimes make watching online video seem like stepping into the middle of a range war.

But Boxee consistently looks out for the interests of viewers, as evidenced by its continuing effort to show Hulu content, which offers commercial-supported streaming video of TV shows and movies. More info Download. I especially loved how I could easily shoot. Gaming runs more smoothly on the 3GS, making the iPhone a superior entertainment device. And being able to record video and upload directly to YouTube finally! A raft of high-end hardware including Beats sound that bumps up the bass , however, indicates that a PC can do the job in style.

More info Video App info. I'll never forget the first time a launcher launched a launcher. So, in there was roughly one major launcher.

Compare that today's plus. Games for Windows Live made our lives miserable, though it wasn't exactly a launcher, more of an arbitrary overlay and DRM hybrid that forced you into the Xbox Live ecosystem. I'll never forget the day it was patched out of Dark Souls. Praise the sun, etc. Piracy was definitely a hotter topic in this period.

SecuROM was pushing online authentication checks and limiting how many times we could use a CD key to install a game, which sounds like a nightmare from here. Spore required online authentication, initially limited to three total activations. Mass Effect was even worse : SecuROM required online activation every 10 days when it first launched on PC, though the three-activation limit wasn't a better solution.

I'll admit, as a poor college student, I was totally immersed in the world of ISOs and virtual disc drives, especially those lovely no-CD fixes to bypass disc checks. Being a pirate was easy. The virus-ridden horrors of early P2P programs like Limewire and Kazaa were buried by popular torrent sites, where downloads were faster and content was cleaner or at least easier to verify as such.

But was also the year that the founders of The Pirate Bay, one of the most popular torrent warehouses, were found guilty of assisting copyright infringement and sentenced to prison.

Around then you'd read the occasional horror story about some kid getting sued for millions of bucks because he downloaded an MP3. Do we prefer the old problems or the new problems? The Sims 3 Electronic Arts 2. World of Warcraft Blizzard, Activision 7. Spore Maxis, Electronic Arts 9. With Steam as the earliest source of daily gaming stats we can get a look at what people were still playing near the end of , just keep in mind Steam's library and audiences weren't representative of the entire industry.

Here's a peek at the top games on Steam on December 26, , as preserved by the Internet Archive. This snapshot certainly sends the message that multiplayer first-person shooters were still super popular. Audiosurf, Torchlight, and Killing Floor stand out as prominent indies. Today's Steam charts don't look terribly different except for a massive growth in players across all games and genres, with some good diversity and new genres peppered in: car soccer, survival games, MOBAs, farming sims, and a bit of battle royale.

Most accolades went to big budget projects from established studios and series. This run of Metacritic's highest-rated PC games for would be the middle of the pack in recent years, with a few exceptions. The PC has always been the best place for indie games, but it wasn't until the last decade that we saw those games catch fire in a big way.

Steam and XBLA brought smaller developers to a bigger stage, giving cerebral side-scrollers like Braid a place to thrive. Today, the PC is flooded with games of a similar calibur. I doubt a Terraria or Stardew Valley would stand out in the indie game market of today, where excellent games like Wargroove and Lost Ember show up and seemingly disappear in the same week.

PC gaming was 'dying' in Widespread digital distribution felt like a distant dream for some, and rightfully so. High-speed internet access was spreading, sure, but most Americans were still without. The Pew Research Center points to the higher adoption rate of smartphones to a stagnation of growth in home high-speed internet services.

Attention had shifted from PCs to consoles and the doe-eyed dreams of smartphone-driven lives. We were so naive. In the looming shadow of mobile technologies, expensive gaming PCs didn't quite fit. Publications took pause to analyze the state of our strange, seemingly arcane hobby.

There were tons of editorials like this one from IGN , which somewhat accurately points to microtransactions and subscription-based behemoths like WoW as the future. Fallout 3: Game Add-On Pack 2. Gaming Laptop Buyer's Guide. We pick the best gear to run Crysis, Fallout 3, WoW, and more!

In an effort to boost awareness about the cost-efficiency of Windows laptops, Microsoft has developed an ad-campaign called " Laptop Hunters ", wherein they follow prospective notebook owners in their hunt for the best bang for their buck, and when they ultimately come across the unit with their ideal feature set at the right price, Microsoft shells out the cash for it.

Microsoft's generosity got the IGN think tank working, and we thought it'd be a cool idea to present you, the readers, with some cost-conscious laptop recommendations of our own, with a few exceptions: they are all built for gaming, and we won't buy them for you.

YES NO. Was this article informative? In This Article. World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King. Release Date. Presented by truth. IGN Logo Recommends. Pokemon Blue Matt Kim God of War Michael Thompson 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.