Half good laptops? any suggestions?

[tattoocheeseburger]

I really don't know much about computers when it comes to what can run what game OK. My wife play wow literally 2-4 times a month so we are by no means hardcore gamers imo, but for the stay in and relax days mmos are a fun way to do something together without breaking bank. We are going to be trying out games like Rift, Tera and blade & soul in the near future but as of right now our computers cant run them.

Now both our computers are really out of date, 8+ years old, as of right now we play WoW on lowest everything, just because our computers cant run any higher graphics lol.

We were looking into laptops, are there any half good laptops out there? like would the common 450$ laptops you can get now run any of the games mentioned above without being on low graphics? Or does anyone have any suggestions on a good laptop for both of us?

Thanks

[chazus]

I recently picked up this laptop for $300 with pretty much the same intent you do. I got it really just to play games when on vacation or away from home. Nothing special. I did a review of it here. I wouldn't recommend it now, at the $500 price point, but something similar may work well.

[anyaka21]

The challenge you might run into is that a lot of low end type laptops are relying on the intel chipset as their graphics processor, in which case, a lot of current mmo's won't play or do even worse than WoW's 8 year old engine. Thus, when looking, make sure it has an actual graphics card in there whether is a atim-m type or an nvidea-m type, otherwise you might just be s.o.l.

[tattoocheeseburger]

Thank you chazus & anuaka21, pretty much the answers I was looking for.

Just sucks how you can get a OK laptop for the price (or close) to a better desktop lol.

Edit: And as for my 8 year old machines doing better I don't know about that they are:

Windows XP pro
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2.00 GHZ
2.00 GB of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series

Computer 2:

Windows Vista
iIntel Core2 Quad CPU Q6600 2.4 GHZ
3.00 GB of Ram
ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT

wow on low on both, and LFR forget it, I can get in, but settings so low I cant see if im standing in anything and im lagging to the point I cant heal properly or get high dps thanks to lag lol