Hardware: Laptops

Be advised that a laptop will not give you as much performance for your dollar as a desktop computer, and for serious multi-tabling a nice desktop is really the only way to fly. That said many well known players have excellent results with a good laptop especially when playing only one or two tournaments at a time. A laptop with a wireless card can allow you the freedom to move around the house. Take your computer with you on trips (most hotels have high speed wireless acess these days) and chase the kids or the dog without having to leave your game entirely.

When choosing a laptop most players find that a large display (15.4" or larger) and at least 512 MB of memory are the key to a good online poker machine. The laptops we have listed below are good examples of those things and they should work well for online poker under typical conditions.

The least expensive machine we recommend is a Compaq Presario from tigerdirect. Our experience with the HP items from them has so far been very good and the price is fantastic for the features that are included. For around $500 we haven't seen anything any better than this.

Compaq Presario C502US Notebook PC

The best mid-range options usually have a 17" screen and 1 GB of memory. The machine below includes a large hard drive and a 2.0 GHz processor, and should make most players very happy with it's performance. This is a good example of what to look for in a mid-range laptop.

Acer Aspire 9300-3716 Notebook PC

It is also possible to get a laptop computer with 1600x1200 resolution a rugged case that will withstand some punishment and all the bells and whistles to make it really scream. Custom built systems we have found through tigerdirect can run as high as $2,000 but if you are serious about online poker and you do a lot of traveling a really high quality machine is probably a good investment.

*As with our desktops we recommend Windows XP as your native operating system for now. You should be able to order your new machine with XP instead of Vista at no extra charge it's a much more stable operating system at the moment. All of the popular online poker rooms and software all run smoothly on Windows XP.