The great Acer Aspire One/Netbook challenge.

I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook, though very much not for playing LOTRO. Yet, why not try anyway.

I was able to download a trail client and get the game to work. The videos actually play better. The graphics setting is low, but on an 8.9 inch screen, you have a hard time noticing that. The frame rate is low, yet again, this isn't a setup designed to allow for raids and such, more for simple RP and low level travel.

So with 1 GB ram, 8 mbs of shared video ram, and a 1 GB SD card used as a paging file, and a 160 GB 5400 RPM HDD, it works! Being able to do it on such a tiny system is fun, might make a dinner at Panera more fun!

:eek:

8 MB of video ram?

You sure it isn't 80... or 800?

I don't think 8 is enough for games from 1995.

The BIOS says 8, and I can't seem to adjust it either. It is shared memory though, whose to say it isn't doing something interesting to get past the obvious issue with having only 8 MB of v-ram.

I want screenies.

I gotta see this.

If you can do it on the Acer One, then you should be able to do the same thing on any current gen netbook; MSI Wind, Acer One, Lenovo S10, Asus Eee, etc.

Patience has an Acer One and Clover has an Averatec N1000. So let's see how you did it!

I shall "effort" some screen shots, I'm going to convert the trail account and see if I can use my old SoA key to use my present Benjimir on the system. Don't even ask why I used a trail buddy Key, it was a long weekend.

Still, I dream of my favorite coffee shop, ice tea, and LOTRO...

Now what color is the Acer Patience has? Curious to know if she's a white, black, red, blue or....pink person.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

I shall "effort" some screen shots, I'm going to convert the trail account and see if I can use my old SoA key to use my present Benjimir on the system. Don't even ask why I used a trail buddy Key, it was a long weekend.

Still, I dream of my favorite coffee shop, ice tea, and LOTRO...

Now what color is the Acer Patience has? Curious to know if she's a white, black, red, blue or....pink person.

---

I'm sure it's not too much to ask the kind people at Turbine to supply the required assets to get this completed for your account, maybe for a free month, I'm sure they'd be delighted to help!

I definitely want to see screenshots, and can you take a piccy of it with a camera too, i want to see how the screen looks before I try and do the same.

Were you using Vista ReadyBoost with the memory card, or the LOTRO boost app that stored low res files on it? I did find that on my system, low wasn't too bad still considering what hardware it hard to work with, and I'd love to have something to auction and craft with out of my house!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noromir

I'm sure it's not too much to ask the kind people at Turbine to supply the required assets to get this completed for your account, maybe for a free month, I'm sure they'd be delighted to help!

I definitely want to see screenshots, and can you take a piccy of it with a camera too, i want to see how the screen looks before I try and do the same.

Were you using Vista ReadyBoost with the memory card, or the LOTRO boost app that stored low res files on it? I did find that on my system, low wasn't too bad still considering what hardware it hard to work with, and I'd love to have something to auction and craft with out of my house!

---

I was not using Vista. I did download the low res version of the client. I've been trying to find utilities that might aid the system akin to the readyboost, but no luck. I did tweak the paging file setting, reducing the amount on the main HDD, and maxing out the 1 GB SD card, so it is at least using some of that space I should think.

I'm going to try some heavy testing later today, see how easy play is, but off of my desktop, I'm having relearn keys without my Nostromo handy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

I was not using Vista. I did download the low res version of the client. I've been trying to find utilities that might aid the system akin to the readyboost, but no luck. I did tweak the paging file setting, reducing the amount on the main HDD, and maxing out the 1 GB SD card, so it is at least using some of that space I should think.

I'm going to try some heavy testing later today, see how easy play is, but off of my desktop, I'm having relearn keys without my Nostromo handy.

---

Hehe Nostromo, the only way to play a warden, if you catch my drift, one touch awesomeness!

This was the FlashBoost article I was talking about, but sadly it is Vista only. Sounds like you know what you are doing with XP if you put the pagefile on a SD card.

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/LOTRO_FlashBoost

I'm on right now, at work no less....

Inside the Pony, few if anybody inside, and I'm getting 28 FPS, outside in Bree, light traffic, between 3 and 14 FPS depending.

Again, 8.9 inch screen, hard to look bad inside. For RP, and crafting, and light work, very playable.

I'm trying to research a hack or BIOS mod that might help with the FDDs, Video memory, but in the end, this is intended to help at work, so I can't get to crazy. Sadly I'm going to have to hook my PDA up to take real pics of the system running it. But I'll post the screen shots on www.SonsOfNumenor.com shortly.

You know what, I've always figured it would be easy for MMO companies to make a mobile room for this type of machine.

The room is very very bare bone and a solo instance, where a user can view the auction, do some crafting and even check inventory and bank, and it could run on even lower end systems too. The provision is that you have limited usage, to ensure that people still did have to go in game to do community type things.

I guess the next step is to transition the auctioneer, inventory management and chat over to a xml based live system and allow people to trade and chat in game from mobile devices, I'd pay $5 buck more for that a month for sure, or even sit through adverts etc.

However, something about this doesn't seem very middle earthy to me, I dunno, but it would be good for MMO's in general.

One of the nice things about LOTRO's old AC2 legacy, the Very Low Settings are very resource friendly. I'd love to have netbook able to use my second account just to sort through the mail, inventory items, and work the AH.

I have played LOTRO on some low end machines, but I think that is lower than anything I have tried. (1GB RAM, and a nVidia 6150 integral GPU, 5-30fps in Very Low)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Noromir

You know what, I've always figured it would be easy for MMO companies to make a mobile room for this type of machine.

The room is very very bare bone and a solo instance, where a user can view the auction, do some crafting and even check inventory and bank, and it could run on even lower end systems too. The provision is that you have limited usage, to ensure that people still did have to go in game to do community type things.

I guess the next step is to transition the auctioneer, inventory management and chat over to a xml based live system and allow people to trade and chat in game from mobile devices, I'd pay $5 buck more for that a month for sure, or even sit through adverts etc.

However, something about this doesn't seem very middle earthy to me, I dunno, but it would be good for MMO's in general.

---

Nah, just put a web interface on the AH, and allow people to bid that way :)

OK, we have screen shots, if they don't work here, or to view the entire thing at your lieseure, visit www.SonsOfNumenor.com, we have user galleries and the album is there.

http://sonsofnumenor.com/gal01/album...t00009%7E0.jpg

http://sonsofnumenor.com/gal01/album...nShot00007.jpg

http://sonsofnumenor.com/gal01/album...nShot00005.jpg

http://sonsofnumenor.com/gal01/album...nShot00003.jpg
http://sonsofnumenor.com/gal01/album...t00002%7E0.jpg

Realize too, that these screen shots are actually bigger on an 15 inch monitor, than they are on the actual system. On the Acer, they look sharper, more lush, if that is the right word.

That's about what my old Pentium 4 2.5GHz 1GB RAM Ati Radeon 9250 (PCI card, not PCI-Express) looked like.

Looks better than my main machine :)

Nice work, let me see if I can get this running on something I have here to!

Whoa, who'd figure. That's proof of just how friendly LOTRO's code is.

Kudos for the experiment. After that, I'll try to run the game on my palmtop =)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by elosefast

That's about what my old Pentium 4 2.5GHz 1GB RAM Ati Radeon 9250 (PCI card, not PCI-Express) looked like.

---

Old? I still play on a Pentium 4 2.5 Ghz, with 2 GB of ram, and an ATI 1950 GT running off an AGP slot.

Heck, it has the same first install of Windows XP Pro on the same 120 GB HDD. Never re-installed, etc. Treat'em right, they run well.

Now somebody a few months ago, managed to get LOTRO to run, by way of a remote access program, on a Windows based smartphone. That was amazing to see.

The thing here is that my Aspire One only cost $350. Total. Best little machine since my Fujitus B2130. Some say we are doomed to see an X-Box release, but I think the real market is in laptops and netbooks. They outsell PCs, fit a tighter range of hardware, and turn-over faster than desktop PCs. I think there is a huge market for netbook and laptop friendly games.

Some capstone notes.

System:
Acer Aspire One.
1.6 Ghz Intel Atom CPU
1 GB Ram shared with video needs.
8 MB video ram, drawn from the main 1 GB.
1 GB SD Card, not a high speed type either, 950 MB set as paging file.
160 GB 5400 SCSI HDD, 1050 MB set as paging file.
Windows XP Home, SP2.

FPS:
Bree, outside Prancing Pony: Averaged about 7 FPS.
Bree, mapping circle outside west gate: 14 FPS standing, 4 moving on horse.
Bree, inside Prancing Pony: High of 47 FPS, average of 30.
Connectivity:
I've been running it off a slow connection through the Ethernet at work, and have also been able to run it equally well using the wireless G connection off a simple netgear hub.

LOTRO Client:
Whatever the current Mine of Moria client is that Turbine is letting people download.

The client installed, auto-set the graphics, and they remain unchanged from that. Everything is set to low from what I've noticed.

I notice on exit, the HDD spins like mad, loading back into Windows.

I'll have to try using a USB flash drive set to fun as a paging file.

I'll be loading it up to try on my Sapphire Blue 120GB (though it actually came with a 160GB HDD, as many of the AA1's produced after around October did, despite claiming to be a 120GB model) Aspire One in the morning.

If you're sticking with XP, grab eBoostr at http://www.eboostr.com/ It's a program that does the same thing as Vista's Ready Boost. It lets you use a SD Card for your pagefile, instead of the slower hard disk. Many users at www.aspireoneuser.com have claimed good results.

The report on LOTRO in the "Games" forum of the aspireoneuser site wasn't promising. But really, if it's playable enough to let me pick up my ore and scholar consigments every coupla days, that's really all I need my AA1 to do.

If you have a large USB drive handy, perhaps you'd be better off installing LOTRO directly to the USB drive and running from there. It should greatly reduce your battery and drive usage, and greatly speed up texture loading, improving performance, especially while moving. I've been planning to do this for my main computer at home, but I'll need a 16GB drive to cover the high-res textures. You'd need much less to do low-end textures.

For what it's worth, I've run LOTRO on an old Thinkpad T23. I think it had better stats, but wierd graphics issues. For some reason, the game was unable to draw many ground textures. It was unnerving, and cool at the same time to be running around in mid-air, while seeing all the texture tricks used to construct the world... If you'd like to see what I mean, check out my posts in the tech forums here.

rushl

Quote:

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Originally Posted by DougHillman

I'll be loading it up to try on my Sapphire Blue 120GB (though it actually came with a 160GB HDD, as many of the AA1's produced after around October did, despite claiming to be a 120GB model) Aspire One in the morning.

If you're sticking with XP, grab eBoostr at http://www.eboostr.com/ It's a program that does the same thing as Vista's Ready Boost. It lets you use a SD Card for your pagefile, instead of the slower hard disk. Many users at www.aspireoneuser.com have claimed good results.

The report on LOTRO in the "Games" forum of the aspireoneuser site wasn't promising. But really, if it's playable enough to let me pick up my ore and scholar consigments every coupla days, that's really all I need my AA1 to do.

---

The odd thing is that I forced the system to use the SD card as paging just by adjusting down the settings for the main HDD. But if it works better, so much the better.

The second Acer I bought for the spouse and mother of my two kids (I named Benjimir after Benjamin my two and half year old son when I was working many hours away during the weekdays most of the last two years) her unit was only supposed to have 120, but in setting it up, I found it had a 160 GB drive.

The other notes would be that I remove all bloat software, have a memory cleaning program, run Scandisk08, and have the OS theme turned to Windows Classic with no menu effects. Much as I would do if I had Vista.

Battery life isn't an issue, I have the six cell battery and can get either four or five hours of run-time in the game, or nearly 12 hours of general use.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

I shall "effort" some screen shots, I'm going to convert the trail account and see if I can use my old SoA key to use my present Benjimir on the system. Don't even ask why I used a trail buddy Key, it was a long weekend.

Still, I dream of my favorite coffee shop, ice tea, and LOTRO...

Now what color is the Acer Patience has? Curious to know if she's a white, black, red, blue or....pink person.

---

Hers is the Sapphire Blue model, but she's skinned it. it's also the 8GB SSDD version.

I have the Lenovo S10 ideapad, same guts as the Acer One but a few more options.
10.2" screen
Intel Atom 270 1.6Ghz
160 GB HDD
1.5GB RAM (I'll be kicking it up to 2.5 shortly)
Intel GMA 64MB (shared)

I installed off the game disks so I have the high-res version installed. Using a USB DVD the install was pretty rough (~2 Hours). You could probably DL the low-res client in the same amount of time.

Results
Very Low 25-34 FPS. (15 in combat v multiple mobs)
Low 20-27 FPS (10 in combat v multiple mobs)
Medium 15-23 (6 in combat v multiple mobs)

I was able to 'play' rather well. I took a new character through the intro and then took a walk to Bree.

http://i395.photobucket.com/albums/p...g?t=1233074621


Thanks for this thread Constock. I'm sure a good many people have just found a new use for their netbooks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

If you can do it on the Acer One, then you should be able to do the same thing on any current gen netbook; MSI Wind, Acer One, Lenovo S10, Asus Eee, etc.

Patience has an Acer One and Clover has an Averatec N1000. So let's see how you did it!

---

I got Lotro to run on my HP Mini 1000. Patches of the landscape would not render, and it was slow, but it did run.

My son playing lotro on an early computer:

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/f...ant_abacus.jpg

*note the color upgrade and large screen display*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Thanks for this thread Constock. I'm sure a good many people have just found a new use for their netbooks.

---

:eek:

Its OK, I'll recover.

;)

Actually the frame rates are rather good on your system. Must be the extra ram and SSDD to be sure. A little bit of WiFi, and a person is in business anyplace. Now if we can just get somebody to try the game on an airplane or cruise ship......

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Hers is the Sapphire Blue model, but she's skinned it. it's also the 8GB SSDD version.

---

I have another skin coming in the mail shortly, too. :D The blue is my least favorite of the colors (I *really* wanted the brown, would have settled for pink or white) but blue was the only color available when I bought it.

Anyway, my A110 w/8Gb SSD has 1.5Gb of RAM; that model comes with 512Mb stock, but I upgraded it through the nerve-wracking process you have to go through to do so. The Acer motherboards will support up to 1.5Gb; it has 512Mb onboard plus an expansion slot, so if you have a 1Gb model, it's possible to pull the 512Mb that came with it and replace it with a 1Gb stick.

I haven't tried to install LOTRO because of the limitation of the 8Gb SSD drive. I may upgrade the SSD to a larger one, but knowing me will never get around to it. I've also considered getting a very fast 16Gb SD card for the left-hand slot. The 8Gb SSD that came on this Acer is known for being sluggish; it might be fine with Linpus, which shipped with it, but I blew that off in favor of a very stripped-down version of XP.

Finally, this site's forums have been a tremendous resource for general info, tweaks, and info on mods: http://www.aspireoneuser.com. They have a whole forum dedicated to running games on the Acer One.

I am not responsible for any trouble anyone gets into trying to mod their Acers. :D And honestly, replacing the RAM is not for the faint of heart either, so read up on it thoroughly before attempting it!

-Meghan

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Patience

...The blue is my least favorite of the colors (I *really* wanted the brown, would have settled for pink or white) but blue was the only color available when I bought it.

---

Is that a hint of impatience? Couldn't wait for the color you wanted huh? ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

:eek:

Its OK, I'll recover.

;)

Actually the frame rates are rather good on your system. Must be the extra ram and SSDD to be sure. A little bit of WiFi, and a person is in business anyplace. Now if we can just get somebody to try the game on an airplane or cruise ship......

---

I don't know howI did that. Sorry :) It must be the effects of watching too much History channel. I was watching something about the Comstock load and became confuzzilated!

I would assume the extra .5Gb ram helps a good deal but the lenovo is also the fastest of the current crop of netbooks. I'll be interested to see how much, if any, things improve when I bump the RAM to 2.5GB.

Oh, and Blue is one of my favorite colors.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

I don't know howI did that. Sorry :) It must be the effects of watching too much History channel. I was watching something about the Comstock load and became confuzzilated!

I would assume the extra .5Gb ram helps a good deal but the lenovo is also the fastest of the current crop of netbooks. I'll be interested to see how much, if any, things improve when I bump the RAM to 2.5GB.

Oh, and Blue is one of my favorite colors.

---

Fear not, there are vastly worse ways my screen name can be misspelled. We might have wondered what you were watching had you done so! :eek:

What I need now is a wireless mouse. Or one of the touch screen mods.

Sapience,
How easy is it to self upgrade the memory on the ideapad?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dell8400p4

8 MB of video ram?

You sure it isn't 80... or 800?

I don't think 8 is enough for games from 1995.

---

Are you kidding me? In 1995 I was sporting a souped up 486DX 120MHz with an Orchid Kelvin 64 VLB graphics Card (plugged directly into the CPU's data bus) with 2 MB of RAM. Who needed 3d acceleration? Not me. That card rocked at "Star Wars: Tie Fighter".

I upgraded that in 1997 to an ATI Expert@Work with a staggering 8 MB of RAM on board. My friends were drooling.

Seriously though, it's easy to forget how far graphics processing has come in such a short time. Real 3d accelerators only started building up momentum in the late 90's. I believe that Nvidia's first, the NV1, was released in 1995, and it was pretty basic and had little support. The Voodoo 1 was I think in 1996. Before then, most video cards did little more than write pixels to the monitor. The CPU did all the rendering. As a result, they only needed enough ram to store a pixel map.

With these netbooks with their integrated graphics, they are not doing much processing on the graphics cards and they don't display a lot of eye candy effects. As a result, they don't need the video RAM either.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jugger181

Sapience,
How easy is it to self upgrade the memory on the ideapad?

---

It's no different than a standard notebook. Remove two small screws and pop off the cover. You'll have both the single memory slot and the HDD bay exposed. The memory is held in by two small tension tabs just like a full sized note. It supports DDR2 667mhz (PC2 5300) upto 2GB. 512MB is built into the MB. And on a related note there are similar fan/mod community forums for the S10 as well if you're curious about it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

Fear not, there are vastly worse ways my screen name can be misspelled. We might have wondered what you were watching had you done so! :eek:

What I need now is a wireless mouse. Or one of the touch screen mods.

---

You mean... you can get a mod that would allow a person to use touch control in LOTRO?

Like... I push the skill I wanna use, and it works?

That would be so sweet...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Valinerya

You mean... you can get a mod that would allow a person to use touch control in LOTRO?

Like... I push the skill I wanna use, and it works?

That would be so sweet...

---

There are some fairly involved mods for these little systems, most of which involve putting an overlay over the screen, that give you touch-screen functionality. I'm early in researching this stuff, but as you can imagine, there is a fast growing after-market supply chain. But some of these mods require soldering, which is often where I'll draw the line.

But again, these dinky little systems are $350. Two people in my company have bought them in the last three weeks because they are so bloody cheap, and frankly they do about all you could want out of such a small package.

And for us? They play LOTRO well enough to make it worth doing, so much the better!

Interesting update. I bumped my RAM to 2GB (the 945 chipset ignores everything beyond that so my 2.5G is capped at 2 accessible).

What it did allow was a bump in video ram from 64MB to 128MB (this again is on the Lenovo S10) after a Bios bump.

Low with most advanced graphics enabled is now possible but distant imposters must be turned off. I'm guessing what I see with them turned on is what Floon saw with some patches of the scenery not loading. Turn it off and everything works fine.

Since all netbooks have roughly the same guts with tiny variances in chipsets I'm willing to bet anyone with an Acer One, Lenovo s10, HP 1000, Averatec N1000, or Asus Eee can achieve similar results. It's playable if you're willing to tweak things a little.

What sort of framerate are you getting on low now? could you raid?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Since all netbooks have roughly the same guts with tiny variances in chipsets I'm willing to bet anyone with an Acer One, Lenovo s10, HP 1000, Averatec N1000, or Asus Eee can achieve similar results. It's playable if you're willing to tweak things a little.

---

I was in Moria when I tried, where we don't really have distant imposters. I'm guessing that the two terrain heightmaps made it unhappy.

I ran though Moria ok, but man did it crush my FPS. I went from 20 zoning in to 4 inside.

I did see the missing tiles at one point after the thing went into powersave mode and I kicked it back out.

(You know people are going to wonder if we really work in the same building)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

(You know people are going to wonder if we really work in the same building)

---

I think people realize I'm most tolerable at a considerable distance, preferably at distances measured by the ping program.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by floon

I think people realize I'm most tolerable at a considerable distance, preferably at distances measured by the ping program.

---

To which distance really doesn't matter, since you can ping your localhost, anyone on your LAN, or any external address, regardless of location.

However, if you mean at least 20 tracert hops, then maybe we're onto something. :P

I have to ask this. I tried to run LOTRO on my notebook, and it would lock up every time I tried to log in. The message in the log said I did not have the video resources to run the game.

I a Dell Vostro 1500
Core 2 Duo (1.4 gig each)
106 gig HD (rest is dual booted with Linux)
Intel integrated graphics
2 gig Ram

From what I have read, I have as much or more then these netbooks, so why can't I run LOTRO. I spend 32 hours a week at a second job mostly here and brousing the net. I would LOVE to spend that farming nodes!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mac173

I have to ask this. I tried to run LOTRO on my notebook, and it would lock up every time I tried to log in. The message in the log said I did not have the video resources to run the game.

I a Dell Vostro 1500
Core 2 Duo (1.4 gig each)
106 gig HD (rest is dual booted with Linux)
Intel integrated graphics
2 gig Ram

From what I have read, I have as much or more then these netbooks, so why can't I run LOTRO. I spend 32 hours a week at a second job mostly here and brousing the net. I would LOVE to spend that farming nodes!

---

As a guess I'd say the Intel GMA in your Vostro is the issue. Not all Intel integrated graphics chips are the same. None are great, but some are designed for very basic functionality. I'm guessing that's your issue.

Well, that was the last vestage of hope for keeping Vista on this laptop. I am already dual booting (in Linux now in fact) and if I cannot game at all on this comp, Ubuntu can do everything else I need.

DANG, you got my hopes up for some LOTRO love at work............

This gets my mind turned towards being the first known person to log into the game from a list of odd places. Football games, cruise ships, airplanes, McDonalds, anyplace WiFi can be found.

Hmmmm, netbooks, WiFi, screen shots...I smell CONTEST! :D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

This gets my mind turned towards being the first known person to log into the game from a list of odd places. Football games, cruise ships, airplanes, McDonalds, anyplace WiFi can be found.

Hmmmm, netbooks, WiFi, screen shots...I smell CONTEST! :D

---

Sounds interesting. But honestly, do we really want to know where some people play? :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Sounds interesting. But honestly, do we really want to know where some people play? :)

---

Hey, I don't want to know some of the place I play!

Think of it as "where I get my.lotro.com" thing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by mac173

I have to ask this. I tried to run LOTRO on my notebook, and it would lock up every time I tried to log in. The message in the log said I did not have the video resources to run the game.

I a Dell Vostro 1500
Core 2 Duo (1.4 gig each)
106 gig HD (rest is dual booted with Linux)
Intel integrated graphics
2 gig Ram

From what I have read, I have as much or more then these netbooks, so why can't I run LOTRO. I spend 32 hours a week at a second job mostly here and brousing the net. I would LOVE to spend that farming nodes!

---

It runs great on my Vostro 1500, but I have the 8600GT mobile in mine. You can probably contact Dell and still get one. Looking at the "Parts for My Dell" site, they've got one: http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/p...chassisid=8543 but it's wicked expensive.

I'd like to see this on the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 (which has a 1280x800 display and GMA 500 card). It's a little larger than most netbooks, and I'm not sure if the 1GB of RAM can be upgraded.

Installing on my new s10 as we speak

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jugger181

Installing on my new s10 as we speak

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Two things you should do as soon as you can.

1 - Reboot and go into the BIOS. Tell it to load defaults and save. Reboot.

This will bump you from 64MB Video Ram to 128MB

2- As soon as you can afford to, grab a 2GB PC2 5300 (6400 will work too, it falls back to 667 nicely and is sometimes cheaper, I paid $35 for mine) laptop memory stick.

The performance boots on the S10 you get from these are very noticeable.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

Sounds interesting. But honestly, do we really want to know where some people play? :)

---

hehe...big screen monitor....wireless kb/mouse...open bathroom door....nuff said????

:D

My wife has been wanting an Aspire One for some time now, so after some overtime at work we went out and bought one this weekend.

Of course, after reading this thread I just had to install and try it out..
Out of the box with no mods or tweaks to the Aspire...

http://www.freefall.ca/AspireLotro/hall.jpg

Settings were as follows:
http://www.freefall.ca/AspireLotro/settings1.jpg

http://www.freefall.ca/AspireLotro/settings2.jpg


Frame rates about the same - definitely not for the big fights! :)

The rest of the settings...

http://www.freefall.ca/AspireLotro/settings3.jpg

http://www.freefall.ca/AspireLotro/settings4.jpg

lol i've gotten this game to run on an old dell dimension 8300 desktop.

P4 2.6
512mb ram
integrated mx 440

very low settings and some nvidia tweaks and got about 15fps average.

And the race for the statistically worst LOTRO rig continues unabated!

I see the screen shots, take a few myself, and I keep thinking: That's bad. Yet, cute in a way. As with pizza, some LOTRO is better than no LOTRO.

Just reporting back with the results of my FrankenAcer, which was originally an 8Gb SSD/512Mb RAM Linux version, but is now a 1.5Gb stripped down XP version (still 8Gb SSD).

LOTRO runs really well from a Transcend Class 6 SDHC card. I haven't fought anything yet, but I logged into Esteldin, took a horse to Trestlebridge where I saw the only real jerkiness (the fires) then another to West Bree where I ran around with little to no lag. Overall if I was going to log in and just hang out and play in low-risk situations it's totally playable. I was very pleased with the performance especially considering it's from an SDHC card!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

As with pizza, some LOTRO is better than no LOTRO.

---

Very much in agreement here! (I might even add that as a quote to my signature ;) )

(oops - guess I did ...)

I guess I had better get on the ball and get it installed. :) I did manage to get DDO downloaded and installed and it runs quite nicely on my Averatec N1000 right out of the box with no mods.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Clover

I guess I had better get on the ball and get it installed. :) I did manage to get DDO downloaded and installed and it runs quite nicely on my Averatec N1000 right out of the box with no mods.

---

Well then I can make a hat trick. All of our current games (AC1,LOTRO,DDO) will run on most netbooks it seems.

I'm running LOTRO on my BlackBerry Storm.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by klyth

I'm running LOTRO on my BlackBerry Storm.

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Don't lie. No-one bought a bought a blackberry Storm. :D

I had a 1GB stick handy so i installed that. I did the bios trick to get 128mb of vid ram. Running windows 7. I get on average between 8fps(fighting mobs) and 27fps (21st hall AH)

I was able to download and patch LOTRO this afternoon with no issues at all. I logged right in. I was able to get the graphics settings up to low, they were very low by default and here is my picture! :)

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_hMgoQbcodtw/SY...nShot00002.jpg

What a fun challenge. I would have never thought to try to install LOTRO on this little computer, I got it for work. I guess it is a good thing LOTRO is my work!:D

Boys and girls......

I'm running Lotro on a 13 inch Mac laptop with Boot camp (AKA windows XP for macs.) It's one of the ones that you can't actually get a video card for :D

*Takes a bow*

WEll my computer is so old the monitor has green text with a black background... and an 8inch floppy, yeah with the bendy thing to "keep" it in during an earthquake, that reads my cd's... true story. >.>

pfft..

<img src="http://www.digitalutopia.org/lotroc64.jpg"/>

:D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

pfft..

http://www.digitalutopia.org/lotroc64.jpg

:D

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Hey -- I got one of those somewhere too...
Wonder if a Timex computer will handle it...

*looks around and suddenly feels REALLY old*

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Olgarlen

Hey -- I got one of those somewhere too...
Wonder if a Timex computer will handle it...

*looks around and suddenly feels REALLY old*

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Sorry...farthest I go back is a Commodore PET....the joy of cassette tape drives lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

pfft..

http://www.digitalutopia.org/lotroc64.jpg

:D

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Nice, but in your case it isn't FPS, its FPDay!

Just remember LOAD "*" ,8,1 is considered an exploit and violation of TOS! :cool:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

LOAD "*" ,8,1

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Ah, the memories. I remember when loading a game meant sending the load commands and then going to find a snack or something else to do for 30 minutes while you waited for the game to load.

And, games on cassette tape FTW.

Now the real question is how do we go even faster? Overclock the cpu?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jugger181

Now the real question is how do we go even faster? Overclock the cpu?

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Its a thought, but the only way to liquid cool my little Acer is to pour water down the keyboard. I shant do that, lest somebody were to say I "....choose poorly."

http://random-squeegee.com/knight.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by auximenes

Ah, the memories. I remember when loading a game meant sending the load commands and then going to find a snack or something else to do for 30 minutes while you waited for the game to load.

And, games on cassette tape FTW.

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Comstrike

Nice, but in your case it isn't FPS, its FPDay!

Just remember LOAD "*" ,8,1 is considered an exploit and violation of TOS! :cool:

---

pfft the LOAD "*" ,8,1 hack is so yesterday...real hackerz use 20 GOTO 10 :P

Those were the days...back when the C64 could totally destroy PC games on the graphics & audio side. And then, when the PC finally caught up due to VGA graphics and an 8-bit Sound Card, the real fun began. Like having to use a boot disk and becoming an expert in config.sys/autoexec.bat in order to free up as much conventional memory as humanly possible to play some games.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

pfft the LOAD "*" ,8,1 hack is so yesterday...real hackerz use 20 GOTO 10 :P

Those were the days...back when the C64 could totally destroy PC games on the graphics & audio side. And then, when the PC finally caught up due to VGA graphics and an 8-bit Sound Card, the real fun began. Like having to use a boot disk and becoming an expert in config.sys/autoexec.bat in order to free up as much conventional memory as humanly possible to play some games.

---

Oh god .... your giving me horrible memories of HIMEM and QEMM and having to tweak the hell outta them to play wing commander and tie fighter and such haha.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by skataneric

Oh god .... your giving me horrible memories of HIMEM and QEMM and having to tweak the hell outta them to play wing commander and tie fighter and such haha.

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Yeah! But if you think that Tie Fighter was bad, you should've tried Falcon 3.0 w/ the Mig 29 xpac. If memory serves it was something insane like 615 KB conventional memory. There were times I felt like that German kid in the You Tube video lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sapience

If you can do it on the Acer One, then you should be able to do the same thing on any current gen netbook; MSI Wind, Acer One, Lenovo S10, Asus Eee, etc.

---

I have it 'happily' working on my MSI Wind clone (Advent 4211). I'll see if I can photograph it, but it only took a little tweaking to get the display correct. It runs relatively smoothly! Great for when I have my other account online to port me around.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

Like having to use a boot disk and becoming an expert in config.sys/autoexec.bat in order to free up as much conventional memory as humanly possible to play some games.

---

Oh man, what a PITA that process could be. Remember deciding if you really needed to have a mouse or could you use only the keyboard, in order to free up a few more bits of memory by not loading the mouse driver?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by auximenes

Oh man, what a PITA that process could be. Remember deciding if you really needed to have a mouse or could you use only the keyboard, in order to free up a few more bits of memory by not loading the mouse driver?

---

This just makes me feel old...not necessarily because of the DOS games themselves, but the very fact that I have a license to say "You think setting up x game to run is tough? Back in my day it was a lot tougher" lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

Yeah! But if you think that Tie Fighter was bad, you should've tried Falcon 3.0 w/ the Mig 29 xpac. If memory serves it was something insane like 615 KB conventional memory. There were times I felt like that German kid in the You Tube video lol

---

Falcon 3.0 is one of my all time favs. True you had to really know how to hack your memory to get it to run well post M29 Xpac, but then what do you expect from a game that almost mandated you own a flight computer to plot your bombing runs and loiter times?

Nothing was more frustrating than getting caught in a furball and trying to do fuel burns in your head while trying not to get blown out of the sky.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sapience

Falcon 3.0 is one of my all time favs. True you had to really know how to hack your memory to get it to run well post M29 Xpac, but then what do you expect from a game that almost mandated you own a flight computer to plot your bombing runs and loiter times?

Nothing was more frustrating than getting caught in a furball and trying to do fuel burns in your head while trying not to get blown out of the sky.

---

Agreed all the extra effort was well worth it. I also tried Falcon 4.0, but other than the graphics I wasn't too impressed with it - too many bugs, and the idea of a mouse cursor in the cockpit just seemed a bit wrong.

just a minor update to the OP (not really since I'm on an S10 and not an AA1).

I was bored this past weekend and managed to install Windows 7 and Lotro on my S10. Both ran very well and I did pick up about 3 FPS for my efforts.

I am on windows 7 ultimate as well but do not know about the fps boost as i have been running it from day 1

Sapience, also what is your windows score on the s10 in win7

I ran my Acer Saturday night on batteries, using wireless (G,) and found it a fully satisfying time. That said, I kept to Bree, did mainly recruiting, RP, and admin stuff with my Kinship (the Sons of Numenor, now recruiting!) but it was worth playing, no question.

Today I ran a trial version of Diskeeper 09, and it has helped speed things a bit too. Indeed, I highly recommend that program regardless.

This week, I'm going to Panera to see how things go. Might see if I can click a pic in front of the fireplace. Hmmm, I sense a theme building....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jugger181

Sapience, also what is your windows score on the s10 in win7

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2.0. The HDD is the lowest score. The next highest was 2.5 on the processor. Believe it or not the 3D/Gaming Video Score was over 3.0. Rather impressive I thought. Highest item overall was the memory at 4.5.

As a side note, I was also able to run the distant imposters while under Windows 7. Something that resulted in some serious nasties under Windows XP.

Mine pulled in a 2.3 overall
proc 2.3
Mem 4.5 1.5gb installed
Graphics(aero) 2.3
Gaming graphics 3.0
Hard disk 2.9

how much do these lil netbooks with wifi go for that you all are running lotro on?


my outside the house job is driving an airport shuttle and there are times i sit for hours down at the airport bored to tears.

seems like one of these lil babys would be perfect for those tedious times

:D

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Darej

how much do these lil netbooks with wifi go for that you all are running lotro on?


my outside the house job is driving an airport shuttle and there are times i sit for hours down at the airport bored to tears.

seems like one of these lil babys would be perfect for those tedious times

:D

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Look up "netbook" at http://www.newegg.com :)

You should see the Eee PC, Aspire One, S10, etc.

My Acer Aspire One, with 1 GB ram, 160 GB HDD, and a 6 cell battery cost me $379. That is good for three to four hours online for my use. They sell a 9 cell battery, which looks a bit odd, but lasts 30% longer than even my system. But they cost a bit more.

Staples has the Aspires, as does Wal-Mart that I've seen personally.

hmm...what about a car adapter?

ie....can they be run off a vehicles accessory socket?

:D

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Darej

hmm...what about a car adapter?

ie....can they be run off a vehicles accessory socket?

:D

---

They can be but they don't come with one. You could pick up a $60 converter at Wal-mart.

I have an S-10. It's a tiny bit larger than the Acer Aspire One but you jump from an 8.9" Screen to a 10.2". Mostly the specs are the same with a couple of exception.

1.6GHz N270 Intel Atom Processor
1GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
Windows XP Home Edition (SP3)
10.2" WSVGA AntiGlare TFT with integrated camera 1024x600
160GB 5400rpm hard drive
Intel GMA 950 Integrated Graphics
Broadcom 11b/g Wi-Fi wireless and Bluetooth
4-in-1 Media card reader and ExpressCard slot
3-Cell Li-ion battery
Size: 9.8" x 7.2" x 1.2" (including feet)
Weight: 2.64 lbs (with 3-cell battery)

You can upgrade the RAM to 2GB, which is the largest of any of the netbooks as far as I know. It's also the easiest to upgrade in terms of RAM and HDD. Remove two screws and you get this: http://www.notebookreview.com/picture.asp?f=37193

Lenovo sells larger batteries, but they're not cheap. As listed you'll get about 2.5 hours general use. LOTRO will eat that up more quickly though.

Right now this runs about $350 at Lenovo's site. I got mine at the Circuit City near me on close out for $305.

Look at the HP1000 as well. It has far and away the best keyboard of any of the netbooks. I went with the Lenovo because it had the highest performance ratings of the current crop of netbooks.

just had a thought.....have any of you in the experiment tried using LotRO Flashboost?

i think it would improve things for you all alot..especially on the netbooks using 5400rom HDDs.

all you need is a readyboost capable (fast reading) usb flash drive.

the link in my sig will take you to the lorebook entry where a FAQ and link to download will be found.

:D

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10...4.html#addcomm

A Cnet article talking about nVida looking to fight for space inside netbooks.

I'm telling you, these netbooks could be utterly huge to gaming in general. Basically full featured systems, super portable, popular, etc.

Couple questions:

The GMA950 chip vs standard Intel integrated graphics, Much a difference?

Anyone try a 9300M based netbook yet?

How important to upgrade to 2GB, some it seems are not upgradable bast 1GB.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Comstrike

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10...4.html#addcomm

A Cnet article talking about nVida looking to fight for space inside netbooks.

I'm telling you, these netbooks could be utterly huge to gaming in general. Basically full featured systems, super portable, popular, etc.

---

To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to portable computers is to adopt a "modular" system - where instead of cramming more stuff into the system, they provide a variety of slots to the exterior of the system. Perhaps a compact PCI-E port combined with an "external" video card.

Even with notebooks, I understand the idea of trying to cram the best amount of stuff within the system itself, but laptops and especially netbooks really suffer from an upgrade ceiling.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia

To be honest, I think the best thing that could happen to portable computers is to adopt a "modular" system - where instead of cramming more stuff into the system, they provide a variety of slots to the exterior of the system. Perhaps a compact PCI-E port combined with an "external" video card.

Even with notebooks, I understand the idea of trying to cram the best amount of stuff within the system itself, but laptops and especially netbooks really suffer from an upgrade ceiling.

---

That kind of goes against the idea of a netbook of being all you need in a small package. A standard docking station would be great.

For me Netbooks remain about price. What I get for $350 is simply amazing. Plus I've fully equipped myself with carrying cases, and various accessories, for less than a "cheap" full sized laptop. Ironically, my old Fujitsu B2130 is about the same size, weight, and as cool looking, but cost $2000 new in 2000.

Being able to just login, spend some time RP'ing, recruiting for Sons of Numenor (which is welcoming new members) is more than enough for now.