Intel Graphics vs. ATI vs. NVIDIA

Basically, you need to know that Integrated graphics cards are not as good as dedicated graphics cards. Intel graphics are the worst. I would not bother with them and that is what the HP DV1000 uses. You will not be able to do any kind of serious gaming with it. The ATI Radeon Xpress 200M is an integrated card and does pretty good. It is your best choice if you are going to go with an integrated card. NVIDIA's cards are great. You won't be disappointed with those but they usually come in the higher end systems. As far as shared and dedicated memory it is not much of an issue. The shared memory in my system that I have with the Radeon Xpress 200M frankly makes little difference. Even with the 1GB I have the card just can't play the higher end games. I have done some research and I believe you might want to take a look at the Acer TravelMate 3200. It has a 14.1" screen (sorry, closest to 14" I could find) and has a Radeon 9700 dedicated graphics card. That is a pretty good one and would play most games you throw at it at this point in time. I believe this is worth taking a look at as Acer is known for good quality machines. Check it out at WWW.Acer.com. Good luck with your purchase. Just remember, stay away from Intel Integrated graphics. You'll be glad you did.

I am a student too, and I just bought a notebook. My biggest priority was portability, so I bought the Dell 700m. It is a 4 lb light weight laptop, and uses intel built in graphics. I mostly used my laptop for internet, but I have also used it for things like 3d modeling. The graphics card can handle CAD programs like solidworks with relative ease (however, realtime shading can bog things down a bit). Before this system, I had an old Dell desktop with an ATI 8500LE graphics card. Now for things like burning dvds or backing up data, the most important things are processor and hard disk speed. Graphics come into play when you need rendered graphics (like 3d modeling or video games). The most intensive game I ran on this laptop was GTA3, which worked OK untill I put resolution up all the way. The biggest differences between regular video cards and intel cards is not just memory, but built in features for rendering specific objects (like smoke) and powerful graphics processors which are neccessary for advanced games (you will never run Battlefield 2 or Doom 3 on intel graphics). If you have a little extra cash, I suggest you look at the Asus w3v (http://usa.asus.com/products4.aspx?l1=5&l2=61&l3=0&model=600&modelmenu=1),
which has an ati card but is still around 5.5 lb. However, if you do not think you will ever want to play cutting-edge games, then there is nothing wrong with intel graphics. (btw, although adding a lot of memory will greatly improve overall system performance, it will not bring intel graphics to the ati or nvidia level.)

Any onboard video is almost definitely a lesser quality than an add-on video card. Also, with the prices of hardware dropping every day, it would definitely be a good idea to pick up a newer [not brand new - prices are always inflated the first 6 months of a video card's release] video card, and if you're a gamer - nVidia is the way to go. If you're looking for audio/visual quality, I suggest ATI. If you are looking for a laptop as I think you mentioned, AlienWare makes the best machines on the market, and Monarch Computer makes a decent system for quite a lower cost - those are my personal experiences, so take it as you like.
A rule of thumb - if you are doing anything more than web browsing and sending email, you will need a decent video card - even if you've got a ton of memory on your system, without a good GPU [Graphics Processing Unit] you're going to wind up regretting not having bought one sooner or later...

Good luck with your search.

If you want to do any gaming at all you'll need a card with dedicated gfx.

I bought a dell inspiron 9300 in August for school and a little bit of gaming. I bought it from the U.S. and got a nVidia Geforce Go 6800. It's a great card. My laptop runs most games better than all the desktops I see. I've played battlefield 2, hl2, doom 3, battlefront 2, f.e.a.r., age of empires 3, civ 4, you name it, any new game out my system can play it on high.

The screens 17" which for class sorta sucks. I pretty much never take it out of my room. The inspiron 6000 is a 15" I think. My friend has one of those and the size is really nice. Just right for carrying around but not too small.

I used this site a lot when I was looking to buy a laptop. http://forum.notebookreview.com (sorry CNET it's just really good).

http://lowlymarine.blogspot.com/
This guy made an amazing FAQ/blog for buying a laptop. It has a great section that compares all the different laptop gfx cards so you know which is better. Does a x700 beat a 6800? etc

Good luck

First off I would not even conside the INTEL chip as an option it just doesn't stack up in the real world. Now second point try to find a system with as much dedicated video RAM as possible shared video memory is a very big negative, even in laptps. Now as far as ATI vs NVIDIA here is my experiences. They both make some grat graphics chipsets and for a destop (I'm not a gamer player) I would consider a card from either vendor. That said here is a major got ya to consider ATI does not release driver updates for their mobil (laptop) chipsets but NVIDIA does. That point alone would swing me to a laptop with the NVIDIA graphics every thing else being equal. I've had to suffer too long from a graphics driver issue on a several year old HP laptop. HP doesn't relese video driver updats (unlike some vendors like DELL). That leaves me with a driver related bug that no one supports. If it was a NVIDIA chip graphics I could go to their web site downlaod the latest driver and be fixed. There has been one Windows Udate driver release for my ATI chipset that did improve things so I only experiece the video issues about once a month instead of daily. I always hate using video drivers from the Windows Update site since more than once I have seen them hang a system where I have had to boot into VGA mode then roll back drivers.

Just my 2cents added to the discussion. Oh by the way while I only own one laptop I support a great deal more at work and have helped friends resolve issues on theirs. I suppose about a half dozen brands over the years perhaps 50-100 total laptops representing several dozed different models.

Ati is great with hi-def graphics and shaders for realistic graphics hands down,yet nvidia has great realism as well. Intel great but are better known for their processors. My pick is go with the greater ati graphics chip x1800xt,625mhz clock speed,512mb. Plus Ati has 59% of the market over nvidia. Please feel free to e-mail me at phillipdre@yahoo.com for futher info.

you cant go wrong with a nvidia
depends how much you want to spend...
for even light gaming or anything get a nvidia 6 series (6200, 6600, 6800)