Hey, I still have a laptop with Vista on it and it runs Sims 3 very well. And I have kept 7 on my desktop. If things work, I leave them alone.

I did purchase an Acer. It was reviewed to be the best budget laptop by several sites. It is also upgradable so in the future I can fix it up to play my games better. Right now I grabbed it because it got a good overall rating. If it doesn't play Sims 3 or 4 it will play 2 I'm sure.

My old laptop was a basic 2.5 year old Windows 7 Toshiba Satellite with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB HD, it cost about $500, and ran TS3 with all expansions as well as TS4 just fine. No dedicated graphics card though, so I generally kept the graphics at mid-level. I'm very disappointed in Toshiba lately though, that was my second Toshiba to have motherboard issues within the first 2 years. I hadn't been playing TS3 on the first one and it was even better than this last one in terms of specs, so I'm a little suspicious of Toshiba right now even though they used to be my favorite brand.

My new laptop is an HP Envy with 16GB, 1TB HD (I opted for a smaller drive with faster RPM because I also use it for my work) and and a 4GB dedicated graphics card. I guess technically it's a base-level gaming laptop and normally runs about $1100, but it was only $700 during Costco's Black Friday sale...



@HCAC I'm wary of Acer- I had two of their laptops previously and both had issues with the screen housing breaking so that you couldn't really open or close the lid. Are they better now?

I didn't get it yet. I hope it is good. I watched a lot of videos and read a ton of reviews in the 2 months I researched. I only ordered it yesterday when I got the rest of the money together for my birthday.

Our Toshiba laptop is from 2010 and it's excellent for Sims 2 (I play on all high settings) with a lot of CC. It runs hot. My pictures seem nice, though. I think Toshiba makes a quality product. My tv (an old one from probably 10 years old or more) has a gorgeous screen.

The machine I am using at present is a HP Pavilion Elitebook 8440p. It's several years old and a bit battered (I bought it second hand) but it plays Sims 3 better than anything I have ever used, even with all the EPs and SPs installed and a whole lot of mods. Its not perfect, but I can live with a little bit of lagging after the bad performance and crashing I had on my previous laptop. If I see another like it I shall certainly buy it to keep for when this one finally gives up the ghost.