Minimalist Laptop Request

I want to take up Rocksmith to start learning guitar, but my gaming rig has the chair with arms and is nestled into its niche, which means slinging a 2 foot stick across my lap will not work. So I’m thinking I’ll pick up a laptop that’s “powerful” enough to run Steam and Rocksmith, that I can put in the living room with a stool. Problem is, I don’t know enough about the lower end of the equipment spectrum; it’s just not what I look at when I’m replacing equipment. Anyone have any recommendations on what I’d need to get buy to get by?

I'm confused. Can't you just move the stool next to your gaming rig?

Disco, pretty much anything that has better than an Atom processor seems to work OK with Rocksmith/Rocksmith 2014. So a cheapish i3 with Intel integrated graphics apparently works. The minimum requirements for the game are pretty low.

From Steam wrote:

MINIMUM:
OS:Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
Processor:2.66 GHz Intel Core2 Duo E6750 or 2.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
Memory:2 GB RAM
Graphics:256 MB DirectX 9 / NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 XT
Hard Drive:12 GB HD space
Sound:DirectX 9.0c-compliant

r/rocksmith has quite a few posts about folks running Rocksmith on a laptop.

Jonman wrote:

I'm confused. Can't you just move the stool next to your gaming rig?

Short answer, yes it’s possible. But I live in a small-ish apartment, so moving the gaming chair out of the niche means finding a place to put it in the interim. This is not impossible, but would involve renegotiating the boundaries of Dadsylvania from the neighboring interests of Kidville and Momtopia. The naturally occurring boundary created by the precipice of the Chairmat Plateau is pretty much all that’s preventing further hostile incursion at the moment.

tboon wrote:

Disco, pretty much anything that has better than an Atom processor seems to work OK with Rocksmith/Rocksmith 2014. So a cheapish i3 with Intel integrated graphics apparently works. The minimum requirements for the game are pretty low.

From Steam wrote:

MINIMUM:
OS:Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8
Processor:2.66 GHz Intel Core2 Duo E6750 or 2.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
Memory:2 GB RAM
Graphics:256 MB DirectX 9 / NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 XT
Hard Drive:12 GB HD space
Sound:DirectX 9.0c-compliant

r/rocksmith has quite a few posts about folks running Rocksmith on a laptop.

Thanks, tboon. I had seen these, but noticed that they were still calling for a dedicated graphics card, which is making the prices I can find for laptops climb higher than I’d like at the moment. Currently, Sanity and Personal Space are commodities that can only be imported from Kidville and Momtopia, and the tariffs don’t leave much left over for discretionary funding.

But I appreciate your input. Especially the reference to integrated graphics. I also hadn’t thought of scanning the reddit boards to see if I can gather intel that way. Many thanks.

Here's a reddit thread that might be useful as pointers, if you believe what these people are saying. Also, here's one from Ubi support forum.

What about using a Steam Link (hardware or software) to stream Rocksmith to your TV? Yes it'll add some latency, which for a game like Rocksmith isn't desirable, but I've found the latency added by Steam Link isn't all that bad when within the same LAN.

Disclaimer: I haven't tried this arrangement personally, so I don't know if the Rocksmith USB adapter will work with a Steam Link.