I've been searching everywhere but there is not enough demand that my questions are easily answerable with a google search.
I am currently looking for a netbook or notebook that is preferably 13.3" and UNDER $300 that can run DOSbox with most <2000 games. I will be traveling a bit in March and throughout the summer and waiting around in airports or long flights are a drag. Mobile games just don't entertain me enough.
I have been searching thinkpads, dells, acers, everything. But I have no source to go to that compares what processors are the best for DOSbox. RAM and hardrive space isn't much of a priority for me.
If anybody has a better source I can go to or knows from hands on experience PLEASE let me know. I will keep this tab open for about a week before I purchase something as I have a flight in about three weeks.
Pretty much any computer made in the last like 10 years should be able to run DOSBOX games perfectly fine.
You can play most DOS games online here:
It'll keep your saved games after you close the browser and once you've loaded a game, you don't need internet to play them (as long as the browser remains open).
Stay away from anything with a celeron n3060 or n3350 ive worked on enough low end laptops to find that these pos cpus can barely run windows let alone anything else.
Pretty much processor from the Pentium III up (anything at or above1.0 ghz) is going to allow you emulate as quickly as necessary pretty much anything you'd be doing, especially in terms of games. So pretty much anything from like the last 20 years that isn't complete trash.
Outside that, DOSBox emulates everything through the CPU, and it interprets its own speed based on the CPU's speed. There is no perfect match up that I know of. It's all adjusting the emulated processor's speed to match the speed of game play of others. This results in slight differences in emulated speeds among different CPU's.
For the purposes of speedrunning, this usually results in two cases.
1.) The nicer thing is if the software/game being operated in anyway has an internal timer set into the game. This sets essentially a top speed the game can be played, when the IGT timer and actual graphics of the game are dependent on one another. Lemmings, is a great example. There are aspects about the game that can faster, such as a opening screen animation, and the fade in/out times between load screens (these top out as well, but at a much higher rate than necessary for the game to run at the top speed the IGT allows it.
2.) Some games.... yea, don't have that. See Jazz Jackrabbit. The only way this really be accounted for if when people agree to a given number of cycles for game play (usually the default of 3000 cycles). Unfortunately, there can still be tiny differences in actual speed of game play on different computers, though generally the name of the game is to find something that for all intents and purposes, is close enough. The frame rate of these games is based on the instruction speed of the given CPU (or emulated CPU in this case). Back in the day, when these games were made for DOS and such, they just relied on the native speed of the user's CPU. It didn't result in ridiculously fast game play because you wouldn't get a faster CPU for a few years at a time.
Also for the purposes of speedrunning, it's pretty general rule of thumb that you should run DOSBox on your computer, opposed through a web browser.
The real issue you here, which I forgot to mention, is how exactly you plan to stream whatever is going on on the laptop. It takes far more effort to stream or record video than it does to emulate DOS. It's not crazy consumption to just record though, especially since you can record with pretty low settings playing stuff on DOSBox.
If you draw a blank in your search, I (or someone else in the mobile speedrunning community) would be happy to recommend some mobile speedgames to you if you let us know your preferences. I know you said that they don't entertain you, but it can be easy to overlook some really credible titles because the mobile games market is so flooded. They are there though.
Also, I think DOS emulation is possible on Android, but I haven't tried it myself. I have tried running a fringe Amstrad title ('Tubaruba' - if any of the other 4 people that played it read this, hmu) on my phone using an emu app and it worked really well.