Sorry to hear that you have had so many problems and challenges. All the Silent Hunter series I have played have been interesting games. Except for SH1, they all had problems in their stock form. But games cost $40-50 at release, and today you can get any of the SH series now for under $10. Microsoft Office costs a couple hundred, and the graphics software I use professionally costs $1000s. Games get rushed out the door, and are often released with a full complement of bugs. "Don't buy Version 1.0" is a good rule for any program.
I also started with Silent Hunter (SH1) on a tower, and loved it. BTW, I found it absolutely trouble-free. I never played SH2, because of a lack of interest in U-boats. (But see below....) I got SH4 hoping to recreate my wonderful gaming experience with SH1. I couldn't run it on my then-current laptop. A couple of years later, I got a gaming laptop. SH4 would run, but it required heavy modding before I would even bother to play it. And then the flavor, atmosphere, style (Thanks, Sailor Steve) just wasn't right. Saw a lot of posts about SH5. Bought it, tried it, and it ran, but oh! the modding it required to be playable. Found I didn't like the scripted feel at all. Soooo, I took a step backward (So I thought!) and tried SH3. There were a lot of limitations, but it had the same feel as old SH1. With all the heavy mod work that has been done, I found SH3 can be tailored to a really enjoyable and fairly high fidelity simulation game. And it runs just fine on what is now an obsolescent and very midrange gaming laptop. In fact, all three games - SH3, SH4, and SH5 - run fine on this machine, an Alienware (Hate that name!) M11X R3. I did have problems with SH3, problems which took weeks to identify and correct. But they were all of my own making, were due to fundamental mistakes I made (no deep technical issues), and were within my power to correct - permanently. I now play SH3 for days and weeks with never a problem.
Regarding your question about laptops: Laptop manufacturers often use custom versions of the standard chipsets, with minor technical changes and limitations. And they make changes without advertising the fact. While most laptops work fine with most programs, no publisher of a $40 game is going to hem himself in by claiming to be compatible with a dynamic environment he can't control. Stating on the box: "Comaptible with X" generates a legal liability which the game publishers don't want to assume.
If you look around these forums, you will see that there are a lot of people who play SH3, SH4, and SH5 successfully, on desktops and on laptops. The number of questions regarding gameplay and performance, compared to the number regarding hard-fail problems, tells me that a lot of people can make the games run just fine on their hardware. And the level of technical expertise is quite varied - there are plenty of options for those who would plug-and-play. And there is plenty of help and expertise available when you run into problems. Don't sell the games short. There's a lot of entertainment value here for the money.
Just personally, I'd urge you to give SH3 another look. Make a good clean reinstallation. Add GWX or NYGM, and color mods to taste. The combination got an old fleet boat skipper to enjoy being a Kaleun. You might like it, too.
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