> So I got my first laptop. I put MAME on it and found
> something odd. Whenevr I hit shoot/attack button a white
> circle flashes in the middle of the screen.
You can turn off that option in the mouse settings for your OS - under the pointer options tab there should be an option - "Show location of pointer when I press the CTRL key" - uncheck it.
> It also has
> some slowdown. I'm guessing some program (don't know which
> one) is causing the slowdown, but any help on either problem
> would be appreciated.
If it's a modern laptop, the reason is probably the CPU being throttled back automatically due to heat - MAME is notorious for 100% CPU utilization regardless of the game - try fiddling with the nosleep option (if you're using the command-line version of MAME) or the "Use Less CPU Time When Possible" option (if you're using MAME32).
<P ID="signature">
"Kupo, motherfucker!! DO YOU SPEAK IT!?"</P>