Well, from what I have been told by my friend Roan on Neriak.
Is to do alt+O not zero but O, this brings up the option menu, from here you can set like the performance settings. I have mine currently set on 'Extreme Performance' (sounds high, but its really rather low) because of my 512MB ram issue and older graphics card; ATI Radeon 9600SE.
Try doing the same? It really zaps away the whole EQ2 feeling though cause you can't see peoples faces, and then when your friends run to run away or whatever it likes make them look as if their skipping like a bunny down the field or something.
I used to have a lappy myself, HP ZE4400 or something like that and it had a 32MB ATI card in it and FFXI didn't work. Me personally am not a big fan of the whole gaming on lappy genre, but who knows it might work for you.
That's about all I know bud. Goodluck
Slyone
aka
Andre