Gonna buy a Laptop

OK...aahhh...Nergal, your avatar is giving me a headache. There, I've said it, finally. :lol: But that's not what this is about.

I'm going to have to buy a laptop soon. Ugh.

I have shopped around, and thought I would seek you guys' opinions 'cause I trust you. There is a lot of knowledge represented on this forum.

I do not trust the manufacturers advertising nor the opinions of most internet writers, many of whom are sellouts. <_< Hard for me to determine the REAL differences among CPUs, Motherboards, L1 caches, etc.

Any advice welcomed. Thanks.

It would be easier for us if we knew what you are looking for!

Besides that, I am using a Dell Studio 15 inches. Its great!

A lot depends if you are into heavy gaming etc.

For Win 7 most of them seem to come with 3 or 4 gig memory and 320+gig hard drive. Some come with 2 hours of battery life, some have more.

Are you going to install Win 7 fresh over the top of what is there, or just get what you are given with the laptop and uninstall the c**p when you get it home (what most people do!)

I have an HP icore3 laptop and it runs fine, my husband has a Toshiba which also runs fine. Both are 64bit.

As you have rightly spotted a lot of the internet talk is just kidology.

i don't know about HP, but you could go to the Dell website and customize your laptop according to what you want.

http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops?scat=notebooks&mp=www.dell.com/home/laptops

Quite right, ishan, I just didn't want to write an essay in the first post.

Looking for:

- Fast, not necessarily gamer fast but thats not out of the question.

- Quality hardware

- Not Sony (no offense to Sony owners)

- Support not an issue, I will back it all up and go from there, use an imaging app.

- quality hardware

- Weight and screen size not primary issues

- did I mention quality hardware?

edit:

Yes, Hazel, will just use installed OS unless it is too awful, and uninstall the c**p.

Ishan, you can do the same w/ HP, my old favorite, and it is surprisingly not more expensive.

Will you use it like a desktop, or is battery life something important?

Hazel, you have hit on an issue. How much difference do those number designators mean? i3...i5...i7...fooey, who can know this stuff?

My niece's Acer at 1.5 GHz runs much faster that my HP at 1.6 GHz, same memory installed, roughly the same application load. Much faster.

Also, if a processor is listed as "dual core" with a rating of, say 2.6 GHz, does that mean that it has 2 cores which "add up" to 2.6 GHz, or 2 cores at 2.6 GHz each?

I have checked out these CPU comparison sites, but don't know from experience if the differences are "real" or even significant.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=337

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html

http://www.cpuscorecard.com/all_cpus.htm

Battery life isn't important. Might use it freestanding, but not for long. Thanks, hadn't thought of that.

Also, cost isn't too important, I have sold my baseball cards :-), but I don't want to get too carried away, here.

Now you are going all tech on me login!!

The bottom line is I bought what I could afford which was an core i3 2.13 GHz.

Perhaps the more hardware experienced members may have better info.

A dual-core @ 2.6 GHz = 2x 1 core @ 2.6 GHz. ;)

Another factor is Intel's HyperThreading, it's a bit like two cores for each physical core, but less powerful. (If, say, you have two Xenon processors, it means 6 cores each = 12 cores, x2 because of HT = 24 logical cores. It empties your bank account as a side effect)

Also, don't forget to use PC Decrapifier once you buy your laptop: http://www.pcdecrapifier.com/ It removes a lot of junk, trialware, and so on.

Well, I found this reference, actually found it myself, then got it from elswhere:

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-dual-core-processor.htm

Good grief. I don't have sense enough to buy a new computer. :lol:

A dual-core @ 2.6 GHz = 2x 1 core @ 2.6 GHz. ;)

...

Yep, Exactly what I was thinking. :lol:

Not poking fun, just venting, lots to think about. For a while there, it seemed that AMD had the upper hand with the multi-threading issue, maaybe is not so now? Eh?

This old AMD Athlon 64 x2 4800+ here at home is waaay faster than the old Intel P4 I used to use at work, but isn't rated much faster; I always thought it was because the AMD folks handled the multi-threading issue better.

This might be interesting: http://img.clubic.co...to/03680036.jpg

It's a big comparison of 82 processors, 35 of them are still on sale. ;)

This is what I know...

Processors:

i3 is for the average user. Cheap and value for money.

i5 performs faster than the i3 and forms the mid segment.

i7 is for gamers, high CPU usage, video rendering, etc. Expensive.

Hard drive:

When people buy Hard drives, people overlook the 'RPM' part and concentrate on the disk space only. Make sure you get a 7200 RPM (Rounds per Minute) HDD. More RPM = More speed.

RAM:

2 GB should suffice but you could consider a 4 GB one if you want your 64-bit system's full potential. More than 4 GB RAM require i7 (As far as I know)

Graphic Card:

256 MB should do it, but at today's development get yourself a 512 MB at least.

Cache:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Explain_how_L1_cache_L2_cache_L3_cache_differ

Ishan, don't forget AMD ;)

Their 4- and 6-core processors are much, much, much cheaper than Intel's. Of course, it has less "brute" power, and I don't know if a laptop manufacturer has them in one if its laptop, but...it's worth a search ;)

With so many options available, I say you narrow it down to HP (as it is your favourite) and/or Dell. The website helps you customize.

Choose your country and... visit these websites

DELL: http://www.dell.com/us/p/laptops?scat=notebooks&mp=www.dell.com/home/laptops

HP: http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/store_access.do?template_type=landing&landing=notebooks

Ishan, don't forget AMD ;)

Their 4- and 6-core processors are much, much, much cheaper than Intel's. Of course, it has less "brute" power, and I don't know if a laptop manufacturer has them in one if its laptop, but...it's worth a search ;)

You don't see many quad/hexa core Laptops for regular usage. Those are meant for gaming laptops like Alienware, etc.

If I am reading this right, it seems that there are some AMD quad core processors for laptops, but they are very costly, and way beyond what I need or want. Am I reading it right?

Started here:

http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/platforms/Pages/notebook-platforms.aspx

and here it seems to say that the specs for the quad, triple, and dual cores are not too different until you get to the Phenom series?

http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/platforms/home/2010-mainstream/Pages/2010-mainstream-platform.aspx

If you want a laptop between "fast" and "gamer", I think you're searching for a quad-core.

However, a dual-core will run most things just fine - except if you want to play games, of course.

(I don't really know much about laptops - I'm more used to desktops, where you can actually chose what you want)

Thanks for all the recommendations, lots of data to sift.

No big rush. I'll keep watching this topic in case someone comes along later with a major epiphany.