OK...aahhh...Nergal, your avatar is giving me a headache. There, I've said it, finally. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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?