Gonna buy a Laptop

[login123]

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.

 

Any advice welcomed. Thanks.

[ishan_rulz]

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!

[hazelnut]

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.

[ishan_rulz]

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

[login123]

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.

[Aethec]

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

[login123]

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

[login123]

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.

[hazelnut]

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.

[Aethec]

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.

[login123]

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.

[login123]

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

...

 

Yep, Exactly what I was thinking.

 

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.

[Aethec]

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.

[ishan_rulz]

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

[Aethec]

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

[ishan_rulz]

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_rulz]

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.

[login123]

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

[Aethec]

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)

[login123]

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.

[rridgely]

I'm a huge proponent for having a nice desktop and a decent yet inexpensive laptop, but thats whats worked out for me. When I'm at home I would rather have a fast desktop with a big screen and a nice desk setup instead of a small laptop with a cramped keyboard.

 

You didn't mention price, but if your looking at laptops in the $1000 range I would seriously consider spending about half of that on a nice desktop(even better if you build it yourself) and then get a decent dual core laptop for $400 or so.

 

I recently bought a pretty nice dell with a pentium t4500 and 2gig ram for $350 at bestbuy. Its probably faster than what most people have for their main computer, but I only use it for office work and videos. I have my quad core desktop with killer graphics for everything else.

 

Just mentioning this because you said you werent sure if you would even use it unplugged all that often. I would never want to sit at home on my laptop instead of a desktop.

[CTskifreak]

If you want a good business class laptop, I have to recommend Lenovo. Since they acquired the ThinkPad brand, I've been impressed. Sturdy and durable - and I have a decent GPU in it and it's great for what I do. I admit I miss my i7 Desktop at home, but hey, college is college.

 

AJ

[ishan_rulz]

If I understand properly, they will be replacing BIOS with UEFI soon (2011)

 

[Tasgandy]

From the old bloke "down under" here in Aus. (Tasmania actually) if you MUST and NEED a laptop, spend as much as you can afford, on the fastest, max RAM, biggest HD, best Video card, biggest 16:9 screen, etc. something with "local" service & back-up available, where you can (if you have to) go and have a "face to face" discussion with a service Tech to discuss the problem you are having, and lastly try like hell to only buy a laptop that comes with a real, physical, can hold in your hand OEM Windows 7 XXX whatever DVD. NOT an OS image sitting on the hard drive.

 

You could also pay particular attention to exactly what standard warranty is provided, what type of extended warranty is available and how much extra, a list of what is NOT covered by the warranty (I don't trust em) and what 64 bit software are they prepared to bundle with the deal.

 

A good time to purchase is always towards the end of the month. Why's that I hear you ask? as one who has worked for Multi National Sales orientated Companies for many years, they all work on monthly and 3 monthly sales targets and their stock is normally priced accordingly.........they get real keen towards the last 2 to 3 days of the month, especially if their sales are down, give it some consideration, ask and ye shall recieve, don't ask and *^*&%^*%&^$ you know the answer.

 

Good luck, let us all know how you go.

 

PS: my next purchase (not a PC, just a bigger LCD TV) will be made during the last 3 days in January 2011, when all the public's Christmas money has been spent and the stores are screaming out for customers, happens every year.

[CTskifreak]

Good thing at UEFI. BIOS is old and outdated. UEFI is the only way to boot to a drive larger than 2.19 TB's. It's a combination of having a 64bit OS, UEFI, and a GPT partition. So that new Western Digital 3TB Green HDD can be booted from, but it needs to be done like this. I was listening to MaximumPC's podcast and they did it.

 

AJ