Laptop Shopping

[Tangerine]

On the Dells I was looking at 500GB was standard and included in the price. :dunno 4GB was the standard for memory. What's the difference between 4 and 8 GB? Speed?

Which Dell did you get? I kinda like the Studio 17's.

I have an Inspiron.

Pretty sure when building at Dell you can downscale some specs and it reduces the price.

Here's the best analogy I can give for explaining memory and HD space and why memory is probably the most important thing you can have:

Imagine a huge library with millions of books. You're sitting at a single table in the middle. The million books are your hard drive. Your table is memory. There's only so many books you can have on the table at once. If you fill up the table, you have to walk some books back to where they go before you can get more off the shelf. It is a lot of wasted time and effort to be walking around carrying books instead of at the table reading. If you had a bigger table, you can have all the books you need at one time without ever having to get up from your chair, return some books, and look for others. That's why you want maximum memory on any computer. All of the info you could possible want is instantly "at your table" without having to move info back and forth from your hard drive.

Make sense?

 

[freakofnature]

I have an Inspiron.

Pretty sure when building at Dell you can downscale some specs and it reduces the price.

Here's the best analogy I can give for explaining memory and HD space and why memory is probably the most important thing you can have:

Imagine a huge library with millions of books. You're sitting at a single table in the middle. The million books are your hard drive. Your table is memory. There's only so many books you can have on the table at once. If you fill up the table, you have to walk some books back to where they go before you can get more off the shelf. It is a lot of wasted time and effort to be walking around carrying books instead of at the table reading. If you had a bigger table, you can have all the books you need at one time without ever having to get up from your chair, return some books, and look for others. That's why you want maximum memory on any computer. All of the info you could possible want is instantly "at your table" without having to move info back and forth from your hard drive.

Make sense?

Yup, makes sense. For the Studio 17's the 500MB hard drive was the base. I could upgrade to 640MB and 1TB. I haven't looked at the Inspirons yet.

 

[Siphorous]

Co-icindences. I've had a Dell lappy for 5 years and it was getting a bit slow, the keyboard was going so I went to Dell again - but this time went to Dell Outlet. That's where refurbs, returns, scratched/dented are. All in a working state of course and with a year guarantee.

Found a bargain Studio 17, core i7, 500gb HD, 4gb ram for £521. Brand new price would have been £969. It has a scratch/dent - will find out how big of one Monday when it arrives. I don't care though (unless it's a massive one on the screen) - it's a great spec for relatively low cost.

 

[Alien Allen]

Tang that might be the best analogy I have heard yet to explain ram.

Zirc unless you have a ton of movies you want to keep on the hard drive I think the 500 gig will be plenty big. Do a defrag on your current computer and it will tell you how much space is used and available. That will give you an idea how much more hard drive space you might want on the new computer.

 

[freakofnature]

On the topic of processors, what would be the difference between say an Intel Core 2 Duo and an Intel Core i3?

 

[darkangel]

I just bought a new laptop and for just surfing the web and doing some photoshop ought an Acer Aspire running windows 7 and it has an AMD processor 3 gigs of Ram 250 gb Hard drive and itt me $400. But i love it! It is fast and does everything I want it for.

You don't really need an I7 or 8gigs of ram unless youre going to be gaming. You can go a lot cheaper with a dual core processor.
I tend to think that Leveno is a great brand and heres the one I would buy. If you don't mind sticking with Vista.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5243613&CatId=4948

 

[emreakay]

Toshiba forever.

 

[Alien Allen]

Toshiba has got some decent reviews as of late. I think it goes in cycles.

 

[Siphorous]

On the topic of processors, what would be the difference between say an Intel Core 2 Duo and an Intel Core i3?

The i3 is newer and more efficient than a Core 2 Duo (at the same clock speed).

Unless they introduce new i3s, then the current i3s have two cores but have a feature called Hyperthreading. This allows each core to execute up to two things at once so even though it is only dual core - Windows will see it as having four CPUs due to the Hyperthreading feature.

Core 2 Duos (and Core 2 Quads) don't have Hyperthreading.

Hyperthreading and it's usefulness vary depending upon what you're going to be doing but imho, if it's not much more for an i3, i5 or i7 go with those.

There are some big differences between the i3,i5 and i7 but won't go into those unless you want to know.

Summary- at the same speed, i3 will be better than a Core 2 Duo.

edit: dell outlet link below-

http://www.dell.com/us/en/dfh/notebooks/studio-1745/pd.aspx?refid=studio-1745&s=dfh&cs=22

I couldn't find a Dell outlet online store similar to that on the Canada version of Dell's website - but it will give you an idea of the wildly varying (and often cheap) prices. I used the uk equivalent to order mine.

 

[freakofnature]

That's cool. Thanks, Siph. Dell.ca does not have an outlet store. Is OK...I'd rather buy one new anyway. :ninja

 

[freakofnature]

Oh another thing, would it be worth the effort to get a Blu Ray drive instead of a DVD/CD optical drive?

 

[Siphorous]

That's cool. Thanks, Siph. Dell.ca does not have an outlet store. Is OK...I'd rather buy one new anyway. :ninja

No worries. Just to clarify, only the refurbs etc would be secondhand, the scratches/dents ones are just brand new ones they can't sell as brand new due to a manufacturing issue that caused the case to get scratched/dented somewhere - so sold at a much reduced price.

Oh another thing, would it be worth the effort to get a Blu Ray drive instead of a DVD/CD optical drive?

Hmm. Tricky. On such a small screen (17 inches) I personally don't think it's worth it as you won't notice much difference compared to a dvd.

e.g. I've a full high definition display on my current 17 inch laptop and I can't tell much difference in a dvd playing on that small a screen compared to a full HD movie clip. You will notice a difference on a bigger screen as the picture is that much more blown up so to speak.

Think of it like taking a picture on your camera - it may look nice and sharp on the lcd display on the back of your camera but then you get it onto your computer and notice that actually it's quite blurred. On the small lcd screen - things will look more sharp anyway even if the definition, clarity is not all there (e.g. dvd compared to high def).

Software wise, I can't think of any titles personally that don't fit on a dvd or two as far as professional programs go at least.

That being said...! If it's only about $50 or so to upgrade to a blu-ray, it can't hurt to have that either I guess.

 

[freakofnature]

No worries. Just to clarify, only the refurbs etc would be secondhand, the scratches/dents ones are just brand new ones they can't sell as brand new due to a manufacturing issue that caused the case to get scratched/dented somewhere - so sold at a much reduced price.

Yeah but if I'm going to get something new and expensive it had better not have any scratches or dents. I'm vain like that and very un-Mennonite in that sense. :ninja Don't tell my mother.

 

[Siphorous]

Yeah but if I'm going to get something new and expensive it had better not have any scratches or dents. I'm vain like that and very un-Mennonite in that sense. :ninja Don't tell my mother.

I won't

I was considering a very expensive import (but far cheaper than buying over here) that would have provided more than enough oomph and would have been pristine... but decided to see if I could get enough power in less than pristine. I'm due to get it tomorrow - I'll examine it for the defect and will post a pic. It's a 'Grade 1' apparently on their site which means the worst grade for defect but I'll see.

Have you decided on a likely spec yet? Don't get pulled in by all those extra Dell love to try to sell too, like printers and what not after you've configured your lappy spec. Unless you really what paraphernalia of course

 

[freakofnature]

I won't

I was considering a very expensive import (but far cheaper than buying over here) that would have provided more than enough oomph and would have been pristine... but decided to see if I could get enough power in less than pristine. I'm due to get it tomorrow - I'll examine it for the defect and will post a pic. It's a 'Grade 1' apparently on their site which means the worst grade for defect but I'll see.

Have you decided on a likely spec yet? Don't get pulled in by all those extra Dell love to try to sell too, like printers and what not after you've configured your lappy spec. Unless you really what paraphernalia of course

There's a Studio 15 that is growing on me. It has the Intel Core i3 processor, 6GB RAM and 500GB hard drive. We'll see... As for extras...forget those. I have no use for them. I'll probably get an external hard drive, though.

 

[Siphorous]

There's a Studio 15 that is growing on me. It has the Intel Core i3 processor, 6GB RAM and 500GB hard drive. We'll see... As for extras...forget those. I have no use for them. I'll probably get an external hard drive, though.

Sounds like a kick-ass spec. Make sure it has Windows 7 as opposed to Vista btw, it probably will have.

You going to be happy with the smaller screen? (especially as I guess this will be lasting you a while) - was your previous one 15 or 17?

As for the external hard drive - definitely a good idea for backups etc. I have a couple too - very handy. Might be worth shopping around to see if you can get a decent one cheaper than via Dell which won't be hard, unless you'd rather not mess about and just want it all together

 

[freakofnature]

Sounds like a kick-ass spec. Make sure it has Windows 7 as opposed to Vista btw, it probably will have.

You going to be happy with the smaller screen? (especially as I guess this will be lasting you a while) - was your previous one 15 or 17?

As for the external hard drive - definitely a good idea for backups etc. I have a couple too - very handy. Might be worth shopping around to see if you can get a decent one cheaper than via Dell which won't be hard, unless you'd rather not mess about and just want it all together

Yeah, it has Windows 7. I've heard nasty things about Vista so I'm avoiding that all together.

I don't even know how big my current screen is. :ninja 14 or 15, I think. I was debating whether or not to get a bigger screen. I should go look at some laptops in a store and see how big they are. I like to cart mine around when I travel so I don't want it to be cumbersome.

 

[Siphorous]

Yeah, it has Windows 7. I've heard nasty things about Vista so I'm avoiding that all together.

I don't even know how big my current screen is. :ninja 14 or 15, I think. I was debating whether or not to get a bigger screen. I should go look at some laptops in a store and see how big they are. I like to cart mine around when I travel so I don't want it to be cumbersome.

Good stuff on Windows 7 - agreed about Vista, from my own experiences of it too...

Good idea on the seeing laptops in a shop to see how you feel about the different sized screens and I didn't consider weight but a fair point there.

One thing the i3's don't have by the way is something called 'Turbo Boost'.

Simply put, if whatever software you are running isn't making full use of both cores in the cpu - then the cpu will increase the speed of the core that is being used to allow that application to run faster.

If the application is using both cores however, the cpu is intelligent enough not to speed itself up if both are being used effectively.

All i7s have that and so far, all i5s do. Don't be too worried about this though, the i3 will still be a very capable chip.

 

[freakofnature]

Good stuff on Windows 7 - agreed about Vista, from my own experiences of it too...

Good idea on the seeing laptops in a shop to see how you feel about the different sized screens and I didn't consider weight but a fair point there.

One thing the i3's don't have by the way is something called 'Turbo Boost'.

Simply put, if whatever software you are running isn't making full use of both cores in the cpu - then the cpu will increase the speed of the core that is being used to allow that application to run faster.

If the application is using both cores however, the cpu is intelligent enough not to speed itself up if both are being used effectively.

All i7s have that and so far, all i5s do. Don't be too worried about this though, the i3 will still be a very capable chip.

I think you should send me some money for telling me that. I'm all about speed and naturally the i5's and i7's are more expensive. :mad

 

[Siphorous]

Got it today. It was indeed brand new, minus the scratches. Fortunately, just on the lid - nowhere else - everything else was fine

The black mark you can see on my floor cushion and dot top left is my camera issue that I've still not sorted... you'll see those in the same place on the second pic.

The pics make them look big as I've zoomed in of course but they are quite small and i'm not going to be staring at the back of it when using it. I'm well chuffed to have saved the dosh. I had it in my mind to go all out on a powerful one if this one didn't do the things I wanted well.

So far, Adobe Lightroom for image sorting is running like a dream - real snappy and quick. So is Paint Shop Pro for that matter too.