Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: Martin_1962 on 25 August 2009, 20:51:35
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OK we have been offered the chance of one for Christmas for the family as one PC is not enough.
So I know W7 will be out and I think we will be OK without XP.
So what makes and what specifications are good?
Home PCs are easy - but a quad core may be a bit heavy for a laptop.
Uses will be, writing homework, emails, web surfing, may be a game.
Also how would I connect a W7 laptop to a XP Pro machine. My networking knowleage is restricted to Dos, Windows up to 98, NT Windows from 2000 to XP, all flavours of Netware, and Windows Server 2000, & 2003. So I might even have enough
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OK we have been offered the chance of one for Christmas for the family as one PC is not enough.
So I know W7 will be out and I think we will be OK without XP.
So what makes and what specifications are good?
Home PCs are easy - but a quad core may be a bit heavy for a laptop.
Uses will be, writing homework, emails, web surfing, may be a game.
Also how would I connect a W7 laptop to a XP Pro machine. My networking knowleage is restricted to Dos, Windows up to 98, NT Windows from 2000 to XP, all flavours of Netware, and Windows Server 2000, & 2003. So I might even have enough
Is the CPU 4 times bigger then, is that why it is too heavy for a laptop. ::) ;D ;D
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Quad core will muller battery.
Core2 Duo coupled with a 965 or later (eg series 3 or series 4 chipset) will suffice. Most laptops use chipset integrated vga, fine for normal use, but not good for gaming (mind you, nor are laptops).
Win7 networks in same way as Vista, which is just an extension to XP networking. They are all interoperable.
Win7 does need slightly more resources than XP, but seems to be less resource hungry than Vista. That said, I'd still go for 2G RAM, esp with integrated vga stealing memory.
I'd stay away from the Acers and similar of this world, do seem to suffer reliability probs. The 'big 3' - Dell/HP/Tosh have had issues in the cutover period to lead free, but seem to have gotten over that now. Certainly I would look at one of those brands myself.
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I think Mrs Albs has a SONY laptop arriving soon. :-/ ::)
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MacBook
MacBook
MacBook
:y :y :y
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MacBook
MacBook
MacBook
:y :y :y
Are they a Scottish brand?
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I wouldn't rule out the Sony Vaio for people (wouldn't obviously have one myself), though they do seem physically delicate (get a lot put in front of me with missing keys, cracked casing and broken LCD panels). Also seen a lot of HDD failures recently on newer Vaios, so could be less-than-ideal HDD mounting.
If looked after, work well enough, but horrendously overpriced for what it is.
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
once you Mac, you never go back :y
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
once you Mac, you never go back :y
Disagree sorry, didnt like it/them at all.
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
once you Mac, you never go back :y
Disagree sorry, didnt like it/them at all.
that's fine Skruntie - you're allowed to be wrong on this occasion ;D
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I wouldn't rule out the Sony Vaio for people (wouldn't obviously have one myself), though they do seem physically delicate (get a lot put in front of me with missing keys, cracked casing and broken LCD panels). Also seen a lot of HDD failures recently on newer Vaios, so could be less-than-ideal HDD mounting.
If looked after, work well enough, but horrendously overpriced for what it is.
I have a GRT100 with 17" sccreen and 32 MB Geforece 4 hardware. Not too bad for gaming (But then thats the difference between hardware and software driven video - Basically the same as TB says about OB Graphics/gaming)
The hard drive on it has started to click and sounds as if it may start to fail, only other dig isthatit is just far too heavy, the newer ones were lighter.
Am a fan of Dell and Tushiba as well.
In your case Martin if you were ever to do video editing away from home I would consider a built in Graphics card if your programs put a similar demand on graphics like some of the game requirments.
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
once you Mac, you never go back :y
Disagree sorry, didnt like it/them at all.
that's fine Skruntie - you're allowed to be wrong on this occasion ;D
Well, that's so very kind of you. ;D ;D
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I`ve had this toshiba for well over a year now and had no major probs with it but i am considering upgrading the memory to 2gb and changing the graphics card if thats poss... :-/
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If you have an investment in Windows software, I'd stick to a Windows laptop rather than crApple, and stick to Windows OS
once you Mac, you never go back :y
Disagree sorry, didnt like it/them at all.
that's fine Skruntie - you're allowed to be wrong on this occasion ;D
Well, that's so very kind of you. ;D ;D
my pleasure :y
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MacBook
MacBook
MacBook
:y :y :y
Are they a Scottish brand?
;D very good Martin :y
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When I was looking a while back I couldn't decide what I wanted but my main need was a good battery life... Thought about the netbook route and found that it would be more hassle than it was worth for my requirements so I ended up with one of the new Acer 4810 Timeline laptops. Nice and light and the claimed 8 hour battery life is easily achievable without dropping everything into power save mode as I've seen over 7 hours!
However... The price I've had to pay is a slightly slower processor than I wanted but it seems OK. The most frustrating thing is that I missed out on a free upgrade to Windows 7 but 3 Days :( :( If I'd known I would have hung on before buying >:( >:( >:(
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Windows 7 runs better on my X1 than Vista did (so far anyway) and it does not even meet basic spec.
I'd go fo as much RAM as I could buy, hard drives can always be backed up to external drives and it's all well and good having the fastest proc but if the rest of the system can't keep up then no need for big fancy proc.
look for procs designed for notebooks as they drain less battery.
As for what brand to go for - best not to ask me as I work for one of the big ones ;)
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operating system : depends on your preference..
hardware : Toshiba with a big screen..
7200 rpm disk (although will consume more power)
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7200 rpm disk (although will consume more power)
As well as run considerably hotter.
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7200 rpm disk (although will consume more power)
As well as run considerably hotter.
yep..but I think its worth the %50 decreased latency..
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7200 rpm disk (although will consume more power)
As well as run considerably hotter.
yep..but I think its worth the %50 decreased latency..
I doubt very much the performance is increased by 50% over the 5400rpm version of the same drive.
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7200 rpm disk (although will consume more power)
As well as run considerably hotter.
yep..but I think its worth the %50 decreased latency..
I doubt very much the performance is increased by 50% over the 5400rpm version of the same drive.
Depends on the benchmark to be honest, but in real life, its noticibly quicker, but for my needs not worth the extra power.
It depends on your own needs - if battery life unimportant, and you do a lot of disk activity tasks, it may be worth considering :)
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Windows 7 runs better on my X1 than Vista did (so far anyway) and it does not even meet basic spec.
I'd go fo as much RAM as I could buy, hard drives can always be backed up to external drives and it's all well and good having the fastest proc but if the rest of the system can't keep up then no need for big fancy proc.
look for procs designed for notebooks as they drain less battery.
As for what brand to go for - best not to ask me as I work for one of the big ones ;)
No point sticking more than 3.5Gb RAM in any desktop 32bit system, it will not be used.
No point going 64bit (that can use more than 3.5Gb) unless you really need 64bit, as 64bit needs more memory than 32bit.
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but in real life, its noticibly quicker, but for my needs not worth the extra power.
Without doubt you can see the difference between the two (as you could see the difference between 5400 and 4200 drives), I was just saying (based on personal experience of testing god knows how many drives to see which was fastest) that I doubted that both the latency & throughput performance figures will be increased by anywhere near 50%
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but in real life, its noticibly quicker, but for my needs not worth the extra power.
Without doubt you can see the difference between the two (as you could see the difference between 5400 and 4200 drives), I was just saying (based on personal experience of testing god knows how many drives to see which was fastest) that I doubted that both the latency & throughput performance figures will be increased by anywhere near 50%
I agree with you for real life use (except those 1 or 2 cases that actually do massively suit the faster spindle), but could get some benchmarks to show that they can be faster that the 30% or so faster spindle would suggest...
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Any video editing would be done on the desktop.
Mainly for casual browsing, homework, holiday use, freeing desktop for us to use
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if you will install .net on lappy and start compiling even 7200 will be slow..
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Well people can say what they want but for any kind of 3d gaming you NEED a separate grafic card, not the integrated cr..
As for OS whatever wondows you choose they are all lousy ( Vista especially) but I've seen Windows 7 and it looks promising (all Windows looked promising ;D)
And one other thing, had a couple of laptops from different brands and Acer was one of the best actually (low price, great performance and really good equipment). My friend works as a chief engineer for one of the bigest pc selling companies in my country and actually he said that for evey Acer laptop which is returned in service at least 2 HP come back!
Also one good brand (from my experience) is definitely Asus. Although they definitely aren't cheap.
As for processors in the laptops I would rather not go into the eternal argument about Intel and AMD