Going to buy a laptop, advise please!!


Techy said:
Intel has the advantage in speed but AMD as the advantage in value.

How does your software not work in Vista? Have you tried to use the compatibility options to make the software think it's XP?

Also, dell's aren't better. Their build quality isn't any better (often I've seen worse build quality in Dell's) and they seem to have battery issues. Both a friend of mine, and a coworker have Dells and their batteries are both completely shot after only a year and half or 2 years. I have 2 batteries for my old laptop. One is the battery off the laptop I had before it. It's 3 years old and the one that came with my last laptop is 2 years old. They both still hold a 2 hour charge no problem.

blinx, try Vista and try the compatibility mode before switching it to XP.
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Will do thank you, funny you mention the battery thing, my last laptop was a Dell, the battery was useless after about 6-8 months, it has to always be plugged in now :angry:

cnstecky said:
i would advise against HP unless you upgrade to an accidental damage warranty. They cover everything cause I guarantee something will go wrong, also their customer support sucks!!!! As for having to run XP, run a virtual machine allowing you to run XP inside vista, newer parts aren't really meant to run XP as they are optimized for vista.

and DO NOT GET A DELL!!!!
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Already got the HP :( I will try the virtual machine :nice:
 
Which version of vista do you have? Let us know how the 64 bit version of Vista is doing. My friend had trouble with his home premium.
 
IntermaN said:
Which version of vista do you have? Let us know how the 64 bit version of Vista is doing. My friend had trouble with his home premium.
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My desktop has Windows Vista Home Premium 32-Bit and runs just fine, i have minor problems when the computer wakes up from any kind of sleep/powerdown mode, have to restart any media that was paused.

The new laptop will run on Vista Home Premium 64-Bit when it ships but i may end up going back to XP if i cant find a way to get IE 6 or Sieble to run on Vista.
 
IE6? What for?

And for those that have problems with Vista. How? Honestly, I've had less trouble out of my Vista machines than any other. I have two that run on Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1 and they run like a dream. My old laptop runs on Vista Home Basic 32-bit SP1 and it's never had trouble.

Hell yesterday, we were working on our projects in Computer Security and one guy had an RFID reader. It refused to work on any of the XP 32-bit machines there in the lab. The software would load and recognize the reader but when he would swipe the RFID tag over it and the stuff would lock up. I loaned him my Vista 64-bit laptop, worked perfectly.

If you know what you are doing Vista 64-bit is freaking awesome. It's been super stable and quick on the 2 machines I run it on.

Also blinx, if your stuff doesn't work in Vista, do a dual boot of XP and Vista. I think that would be better cause I can almost guarantee that for normal use, Vista will be better. That way you can boot to XP for work and then for screwing around and watching teh animes, boot back into Vista.
 
blinx9900 said:
Sorry i thought all windows XP was 32bit, well let me ask then do i need a specific version of XP to run over 3gigs of ram or is that just vista? Cause i know Vista 32bit only works with 3gb ram and you need Vista 64 to run 4gigs or higher. Am i wrong on any of this?




Thank you, glad to see you are happy with the Dell, i may go with the Dell since i get %15 off so it will come out to around $700 :nice:
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yea i think there very good.
its worth buying an external drive to back it all up. its very quick transferring with the 4GBRam. Also you have a back-up if it does go wrong
 
Techy said:
IE6? What for?

And for those that have problems with Vista. How? Honestly, I've had less trouble out of my Vista machines than any other. I have two that run on Vista Home Premium 64-bit SP1 and they run like a dream. My old laptop runs on Vista Home Basic 32-bit SP1 and it's never had trouble.

Hell yesterday, we were working on our projects in Computer Security and one guy had an RFID reader. It refused to work on any of the XP 32-bit machines there in the lab. The software would load and recognize the reader but when he would swipe the RFID tag over it and the stuff would lock up. I loaned him my Vista 64-bit laptop, worked perfectly.

If you know what you are doing Vista 64-bit is freaking awesome. It's been super stable and quick on the 2 machines I run it on.

Also blinx, if your stuff doesn't work in Vista, do a dual boot of XP and Vista. I think that would be better cause I can almost guarantee that for normal use, Vista will be better. That way you can boot to XP for work and then for screwing around and watching teh animes, boot back into Vista.
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I will have to investigate this dual boot you speak of, now as far as problems with Vista as i mentioned the only thing for me is that if i have a video playing an i pause it and my PC goes into sleep mode or any kind of power down status when it wakes back up the video is frozen and must be manually shut down using ctrl alt del. Aside from that i am very happy with Vista, but i was also very happy with XP.
 
Dual booting is where you split the drive into 2 partitions (probably 3 in your case since I bet yours is already in 2 with one of them being the recovery partition) and install one OS on one partition and another OS on the other. From there you use a bootloader (which Windows should have one built in) to decided which OS to boot when you boot the system.

This can also be done with 2 physical hard drives. That's what I do. Just install one OS to one drive and the other OS to the other. I do that for my Linux rig. The first drive has Ubuntu Linux and the secondary has XP Home using the Linux GRUB boot loader. But I also have it setup to where I can unhook the main drive with Linux and it be able to boot to XP without GRUB.

My main rig, I have Vista Home Premium 64-bit and Windows 7 Ultimate Beta 64-bit. I just swap the power dongle between the two to boot them :p
 
also, that video problem is a common thing. Just don't let it go into sleep with a video on. Hell I had **** do that on my old XP laptop. I have sleep/hibernate disabled on all my stuff except for On Battery mode for my laptop. It goes into sleep after like 15 or 20 minutes On Battery but when plugged in, it stays on.
 
Thanks techy, that sounds pretty good, 1 question though: Will i be able to change how much space i allocate to either partition with simple point and click at any time i like or would i have to redo the whole thing over? Like say the Vista partition is low on space and the XP side has loads, can i change the allocations without messing anything up?
 
for guys in the uk do we get to choose which version os here like 32bit or 64bit cause i dont see that happening here?
 
cnstecky said:
and DO NOT GET A DELL!!!!
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why the hell not. i have 2 desktops (non dell) 3 laptops (2 dell, 1 non dell)
and the 2 dell laptops are the only thing that hasnt broken in my house as far as im conserned DELL is very good!

linh-ej9 said:
for guys in the uk do we get to choose which version os here like 32bit or 64bit cause i dont see that happening here?
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I think it depends on the actually package you get. I THINK the basic version of vista will be 32-bit and the best package will be 64-bit.
someone correct me if im wrong
 
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I have no idea whats available in the UK but allow me to clarify how i personally buy computers, i DO NOT buy them from a store like most people, i order them online direct from the manufacturer and you can usually choose your operating system on the manufacturers website :nice:
 
I've got £800 for a new build, I was going to build a desktop/htpc but now im having thoughts of spending the money on a laptop because its so much simpler that way lol. Im not sure whether to get laptop or build a rig, you seem to get more out of a rig imo!
But a nice sony laptop does look flash!

Currys - Shop for Entertainment Laptops - Sony VGN-FW31J Stunning 16.4" laptop with Blu-ray for high definition viewing

OR

spec4.jpg
 
i find laptops are alot better. also cheaper. my laptop is nearly 3 times better than the family desktop and was half the price :nice:
 
Guys I am also looking for a new laptop since my HP has **** a brick and stopped runnning quite a few programs.

I need something I can run a multitude of graphics intesive CAD programs on, rendering and animations should not be a problem for it. My previous HP had the AMD Turion 64 chipset and ATI radeon GPU, while it ran Solidworks ok it was stretched to it's max.

The one I have my eye on in the Samsung R710. (Although it seems to be disappearing from the shelves at the moment.) It has the Intel Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GPU.

Would the IT guys here reccomend this for CAD use? I don't play games and I understand CAD and games use the GPU in very different ways, so I have no idea if this would be suitable.

Also, someone mentioned earlier about running temps. These are a concern for me, as my AMD laptop ran so hot I could not use it on my lap, it actually burnt my skin. This isn't really acceptable now as I no longer have a desk to work at.
 
Bon87 said:
I've got £800 for a new build, I was going to build a desktop/htpc but now im having thoughts of spending the money on a laptop because its so much simpler that way lol. Im not sure whether to get laptop or build a rig, you seem to get more out of a rig imo!
But a nice sony laptop does look flash!

Currys - Shop for Entertainment Laptops - Sony VGN-FW31J Stunning 16.4" laptop with Blu-ray for high definition viewing

OR

spec4.jpg
Click to expand...
Damn, thread hijack in progress!!! It's ok though since i already got my questions answered :)

Mattharvey12 said:
i find laptops are alot better. also cheaper. my laptop is nearly 3 times better than the family desktop and was half the price :nice:
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WOW WOW WOW, slow down, thats simply NOT TRUE, desk tops are much cheaper then laptops and are more powerful, don't go comparing a 3 year old desktop to a brand new laptop thats not fair!

Allow me to give an example:
I bought my desktop (Tower) about 16 months ago, some quick specs:
-2.8 amd 5600+ 65x2
-2 gigs ram
-500 gig hdd
-512 8500GT
Total cost with Tax: $960

New Laptop:
-2.3 Amd turion
-4 gigs ram
-500 gig hd
-internal graphics card
-Total cost with tax $1150 (luckily i found a 30% off coupon code so it came out to $820)

Laptops have to be smaller and include a screen, it only makes sense that they will be slower and more expensive.

Kozy said:
Guys I am also looking for a new laptop since my HP has **** a brick and stopped runnning quite a few programs.

I need something I can run a multitude of graphics intesive CAD programs on, rendering and animations should not be a problem for it. My previous HP had the AMD Turion 64 chipset and ATI radeon GPU, while it ran Solidworks ok it was stretched to it's max.

The one I have my eye on in the Samsung R710. (Although it seems to be disappearing from the shelves at the moment.) It has the Intel Core 2 Duo and NVIDIA GeForce 9200M GPU.

Would the IT guys here reccomend this for CAD use? I don't play games and I understand CAD and games use the GPU in very different ways, so I have no idea if this would be suitable.

Also, someone mentioned earlier about running temps. These are a concern for me, as my AMD laptop ran so hot I could not use it on my lap, it actually burnt my skin. This isn't really acceptable now as I no longer have a desk to work at.
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AMD computers tend to run hotter, laptops in general run hot though. Look at the tomshardware link tech posted on the first page it should help you pic a processor or a graphics card, also i found this during my search, seems to be aimed at people just like you:

Dell Business Laptops and Laptop Computers

Far right "precision mobile work stations"
 
i didnt say 3 years old!!! i said my laptop is 3 TIMES better than my desktop
 
Mattharvey12 said:
i didnt say 3 years old!!! i said my laptop is 3 TIMES better than my desktop
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A top end Laptop wont be as good as a top end desktop PC. A Laptop's party piece is it is portable whereas a desktops's is that it can be customized and upgraded easily.

Bon87 said:
I've got £800 for a new build, I was going to build a desktop/htpc but now im having thoughts of spending the money on a laptop because its so much simpler that way lol. Im not sure whether to get laptop or build a rig, you seem to get more out of a rig imo!
But a nice sony laptop does look flash!

Currys - Shop for Entertainment Laptops - Sony VGN-FW31J Stunning 16.4" laptop with Blu-ray for high definition viewing

OR

spec4.jpg
Click to expand...

You forgot a DVD drive if you want to install vista :p Unless you want to transfer one that you already have. Go for the custom build unless you need something portable.
 
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