Buying a Laptop need help...fuzzy and stipud help needed

Thumper88 · Post by **Thumper88** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 7:33 pm

naughty wrote:
Ok, your G4 uses DDR333 (PC2700) and the Macbook uses DDR2667 (PC2-5300). It should be backwards compatible, but you might as well get the newer faster stuff for that price.
im no expert on laptops - but wont those have different pin counts ??? - i know that lappies use SODIMM's instead of DIMM's but on desktops DDR uses 184 pin DIMM's and DDR2 uses 220 pin DIMM's - so dont laptops also use different form factors on the memory as well

EDIT : okay - fuzzy has already replied to this question above - i stand corrected

yes, definitely NOT interchangeable...

rlockwood · Post by **rlockwood** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 8:40 am

stipud wrote:What do you need 2GB ram for? If you're only web browsing, you won't need 2GB. My Mac, with my web browser, email, office, chat programs all open takes only about 700mb, TOPS. It takes some heavy software development for me to get that much utilization (parsing 4 200mb XML files as Java objects in memory, for example). On a Vista machine, I would not run any less than 2gb, since the OS already seems to take nearly 1gb of that RAM in regular use.

Kingston RAM is fine. Brand won't matter in your case beyond getting something that isn't hilariously bad. Why don't you take the RAM out of your old, busted laptop? It's a MacBook right? To see if you even need it, check activity monitor under heavy utilization on your computer, and see if you are touching the 1GB limit before you spend your money on RAM. The newegg link is down, but RAM is cheap as hell these days, so it may only be a few bucks. It can't hurt, so if you really feel like upgrading, go ahead.

My first upgrade to any laptop is a better harddrive. 5200rpm standard drives are slow and shitty. You get a HUGE speed boost out of a 7200rpm disk... my boot time went down by half! The best deal I know of right now is the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200, which you can get for under $100 now. It's got 200gb of storage, and is fast as fuck. Also, you can install it in your MacBook in about 15 minutes... using your tongue. Seriously, pop the battery, pull a few screws, and the drive slides right out. You can install your old drive in a $10-15 external 2.5" HD caddy for a cheap external drive, AND you can use software like Carbon Copy Cloner to copy your existing OS to your new drive, if you don't feel like reinstalling.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CVRqCjCVRq

keep in mind that the power consumption between a 5200rpm and a 7200rpm drive is HUGE, especially when you move to a larger capacity disk with more platters. If you actually plan on using the laptop on battery, I HIGHLY recommend NOT getting a 7200 RPM drive.

also, i've got vista running chrome(3 tabs), steam, and pidgin, WITH aero, and i'm slightly under 700mb of ram usage. Just to set the record straight.. BUT I would still recommend at least 2gb of ram, as it definitely does go over 1gb with any real computing

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 1:27 pm

rlockwood wrote:keep in mind that the power consumption between a 5200rpm and a 7200rpm drive is HUGE, especially when you move to a larger capacity disk with more platters. If you actually plan on using the laptop on battery, I HIGHLY recommend NOT getting a 7200 RPM drive.

also, i've got vista running chrome(3 tabs), steam, and pidgin, WITH aero, and i'm slightly under 700mb of ram usage. Just to set the record straight.. BUT I would still recommend at least 2gb of ram, as it definitely does go over 1gb with any real computing

If you compare the power consumption spec difference between the Hitachi 7200rpm drive Tom posted and other Hitachi 5400rpm drives, the differences are extremely minimal.

Post by **stipud** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 2:11 pm

I lost about 10 minutes of battery life (out of 4 hours) by swapping the harddrive. The performance gain was totally worth it IMO.

rlockwood · Post by **rlockwood** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:17 pm

its tough to get any conclusive evidence on this.. but trends do tend to show a CONSIDERABLE amount of difference in power consumption between 5400 and 7200rpm drives.

heres an image from tomshardware.

in most cases, the 5400rpm drives (typically in higher capacity, even) have much lower power consumption levels at both idle and under load. Logically, the 5400 drive would spin longer under load, as it is after all slower. I wasn't meaning this to be the end all consideration of whether to get a 7200rpm drive or not, but its certainly something to think about. The difference between the two when surfing web pages is probably not even noticeable, and would certainly be worth the trade off.

taking a look at the hitachi 5k250 vs the 7k100, power consumption is DOUBLED. Hardly "minimal".

perhaps i'm missing something? maybe outdated?

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 5:44 pm

I only made reference between the exact Hitachi drive Tom posted and the Hitachi 5K250, although I didn't specify that at all.

The 7K100 does seems to be a more significant hog but that 7K200 shortens the gap to 1.1W, but that's perhaps not quite "extremely minimal" as I suggested earlier.

rlockwood · Post by **rlockwood** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 6:33 pm

I always generalized on the extreme side, and i'd say that as a general rule i'm probably correct.. there do definately seem to be some exceptions to both rules (that is, extremely inefficient 5400rpm drives, and vise versa)

so i'd say research the individual drive if you're concerned with battery life.

also, the laptop I usually use is an asus f7 sv-a1 I believe. Its pretty kick ass, but the battery life is pretty low. It does kick some ass in the gaming performance category, though.

bretti_kivi · Post by **bretti_kivi** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:50 pm

... which is also why my home server is going to get 2.5" drives, not big ones, or a mix of the two.

I'd also argue that a bigger effect on battery life will be USB devices, screen illumination and what you're using it for - it might make ten minutes, but is that really going to break the camel's back?

Bret

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:53 pm

bretti_kivi wrote:... which is also why my home server is going to get 2.5" drives, not big ones, or a mix of the two.

I'd also argue that a bigger effect on battery life will be USB devices, screen illumination and what you're using it for - it might make ten minutes, but is that really going to break the camel's back?

Bret

IBM is putting 2.5" SATA or SAS drives in many of their rackmount servers now. It's catching on even in the enterprise.

Post by **stipud** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 7:00 am

The 7k200 I recommended has the lowest average draw of any 7200rpm drive in that graph. Good to know

Anecdotal evidence in my case, but losing 10 minutes out of 4 hours on my battery life (4%) was totally worth it. I boot and load programs twice as fast, so there is less time wasted running on the battery anyways. It boots so fast now that it doesn't even show the loading screen. It just goes straight to the desktop! Bad assssssssss... If I really need another 10 minutes, I'll pick up a second battery