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

Post by **bdubs767** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 7:48 pm

Okay when it comes to comps Im pretty much useless besides being able to use them. I know what I'm doing when it's turned on, it's just all the lingo, programming, and all that stuff you comp guys are the experts of.

So I've always been a Mac user but right now I really can't justify spending $400 for a comp that had 2 MB less of ram and half the hard drive....I know the OS operating system is better but is it really that much better for the price difference and lack of memory and hard drive???

So besides that question I've been looking at these two laptops...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8010173766
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 0982227895
The only real difference I see between them is the processor. So which one is the better one.... The normal Core Dou or the Centrino Core Dou ?

Post by **stipud** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 8:03 pm

What's wrong with your current computer? I'd bet a RAM + HD upgrade on your current computer would have you going as fast as you need to... unless of course you're into gaming (in which case get a console

).

Post by **bdubs767** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 8:08 pm

stipud wrote:What's wrong with your current computer? I'd bet a RAM + HD upgrade on your current computer would have you going as fast as you need to... unless of course you're into gaming (in which case get a console ).

It was working fine...until it took a 5 ft drop and the screen snapped in half form the body.

It's 100 Percent done....

gridracer · Post by **gridracer** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:11 pm

Look on ebay for a replacement screen I found one for my compaq for $20 and its a 15 minute swap even if you don't know what your doing.

deathcloud · Post by **deathcloud** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:12 pm

BUY FROM BEST BUY!!!!

i work there lol

Post by **bdubs767** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 9:19 pm

gridracer wrote:Look on ebay for a replacement screen I found one for my compaq for $20 and its a 15 minute swap even if you don't know what your doing.

I would but all the wires, connectors, and whatever else was in between there was destroyed...I dont think it's possible to fix

bretti_kivi · Post by **bretti_kivi** » Wed Oct 01, 2008 10:31 pm

.. external monitor?

Post by **bdubs767** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 5:17 am

bretti_kivi wrote:.. external monitor?

Did that for a while but the output from the laptop shit the bed lol. So thats doen too

Post by **stipud** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:51 am

Geez.... well.... is a used Mac an option?

I just bought a PC to use at home for gaming... it renewed my hatred of Windows. Update, restart, update, restart, defrag, update anti virus, restart, scan, update anti-spyware, scan, update firewall, defrag... ad absurdum. Just to keep it usable. Even with the service packs, you still end up with layered updates that require you to restart before you can update the next level... so to get a fully up to date OS you have to restart a whole whack of times. Even the most benign update requires a restart too, and if you don't restart, Windows will pop up a box and do it for you after a few minutes, whether or not you've got work open and are just taking a shit.

And every f-ing game just sits there "loading" for minutes, or programs updating every freaking day. It seems like developers have gotten very lax at what is supposed to be a reasonable loading time for a game. EA seems to suck at this more than anyone else... at least Blizzard still has a few good developers.

Vista is just plain needy. You have popups on your screen every two seconds if SCRVDRV.DLL can access 102.2.1.5. Do you think any average user knows WTF that means? Seriously? It just trains people to click "OK" on every box they see pop up, so if a virus actually does come and try to do something malicious, they will just click "OK". Of course then MS gets to say "but we warned you, so it's your fault".

OSX is by far the best user operating system I have ever used. Everyone I have put on it, noob or 1337, has preferred it, by far, to Windows. It turned scared computer-phobes into skilled users, because the interface is simple and intuitive. Everything has the same look and feel, so they can adapt to new software quickly. Once they get over the learning curve of first learning the operating system, everything flows naturally from there. Also, I really like that I don't have to fix their computers every month! Seriously, I have SO much more free time now, without having to fix friends and familys computers.

And what's cool for me is that, while the front end is so simple, it is still every bit as powerful as what windows gives you. And the BSD back end means I can do advanced things like software development easier than in Linux at work.

If you are already a Windows power user and enjoy it, especially for gaming, then I don't think you have to switch over. BUT OSX is IMHO a MUUCH better operating system for day to day use, intuitiveness, etc.

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 6:55 am

Between those two? I'd choose the Toshiba, personally. But that's a brand issue, not a hard comparison of price to what you get ratio. I haven't used either of those brand's laptops since probably 2005 or so.

I'll often recommend a Mac if it makes sense. However, if you really need an inexpensive laptop, well Apple doesn't have one. They start at $1000.

You need portability? What applications do you want to run on this computer?

Post by **stipud** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 7:03 am

Finally the best buy site let me through... Yeah, I would probably go Toshiba as well. I have had the best experience with them for cheap laptops, though I haven't had many problems with Dell as of late either (but my god, they used to be the bane of my existence).

My roommate actually bought that exact Toshiba. Seems to work just fine, and Vista wasn't as horribly slow as it was on last year's computers. She is definitely getting frustrated with all the popups though, and has already picked up some adware in two weeks of owning it. If you really know what you are doing, that's probably not a big issue.

bretti_kivi · Post by **bretti_kivi** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 8:24 am

vista: http://kuvaton.com/browse/9443
OSX got another big vote at the front of c't this edition (c't is Germany's biggest computing magazine, very well respected) and his comment was that for the 90% of users who are "mousemovers", OSX is the better choice.

Bret

Post by **bdubs767** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:03 am

Well all I use my computer for is....

Internet, music, and word processor. Maybe some downloading of things, adobe photoshop, excel, and few other programs. I never play games on the comp thats what my PS3 is for.

Post by **stipud** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 11:23 am

You can get old Powerbooks for cheap now that the Intel ones are out...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0294562607

Waaaay overkill for what you plan to do.

Or something like this (it would match your purse!)

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0293498070

Post by **bdubs767** » Thu Oct 02, 2008 7:39 pm

Well I think I'm just going to do this...

Buy this
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB402LL/A#overview

and add this to it
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... _-20134193

But one more question does the brand of memory I add to the comp really matter?

Post by **stipud** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 6:33 am

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

Post by **bdubs767** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:25 am

thanks tom....

Ill def do that w/ the hard drive. Only $100 to get an upgrade why not. Then I'll nab two of those external drives and use both the Harddrive from my busted laptop and the new as external ones. As for the ram from my old comp I doubt it will work since my old laptop was the G4 model. FOr 4 GB of ram it was only $70 shipped so if I pull the hard drive out I might as well upgrade that too.

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:36 am

I used my 1st gen Macbook for over 2 years with 1GB of RAM with few complaints and I'm what I consider a "power user". When I got a free upgrade to 2GB, what I found was not a very significant difference. Sure, I could open more applications and bigger data sets without having the machine resort to using the hard drive for virtual memory but it wasn't a night and day usability thing.

I'm with Tom. For a big overall performance difference, the HDD is probably even more significant than that 2nd GB of RAM.

Post by **stipud** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 7:47 am

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.

That is going to be a quick laptop. Should last you many years, if you can keep yourself from dropping it again

joyride · Post by **joyride** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:06 am

If you are using photoshop, I would suggest upgrading the ram. One photo will load down your memory pretty badly. I've loaded files that use way over a gig (60" x 120" @300 dpi), and its a bitch when the thing starts using space off your drive. I dont know how the SD ram works, but I thought that once you go above pc3200 in regular ram, it goes to a 200 pin (from 184). then again, maybe im a moron

Post by **bdubs767** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 9:25 am

stipud wrote: if you can keep yourself from dropping it again

no promises there

Post by **fuzzysnuggleduck** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 11:22 am

joyride wrote:If you are using photoshop, I would suggest upgrading the ram. One photo will load down your memory pretty badly. I've loaded files that use way over a gig (60" x 120" @300 dpi), and its a bitch when the thing starts using space off your drive. I dont know how the SD ram works, but I thought that once you go above pc3200 in regular ram, it goes to a 200 pin (from 184). then again, maybe im a moron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SODIMM

gridracer · Post by **gridracer** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 12:54 am

I was in the market for a laptop but my pc shit itself so I spent $1800 on a new one of those. Should be the fastest kid on the block now.

naughty · Post by **naughty** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 5:48 am

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

Mackenzie · Post by **Mackenzie** » Sat Oct 04, 2008 1:16 pm

I have a toshiba that I got less than a year ago, and I love it. Ive owned probably 4-5 computers in the last year and a half, and by far my toshiba has been the best. Working at cc, I have had the chance to play on practicly every make and model of many computer companies..