Category: Geeks r Us
For those awaiting quad cores for your laptops, the time is drawing near.
screaming laptops of the future
Santa rosa still is my preference since I enjoy a longer battery life over speed.
However, if affinities are independently adjustable for desired aplications, I just might go for the hype.
mmmmmmm *drools*
Not worth it, if you want high performance go for a desktop, only use a laptop for simple things like email and internet unless your company buys you a monster to use for work.
I agree, for heavy duty processing I'd stick to a desktop.l That being said I have an AMD dual core 64 bit 1.6ghz laptop. It's performed pretty well, I've left it running more or less 24 7 for 6 months (my desktop is being shipped from the U.S.) and I have only minor complaints. The processor has overheated and shut down the computer a few times during a heavy load but it could be a design flaw with HP and/or AMD, after all AMD were notorious for overheating although they have improved drastically.
So far I can't evenimagine what I would do with a quad core, may be for my music studio, but I've been quite happy with my dual core amd for that one too and have not had a crash yet.
Basically I think most people buy way more powerful computers than they ever need. For your basica tasks, email, net, Office, programming (at least the basic database programming= a Celeron processor would be just fine and a $400 computer would be all one needs. For visual studio I would recommend at least Pentium 4 or equivalent and a gig of ram but for the average email and zoner with the occasional voice chat the very basic computer is more than sufficient.
Hey,
Yeah, I pretty much agree with what B, said. I try to go for major memory now days, the processor doesn't matter as much to me but if you have enough memory you can do just about anything.
I have a laptop with 2 gigs of memory that's a amd 1.7. and a dual core desktop with 2 gigs of memory. both I got from dell and they are both referbished. the desktop was 439 and the laptop was 500. I really think the only reason we may need 4 processors in a computer is to keep up with Microsofts shit. I'd love to see what xp pro would do with a quad core. Vista may need it. grin
For one thing XP does not even see more than 3gb of memory. My new desktop has 4gb of memory and since I'm running XP rather than Vista I won't even get to enjoy more than 75% of what I purchased, stupid but true.
that is true, xp does not recognize more than 3 gb of ram and no more than 2 tb of hd.
its just a 32 bit limitation rather than the os limitation IMO
However, if more apps take advantage of the 64 bit platforms, even xp pro 64 can support up to 16 gb of ram. Not that anyone needs it at the moment.
I say, quit with the new os's and implement the already 64 bit stuff that is currently in place.
64 bit enabled processor, 64 bit os, 64 bit enabled games/apps and you can have yourself an amazing computing experience.
I disagree with those that say that you should just stick to a desktop for a processor like that. There are times and situations where having a powerful laptop would be useful and benificial. (and not just because it'd be a cool toy to have, though that's certainly true.)
I agree on the 64 bit implementation. The O.S. and indeed software designers in general have to catch up with the hardware. Sadly every hardware expansion so far has been followed by a much more resource intense O.S. and apps, not always with more or better features in my experience. Word, for instance, to me has not improved muh since Word 6.0, that being said I don't do much fancy editing of documents. But I know MS had a survey of what features users must wanted to see in Word, turned out 60% of those features people asked for were already in the application, just buried somewhere deep in some menus. I think, to some extent, the linux approach of more barebone apps and then updates and plug ins one can choose to fit one]s needs is one thing. But I digress. Singer... in what circumstances would you need to use a quad core computer on the road? The only thinig I could think of would be for fancy engineering design thing (Auto Cad) or heavy duty video or sound editing. The first two apps will probably never be accessible and, well, I see the music thing if you are a producer but generally I would just use a laptop for barebones recording of an idea, not the full blown processing of it. At least whilst laptops remain more expensive than desktops, and that is still the case. I got a top of the line 4gb Pentium e667 (well .. top of the affordable line) with 750gb of hard drive space and nice video and sound cards for $710, a laptop with same spaces would be at least 50% more, probably close to twice as much (and I don't think you can get more than maximum of 400gb disk space on a laptop) and with the desktop I can install additional fans to keep it running more smoothly and not overheat during heavy duty multi tasking.
cheers
-B
One case that I'll probably be looking into getting one twith a lot more power than what I currently hav: I'm in colllege in the computer networking area. I'm going to have to be running vurtual servers they tell me. Now I could get a desktop set up that we'd have to move every time I get a new class, or I could get a laptop that could have enough power to handle those demands. The laptop would be much more convenient for that situation it seems to me.