(no subject)

[katster]

Argh, too many choices...

Trying to spec out a laptop.

Right now I'm sitting at here and trying to decide what to do. (This is $2308.91. CA sales taxen [blah!] *will* be added) Any comments will be appreciated.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/killjoy_/]

mein gott... hm. imo, more ram would come in more use than that much CPU... unless you turned into a gamer when i wasn't paying attention, that fast of a P4 is most likely superfluous. er... did i spell that right? anyway.

... my thoughts are, and always have been, skewed by the fact that i have little money though. uhm... that's about my only comments, other than to mention how weird it feels that so many people have faster computers than me now.

[katster.livejournal.com]

Point. Yeah. The thing is, the *slowest* this baby comes is 1.7, which isn't much difference. The scariest thing about this is that this is a *laptop*. :)

I can tweak around with dropping the processor speed to 1.7 and see how much that frees up for more RAM.

And your thoughts are appreciated because you are the hardware geek. :) And yeah, superfluous is spelled right. ;)

-kat

Re:

[http://users.livejournal.com/killjoy_/]

oh, cool. i'm never sure about my spelling.

*the* hardware geek? whoa. i'm somewhat honored, though i'm becoming less of one.

processor speed is... highly overrated. there's a small segment of the population that uses it to its full extent, but... well, faster is better, right?

it's funny... i moved from a 1.6ghz Athlon XP (real clockspeed) with all the trimmings to a 900mhz C3 (low power CPU; performs somewhere between a pentium 233 and a p3 400 depending on application) and for the most part i don't miss the CPU horsepower.

... and this is *ME* here. ;)

i'll say this, you most likely will be able to keep using it for *quite* some time.

[katster.livejournal.com]

right. I'm actually decently happy with Prufrock, which is an AMD K7 600. I just need portable computing for school.

Right now, I'm debating with myself. Dropping the processor one notch doesn't do much for cost savings, and 512K of laptop ram is kinda pricy, which is where I'm debating with myself. I also have to come up with a wireless LAN card, which is going to be another hundred bucks.

I *could* try poking at not-Dell's-gah-top-of-the-line laptop and see what I can do that way...

-kat

Re:

[http://users.livejournal.com/killjoy_/]

might be a wise thing to check, seeing as how i doubt that you have unlimited resources either. ;)

... on the other hand, i might be veering too far towards the side of inexpensive. i tend to tend to extremes, though i don't usually realize it.

[katster.livejournal.com]

there's not much difference in price, and so I might as well sink the money into this.

Luns suggests getting the 384 and upgrading later if I need it, I guess laptop memory is easy to replace, whereas other things aren't going to be so easy to change.

So I might play with specs one more time, but I'm pretty sure this is it.

-kat

Re:

[http://users.livejournal.com/killjoy_/]

*nod* He has a point there... memory and drives are about the only things easily upgradeable on those things.

Cool.

[fb.livejournal.com]

Um, is there any particular Windows-only software package that you're really tied to?

Because, and I may sound biased here but I've tried not to be, it is my honestly considered opinion that Apple has the best portables on the market. You could get all of those features, with the exception of a bit of processor power but plus a couple more, in an ibook for a thousand dollars less. For the kind of money you're looking at spending now, you could get a PowerBook G4. I think Apple gives student discounts too (loan and lease programs too), so it'd be a little less, or I know of places to order from out of state so you can avoid sales tax.