what PC spec to go for?
god1406
Posts: 554
ok, I've finally decided on getting a HP laptop for uni after some sound advice from here.
now, for about £550-£600, what kind of spec should I be looking at?
Most laptops around this price seem to be dual-core, have 2-3gb memory and around a 250-320gb hard drive.
does this sound about right, and what else should i be looking for?
also, where is reputable for getting computers from? I've already been warned away from PC world...
thanks for any help
EDIT: got my gb's and mb's confused...
now, for about £550-£600, what kind of spec should I be looking at?
Most laptops around this price seem to be dual-core, have 2-3gb memory and around a 250-320gb hard drive.
does this sound about right, and what else should i be looking for?
also, where is reputable for getting computers from? I've already been warned away from PC world...
thanks for any help
EDIT: got my gb's and mb's confused...
0
Comments
-
If you go for Vista, which is compulsory these days it seems, you'll need 1Gb ram minimum. Plenty of places to choose from without resorting to PCW, get a computer comic and have a browse at the websites of retailers.I've added a signature to prove it is still possible.0
-
You only need 2Gb ram for a laptop unless it uses 64 bit operating, if it isn't listed on the specs right click on My Computer and go to Properties. You will normally find a faster AMD rather than intel processor in a given price band due to AMD always undercutting Intel, not much difference between them.
Look at extra's too like an external harddrive for backing up and a mouse if you have a lot of work to do.
I bought the HP TX2130 from Staples a few months ago for £650, converts to a tablet pc, built in graphics tablet, AMD TL60, 250gb, 2gb memory, 2 batteries, bluetooth and Vista home premium (can't have everything would much rather have XP). It's a 12.1" screen so might not be to everyones liking but I wanted something small and portable and not a paving slab like some laptops. Same laptop now £600 in Staples and they have a very good customer services, get yourself a rewards card and you'll gain £30 in vouchers from the purchase of the laptop which I'm sure you'll have use for later.0 -
I'd get a laptop with 2gb RAM regardless of 32/64 bit due to the fact that Vista itself uses a fairly large chunk of ram. (700mb iirc)
Plus if you want to run games on it or it to last you a while its safer to go for 2.
Try and get a 17" too, much better with a 1400x900 resolution than the tiny 14.1's or 15.4s.
Oh and if you do want to run games on it, make sure you get a seperate graphics card and not an onboard one.0 -
I was trying to say that a 32bit system will only recognise maximum 2gb RAM and anything over 2gb requires the 64bit operating system. Memory is cheap at the moment so 2gb should be the minimum a laptop should come with and with Vista you'll need all of it.0
-
Vista is the standard now, you'd have to pay extra for XP..
You'd definately want at least 2gb of ram and at least 1 or 2gb of memory for that money..
And tbf, it's widely known and believed that Dell are ace, personally I swear by them..
And this my friend, is a hell of a deal (trsut me on that one)
http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.204-7508.aspx
There are slightly better models with faster processors and memory/ram etc... So have a look at the others on tesco.com
Obviously shop around too, but personally I done a whole load of looking into prices, and tesco were the cheapest by a £100 easy0 -
right then...
I'm now looking at the HP dv9827 with a 320gb hard drive, 3gb memory and a 17" screen, for £585.
sounds pretty good, and I can't find anything similar from other brands with that kind of memory or hard drive. Sony seem quite expensive and pretty, and Toshiba's don't seem to come with large hard drives.
with 3gb RAM i'm hoping Vista should work ok. probably
the cache isn't quoted anywhere, is this very important? I've seen PC's with 512kb up to 8mb caches for about the same price, so it seems to vary quite a bit. hmmm.
CraigXXL, that laptop from Staples looks like a good spec, but i'm going for a larger screen since it'll be sat on my desk quite a lot and portability isn't much of an issue.
Thanks for the advice people 0 -
Vista is fine with 1, and flies with 2 gigs. 3 is nice, and 4 is getting sillygod1406 wrote:with 3gb RAM i'm hoping Vista should work ok. probably
If you do have a 4-gig 32-bit machine, then applications will only be able to use the firt 2.8 gigs or so of memory, due to technical limitations. The operating system (windows) can use the rest up to nearly 4 gig however. This is true of any system, including Linux, and Unix.
anyway, I'd reccomend getting an intel "core 2" based laptop, as currently they have easily the best performance, and if you go for a "centrino" branded model, they'll also have amazing battery life.
On that note, it really is worth upgrading the battery, if it is an option, to the largest capacity the manufacturer offers, as some laptops have diabolically poor batteries. A friend's Packard Bell will only give him 30 minutes or so :shock: whereas my Dell will easily last 4 hours, and even up to 8 with the WiFi turned off. However, i did opt for the biggest battery they offer - which confusingly is physically the same size, but a little heavier (ahem, about twice the weigh of the standard batery!)
Vista is a must, don't believe all the negative press, it really is fine, and offers much better security and 'snappiness' than XP.
Try and get a laptop that has an ATi (amd) or Nvidia graphics chip, as opposed to an "integrated" version.
If you have to compromise due to price, then I'd suggest dropping features in the following order
battery
hard disk
graphics
RAM
processor.
Alternatively, you could look on fleabay for some good bargains on macbooks, if you're interested in apple. Apple owners can be very vain, and sell off perfectly fine hardware, just to get the newest, latest model, but don't tell anyone I told you that!
0 -
Does it have to be HP? Not too keen on their laptops.
Bit of an Acer fan (they seem to score very well in tests) and I downgraded" to XP as I don't trust Vista and it's a workhorse so needs to work without any fuss.
The Travelmate series are very good - robust too (mag alloy chassis) and competitive.
Agree that Centrino is the processor to go for and unless you are using it for gaming, don't bother with a flashy sound or graphics card - too many overspec their systems and waste money.0 -
Surf-Matt wrote:Does it have to be HP? Not too keen on their laptops.
Bit of an Acer fan (they seem to score very well in tests) and I downgraded" to XP as I don't trust Vista and it's a workhorse so needs to work without any fuss.
The Travelmate series are very good - robust too (mag alloy chassis) and competitive.
Agree that Centrino is the processor to go for and unless you are using it for gaming, don't bother with a flashy sound or graphics card - too many overspec their systems and waste money.
Thing is with a laptop you need to overspec, as upgrading the hardware is a complete bitch to do, if at all doable.
If you want it to last you that is..0 -
Hmmm - you can upgrade RAM on most easily enough and does anyone honestly need a hard drive bigger than say 200GB?!
We change ours about every three years.0 -
yeehaamcgee wrote:
Vista is fine with 1, and flies with 2 gigs. 3 is nice, and 4 is getting sillygod1406 wrote:with 3gb RAM i'm hoping Vista should work ok. probably
If you do have a 4-gig 32-bit machine, then applications will only be able to use the firt 2.8 gigs or so of memory, due to technical limitations. The operating system (windows) can use the rest up to nearly 4 gig however. This is true of any system, including Linux, and Unix.
anyway, I'd reccomend getting an intel "core 2" based laptop, as currently they have easily the best performance, and if you go for a "centrino" branded model, they'll also have amazing battery life.
On that note, it really is worth upgrading the battery, if it is an option, to the largest capacity the manufacturer offers, as some laptops have diabolically poor batteries. A friend's Packard Bell will only give him 30 minutes or so :shock: whereas my Dell will easily last 4 hours, and even up to 8 with the WiFi turned off. However, i did opt for the biggest battery they offer - which confusingly is physically the same size, but a little heavier (ahem, about twice the weigh of the standard batery!)
Vista is a must, don't believe all the negative press, it really is fine, and offers much better security and 'snappiness' than XP.
Try and get a laptop that has an ATi (amd) or Nvidia graphics chip, as opposed to an "integrated" version.
If you have to compromise due to price, then I'd suggest dropping features in the following order
battery
hard disk
graphics
RAM
processor.
Alternatively, you could look on fleabay for some good bargains on macbooks, if you're interested in apple. Apple owners can be very vain, and sell off perfectly fine hardware, just to get the newest, latest model, but don't tell anyone I told you that!
IMO Vista with 1GB is very slow, 2GB is ok, but I and many people have noticed with 2GB ram the HDD seems to get thrashed more often, 4GB is brilliant, its certainly needed sometimes, its used mostly in multimedia and gaming situations of course.
What I'd say is.
A C2D CPU.
2GB ram minimum
160gb HDD minimum
Graphics is a tricky one, anything getting on 8600M GT and above then the laptops are going sky high prices.
For around 550-600 should get a nice lappy though, I have always wanted a lappy but instead it goes into my PC's graphics card and CPU
.
As far as I know the reason 32bit OS's only see around 2-3.2GB of ram is due to graphics memory, if you have say a 1GB graphics card then it takes something like that up in system ram!, 64bit you have it all though.
The interesting thing about Vista is, the more ram you add, the more ram it uses, on boot I'm using about 22-28% of the ram, about 1000mb in use, its around 800 or 900 with 2GB.0 -
4GB is never needed in Vista 32-bit. It can't use it, due to 32-bit limitations.
There is a lot of misinformation about how Vista uses RAM, don't fall into that trap.0 -
Vista 32bit can in theory use 4gb of ram and still have addresses for the graphics memory and other devices, if your mobo will support extending the (paging?) table. That said, I haven't got it to run stable yet!!!! Waiting for a bios patch methinks.
I currently have 4gig in my gaming rig, and vista gets about 3.4 or 3.6 gig to play with. Runs pretty nicely, and I notice the difference in loading times with the 4th 1gig stick (however that might be due to bottlenecking with the slots i think)0 -
ride whenever, the 4 gig limit includes video RAM. So, if you have a graphics card with a gig or RAM, that leaves with you w theoretical 3 gig ceiling, which again, in practice, can't be utilised.
"Paging the RAM" results in drastically reduced performace, which is why this avenue was never ventured down.0 -
I understand the principle, of the video ram effectively coming out of your 4gig ceiling.
But I'm also pretty sure that there is a bios option on my mobo to extend something possibly address tables, specifically to allow 32bit to utilise the full 4 gig and the gpu etc.
As aforementioned, it is a bit glitchy though.0 -
My vista laptop is using 4gb which consist of 2x2gb. And I am currently getting 3.6 memory available which is sufficient enough for my work.
As my laptop has a dual-channel feature I must installed two matching memory module for speed benefit. So therefore I cannot use 1x2GB and 1x1GB which was my first choice option hence why I went for 2x2GB.0 -
ride_whenever wrote:I understand the principle, of the video ram effectively coming out of your 4gig ceiling.
But I'm also pretty sure that there is a bios option on my mobo to extend something possibly address tables, specifically to allow 32bit to utilise the full 4 gig and the gpu etc.
As aforementioned, it is a bit glitchy though.
Some new motherboards can utilse the full 4 gig for 32bit operating system. Mine don't and nothing i can do about it.0 -
But the facility to fully utilise the 4 gigs of RAM comes at a performance price.
Honestly, 2 gig is fine for the vast, vast majority of people.
My laptop here at the moment has 2 gigs of RAM, and at this very moment in time, running IE7, thunderbird, Excel, word, Live Mesh, sidebar with 6 gadgets, Switcher, and Aero, is using exactly 806Mb of that RAM.
That leaves plenty spare :roll:
EDIT: wow, bad typos, typing with one hand is teh suxxorzzz !!!!oneoneone!!0 -
Needing 3GB of RAM to run an O/S is just silly.
That's why I chose XP.0 -
If you're going down that route then avoid windows... who needs a HD for an operating system?0
-
yeehaamcgee wrote:
Did you read my post above yours? :roll:Surf-Matt wrote:Needing 3GB of RAM to run an O/S is just silly.
That's why I chose XP.
I did but it still really "needs" 3GB to run properly.0 -
No, it doesn't. I have a 2gig laptop, and only 806 meg is being used.Surf-Matt wrote:yeehaamcgee wrote:
Did you read my post above yours? :roll:Surf-Matt wrote:Needing 3GB of RAM to run an O/S is just silly.
That's why I chose XP.
I did but it still really "needs" 3GB to run properly.
There is a computer at work that runs along quite happilly on a gig of RAM, and the PC I used to have at home ran vista fine with 1 Gig.
In fact, the machine I used to have at home would still have been fine, except I wanted to play Crysis. You wanna talk resource hog? you're looking in the wrong place.
A machine with 1 gig will happilly run Vista. You're making ungrounded assumptions.0 -
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2007/11/29/micros ... g_vis.html
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... ments.aspx (1GB is the MINIMUM required RAM - I'd rather have more in reserve thanks)
I also have a 2GB laptop with a 2.0GHz Centrino processor and XP. I bet it runs a lot faster than a Vista equipped version.
http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,10000 ... 70o,00.htm
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/ ... cleid=1658
I'm a little bemused at the aggro tone though - not exactly big news that Vista gobbles resources.0 -
Matt, is is bullcrap spewed by a million uneducated prats that vista requires more system resources than sense. Unfortunately, you seem to have taken them for granted, without even trying it for yourself.
If you'd like, I can post a link to a tweakguides article, where most of these myths are debunked.
Why does it annoy me? Because I advise people on their IT, and recently, anyone who suggest Vista as a viable solution is ridiculed - purely because of scaremongering. There really is nothing major wrong with it - it's just that the mainstream press likes to pounce on anything by MS. Guaranteed, in 2010, the same old crap will be said about the next version of windows, just like it was said about xp, 2000, me, 98SE, 98, 95, NT etc etc.
Seriously, take those blinkers off, and look at the world through your own eyes.
If you don't feel a need to switch to Vista right now, fine, but for god's sake, don't adopt the childish mentality that vista must suck, purely because you heard it somewhere - especially to the point that you will disagree with people who DO use it on a daily basis, who are much better placed to comment than yourself.0 -
http://chris.pirillo.com/2007/08/30/32- ... gb-of-ram/
Thats a nice explanation in the above link.
Anyway, I know vista uses ram differently, and I think your 32bit CD Key for Vista actually works on 64bit too so best to get 64bit, Vista limit is about 3.12GB from various sources apparently.
2GB ram can run Vista fine, but 4GB ram runs it ALOT better, with 4GB ram Vista does take up more memory, but if you look in task manager as Physical Memory (MB), you see most of the ram is Cached in the superfetch catch, so really when it says you have 26% memory usaged its using alot more as superfetch is enabled, but when the memory is needed it just frees it anyway. Great feature superfetch is, really makes Vista more responsive and 4GB of ram reduces HDD's been thrashed in my experience.
Also with Vista its best to disable indexing as that thrases the HDD too.
2GB ram is the standard at the moment, wont be long untill 4GB is unless Windows 7 with its new kernal and all that uses alot less memory.
Its really annoying when people say they still use XP due to memory usage in Vista, 4GB is cheapo these days and Vista is just simply better than XP!
It used to be that gamers preffered XP over Vista as XP gave faster frame rates, and especially 3DMark06, higher scores in XP, but now on my system it seems Vista is faster, 3DMark06 I got 15500 in Vista yet only 15300 in XP and thats with a 4Ghz E8500.0 -
Okay then here's an example.
At almost exactly the same time as I bought an Acer Travelmate with 2GB RAM and a 2.0GB Centrino processor and "downgraded" to XP (about 6 months ago), our friends bought a Vaio with exactly the same spec and Vista.
They had no end of problems with theirs - kept hanging up, crashing, all sorts.
Meanwhile our machine flew dealing with any task asked of it.
Now after several patches, theirs now runs better but it's still way slower than the laptop I'm writing on.
So it's not crap that I'm spouting, it's what I've read and heard about as well as experienced. And as I'm in charge of our company IT budget and decisions as well as administrating several big client websites, I'm not what you'd call an IT thicko.
However if you want to get all narky over such a trivial matter then carry on. I'm suprised and a little disappointed at your attitude as up until now, you've seemed like a worthy contributer.
What you're doing is what countless "geeks" do - they tie themselves up in knots over the minutae and ignore the things that actually make a business profitable.
Like having good value fast IT systems that don't fall over all the time and aren't clogged up with pointless little gimmicks.0 -
it's true that 2 gig seems standard at the moment, but 1 gig is still enough. The minimum specs actually state 512Mb, but that is a minimum, and is going to result in a somewhat unsatisfying system.
You cannot access more than 4 gigs of RAM total, in a 32-bit OS INCLUDING video memory - without using tricks, that will actually hamper performance. So having 4 gigs of RAM is pointless unless you have a memory card with no on-board ram.
DirectX 9 performance in Vista and XP is so close, and so give-and-take as not to be an issue. When it was initially released, on first generation drivers, Vista did lag behind a little compared ot XP, but that diffference has now vanished.
OpenGL performance, is likewise as close to identical as can be. Each OS wins some benchmarks, and loses others, but only by a single fps or so.
While I agree that 4Gig (and x64 vista) will be commonplace by the time windows 7 arrives, I very much doubt that the system resources required by 7 will be less than Vista. There are some cluesthat they are trying to adress hardware usage, but it is wholly unlikely that the trend will reverse.2GB ram is the standard at the moment, wont be long untill 4GB is unless Windows 7 with its new kernal and all that uses alot less memory.0 -
When you buy a laptop no matter what OS is on it it wants wiping and a fresh install on, they come with bloatware and all sorts of crap on. I'm not happy with XP or Vista standard, I used Nlite for XP and Vlite for Vista to streamline the OS and then manually disable loads of stuff too.0
