Computer Help
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Coming from someone that is in school and knows computers:
A. Get a Dell online built the way you want, there cheap.
B. Get almost no RAM and just go buy it at best buy, its mindless to install and its waaaay cheaper than if you bought it from the manufacturer. Its usually 65-75 dollars for 2 Gigs at Best buy.
C. As for the getting XP? Get vista, its whats going to be common in the future so why spend money on it later when almost ANY program your going to need for school is perfectly compatible with it. I dunno where you are going but NDSU is up to date with all there programs. Don't get any software loaded on it beings that everything your going to need is free, and if it isn't your school is probly going to sell it for alot cheaper. (NDSU varsity mart sells Microsoft Office Professinal Plus 2007 for $80. Getting XP only to have to buy Vistia in a year or two is retarded.
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DelSlow;200549 wrote:
Coming from someone that is in school and knows computers: As for the getting XP? Get vista, its whats going to be common in the future so why spend money on it later when almost ANY program your going to need for school is perfectly compatible with it.That's the question I couldn't answer. Thank you.
I will say this. Over build it if you can. That way you have room for expansion if needed in the future. Just like Delslow said about the operating system, if your hardware isn't that great now.... you'll be wanting to upgrade in the not-so-distant future.
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weshole;200550 wrote:
I will say this. Over build it if you can./ Agree. But when over building it personally all i would do is get a beefed up processor and maybe a graphics card/nicer screen. Hard drives are nice n' all but honestly you can buy a 500G external for $100 like what i did.
You could be uber 1337 and buy that $5,000 WoW Dell Laptop with the sweet physics card and what not. 1337ness.
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Right on, if you are not using it in the feild, than youre best bet is a decent dell. Delslow also has a good point with the xp over vista thoughts.
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Biggest question... are you going to use games on it? If no, you wont need to spend over 1000 bucks.
Vista vs Xp: I'd go with Vista only to have the copy of it. When you receive the computer, the first thing I would do is reformat the computer and install a fresh copy of Xp Professional.
Processor: Intel Core/Pentium Duo. Don't waste your time with that AMD shit. Intel runs way cooler and way easier to overclock (if you want to).
Ram: If your not going to be using it for games, 1gb is plenty. (Which is what they all come with I think anyway.)
Harddrive: 60-80 is plenty. As Del said, you can always get a external for pretty cheap.
If your only gunna use it for what you state (music, photo's, school projects, personal use), you should be fine with a medium quality dell laptop.
It's only gotta last you through school.. and unless your doing like CAD or engineering shit, it should last you 4yrs very easily if you don't beat the hell out of it.
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Word of advice: get the smallest one you can afford.
Ask anybody, lugging around a big laptop sucks balls... 12.1" is great...
I'd take a smaller, slower laptop anyday...
Vista, Intel Processor (battery life), I'd say 2gb of ram (the more the better), HD size doesnt matter but get a 5400 or 7200rpm if you can (makes a huge difference then the slower laptop ones). Jump for the extended battery too.
If all your looking to do is pictures and school work, you dont need to spend $1000-1500.
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Jim;200676 wrote:
Word of advice: get the smallest one you can afford.Ask anybody, lugging around a big laptop sucks balls... 12.1" is great...
I couldn't imagine using a 12.1" often. I guess it depends what you're doing with it though too. I was doing graphic work and programming on mine and 15.4" is never enough screen.
None the less, I'm happy with my 15.4". Light and small enough and it never left me the last year of college...
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Brian and I both have 12.1's...
I've had 14 and 15 inch ones as well, just for the portability in class its great. Its funny to watch the 17" ones try to fit on desks and shit.
Anyway, yeah as long as its light, your good to go.
Another consideration, most people here don't consider this, but you don't need the fastest processor to accomplish the tasks that you want to do... look in to what has the best battery life (as processor speed, unless you have a specific use for it, is pretty useless these days...)
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I agree with Jim on the smaller screen. Even a 14" would be a good compromise. I dissagree with Link in that the Hd capacity never seems to be enough. 60-80gig seems a bit small and alot of todays laptops have more capacity anyway so that should be a mute point anyway. It always seems that you are needing more soon after you get one. Delslow had a good point in getting an ext Hd but who wants to lug that around?
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I dont really think laptop space matters...
External harddrives can be USB powered (no power adapter), and if your going somewhere its easy to just transfer what you need on to your laptop from the HD and not bring it along.
Theres no real need to store tons of movies or anything on a HD, as the laptop HD's are so much more spendy (from the manuf.)... figure this, for the same price as a 40-80gb upgrade in a laptop HD, you can buy a 500gb external drive...
60-80gb is more then though to take what you need with you...
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I have the following comments
1: the more "awesome" you put into a laptop, the worse its battery life will be [typically]. I'd choose a processor for energy efficiency over absolute power
2: Don't run Vista with less than 2GB of ram. Either get it with 2gb from whoever or plan on updating it. Between work and home I've got 5 Vista machines, with 1, 1, 2, 4, and 4 GB of ram in them. The two 1GB machines are an old laptop that I am throwing away soon, and my former desktop, which I'm going to blow away and put WHS on. My main home and main work machines are both running Vista 64bit with 4GB. My 2GB Vista machine is a dedicated HTPC and runs fine.
The point is -- some people may be happy with Vista on a 1gb machine, but on a laptop especially, where your hard disk is typically slower, it can be quite frustrating, especially if you'll be using Office 2007 apps or heaven forbid, Visual Studio.
- I wouldn't subscribe to any fanboyism about Intel vs Amd. For a laptop, look at the cpu that's going to use less power for the sorts of tasks you're going to do most often while using a battery. That's probably hard information to get, but that's what I'd try to figure out. Perhaps you want the lowest power-consumption CPU that will still play a DVD on battery without stuttering.
Note that slower isn't always less power consumption, so this can be tricky to figure out. You might try and look for 3rd party battery tests of models you're considering.
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Get as much screen resolution as you can in a given screen size. Dell sells a 17" laptop (Inspiron 1721) witha few different screens, all having the same diagonal size. One of them is 1920x1200, i.e. true HD 1080P. You can get the same size screen and machine but with a lower resolution. That would be cheaper, but lamer. Essentially, look past stuff like 12" screen, and see what the actual resolution is. Higher is better, always.
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If you want to store lots of mp3s and photos on the machine, get a larger hard drive. You can do some simple math based on the size of images your camera takes and the size of your mp3s. Figure 1 CD of MP3s is about 100MB, so with 1GB you can store 10CDs. How big is your CD collection [legally owned or otherwise
]. Someone with 500 CDs they wanted to store on a laptop should plan on dedicating 50GB to that purpose.
Do you have a 6MP camera? Figure 2-3MB per photo, or between 3-400 photos per GB. Another way to think of it is -- most cameras have a 1GB card in them.. how many events in your life time do you think you'll fill up a card and then put it on the laptop?
Apps are bigger and bigger these days. Just having Vista on the machine will take around 11GB. If you went with an 80GB disk, 500 CDs of MP3s would fill up most of it, once you added in the OS and a few other apps.
I would disagree with Jim on the utility of portable external disks. They're usually not that portable, and not all laptops supply enough USB power to power up the disk properly. Also, its just a hassle to mess with that kind of thing compared to having the storage built-right-in. The hard disk is going to be the cheapest component in the system, so there's little reason to try and save money there unless you're working with a stupid vendor that has goofy pricing tiers.
- Get the biggest battery you can get. Some laptops support having 2 batteries hooked up at once (you take out the DVD drive and put a battery in its slot). If so, get the 2nd battery for that situation.
Also, get 2 AC adaptors. One of them you can leave at home on your desk, or where you use the laptop most often for long periods of time. The other, take with you in your bag/backpack/whatever.
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Make sure it has 802.11g wireless built-in. I don't know much about 802.11a, except that mostplaces don't have it, or 802.11n, except that it's either quite new or not fully done. You might want to research the back compat of 802.11n with b/g equipment, as the latter is what you'll be connecting to.
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Try and get built-in bluetooth; that makes it nice for using wireless headphones, syncing with your phone, or using an external mouse/keyboard.
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+1^^^
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