Which laptop - Q for the techies

[fenghuang]

I'm pretty much settled on a budget and ball-park spec for a laptop computer. But if you had the choice form the following with almost identical prices and specs (other than CPU), which would you choose and why?

Acer : Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 : 2 - 2.49GHz
Toshiba : Intel Celeron T3000 : 1.5 - 1.99GHz
Compaq : Intel Celeron Dual Core T3100 : 1.5 - 1.99GHz

It's esentially as a second home PC with some light business admin requirements, so web / email / MS office (or Open Office) / iTunes. Possibly some occasional use of Photoshop.

 

[silverwhisper]

2 questions:

i'm assuming you're buying from a brick & mortar store, rather than from some online store?

is the portability factor important? you can get much better bang for your buck with a desktop rather than a laptop.

ed

 

[York]

It very much depends on what you want to use it for. If you're rendering graphics for any sort of gaming you need a decent graphics card. If you're just using it for surfing, word processing etc even the cheapest laptop these days will be fine.

Processor speed is not necessarily the be all and end all.

The other point about desktops above is spot on.

 

[mark_j]

I'm pretty much settled on a budget and ball-park spec for a laptop computer. But if you had the choice form the following with almost identical prices and specs (other than CPU), which would you choose and why?

Acer : Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 : 2 - 2.49GHz
Toshiba : Intel Celeron T3000 : 1.5 - 1.99GHz
Compaq : Intel Celeron Dual Core T3100 : 1.5 - 1.99GHz

It's esentially as a second home PC with some light business admin requirements, so web / email / MS office (or Open Office) / iTunes. Possibly some occasional use of Photoshop.

All other things being equal I'd take the acer with the pentium 4 dual core. But making a decision based just on the CPU is not exactly how I would go.

What would really drive this for me is:

Size and ergonomics of the unit.
Memory in the package.
Size of the HD (if you are doing I-tunes and stuff the bigger the better, that kind of thing eats a lot of drive real estate)
Does it have enough ports (USB. wireless. card slots, etc.) to cover anything that I might use it for.
Does the unit fit within my budget.
Manufacturers warranty. (Not the crap extended stuff they try to sell you in the store but the actual manufacturer's warranty)

Finally, how good is the manufacturers service record. Do they have an actual service department that can help you (in english that you can understand for pete's sake, or do they send you off to some department that charges you $X to talk to someone)

Do your research and good hunting.

 

[fenghuang]

It was just a case of brand vs processor.
Other than that there is next to nothing betwen them.

 

[fgarvb1]

It was just a case of brand vs processor.
Other than that there is next to nothing betwen them.

My wife's has an Acer. It has Vista on it. I.6 Gig processor

It hasn't crashed yet.

I hate Vista.

Sometimes she has to turn off the fire wall to get on the Internet.

Mostly she plays card games on it, listens to Nascar scanners and once a month she pays bills.

I backed everything up on our backup system and bought the restore disk for about twenty-five dollars.

But, it hasn't crashed yet.

Its about one year old.

 

[whywouldi]

Stay away from the Celeron Processor : it is a slow and old CPU

 

[remove090809]

Acer : Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 : 2 - 2.49GHz

with this dual core cpu its like having a single 3.0+ ghz cpu. This def needs to be your choice

 

[York]

Stay away from the Celeron Processor : it is a slow and old CPU

This is a simplistic and incorrect view of the Celeron. It's as modern as (m)any of the other processors out there. The latest Celeron is a cut down version of Core 2 Duos, so it isn't true to say it's old. Celerons have always been the same basic core as any of the other Pentiums but with less cache memory and sometimes advanced features disabled. Cache memory can sometimes impact on performance, but it can be irrelevant depending on what you're doing. Whether it's slow, as I said in a previous post, really depends on what you are using the computer for.

My current workhorse is a 3GMhz P4 which is at least three years old and it flies for just about everything I do. Going to a Core 2 Duo seems to help with things like movie encoding, but makes absolutely no difference with graphic intensive things like Second Life (over my P4).

From what you're using it for, the photo manipulation will be the sternest test and that will probably be as dependent on he amount of RAM as much as much as the CPU for casual usage. If you're going to be using Vista, you'll need at least 2GBytes for it to be usable (for pretty much anything). If you use an older version of Windows or a different OS altogether you'll get away with far less.

Of Acer, Toshiba and Compaq, Acer are the most plasticky and (in the UK anyway) seem to have the least interested support team when you have a query. Compaq are HP these days so you (I) would assume it would have the best build quality. Toshiba have been solid machines in my experience.

The fact remains that any of those machines for your uses will be just fine. Maybe you should try the keyboards and glide pad to see which one feels best for you.

 

[fenghuang]

Thanks