LAPTOP ADVISE

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

i want to buy a laptop from ebay but dont know much about the makes and the specs .
all i want to be able to do is connecting to internet and being able to run the main windows programs ,any tips on buying one would be great .
i have a few questions in mind after seeing a few laptops on ebay

-is the usb port a big deal ? (as i have been told i can get a plug in usb adaptor )

-cd rom is a must i beleive ? or is there a way to upgrade that too without a lot of hassle ?

why do the ram on most laptops i see seem to be too low ,can they be upgraded as easy as the pc"s ?

many thanks in advance

Site Subscriber Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 4722

usb = a must have nower days

90% says thay will have one but if not, no worrys, as you can get serial to usb adaptor

cd rom = must have, dont bother getting anything WITHOUT one

ram isnt that much of a fuss on laptops as they mainly used for business, ie using word powerpoint the net etc, thses things dont use super amounts. games and running multiple programs at once use a lot of ram. lots of ram on laptopnormally means a high spec one, so lots of cash, unless you want a super powerful one?

and its not the eaiset to upgrade yourself.

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

cheers roger ,
as far as i understand all i need is a basic laptop (i dont know if the make matters) with cd rom for sure and usb if possible . i suppose an internal modem would be usefull unless there is a way to sort the internet problem out.

Site Subscriber Joined: 13 Oct 2004 Posts: 4722

internet problem?

depends what you want..if you want boring old 56k internet, then modem is not that much of an issue.

but if you want ADSL, have to get either an external ADSL modem

or possibly a netword card, some have them with it inside. make aint to much of a fuss, but compaq seem to be good, as well as Dell.

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

thats allright as long as an external modem can be used easily.

the laptop will probably never be used on the run anyway ,it will be used in doors most of the time.
cheers mate

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

I doubt you will be able to find a laptop made in the last 5 years without a modem and network port built in

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

Have a look at the compaq m300, I picked one up recently, made up to a PIII 600mhz, perfect for web browsing and they are absolutley tiny Smile

Retroholic Joined: 12 Feb 2004 Posts: 5685

I have a toshiba satellite 5105-S607 and it rocks,1.7 P4, 512mb ddr ram, harmon kardon speakers, yamaha sound card, tv out, firewire, nvidia graphics card. I paid about 400 for it 18 months ago second hand but had to pay more cos the last owner forgot his security code...

I also broke it and it now spends its days protecting my important documents from blowing away.

Get one of them Very Happy

Level 6 User Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 134

m8, you will definately need usb at some time or another, believe me, even if you go for Broadband, a generic cheap as chips, adsl modem is usb, also although yes you can get a serial to usb adaptor the speed through serial is shit, equating to 1mb per second at best, at least usb1 is 11mbps, i.e if you get bb you could actually be restricted if the service was above 1mb, i'd forget the serial adaptor m8, waste of money as it equates to a massive bottleneck, just make sure it has USB and if you can get usb2 which is up to 400mbps, else you be looking an RJ45 ethernet socket for BB and again most new laptops have these as standard now but some laptops do not have them on board, especially cheaper ones, or older ones.

memory, what you have to be careful of is, if the laptop is older it may use older memory which may not be available anymore, make sure it is sodimm ram and the speed is the highest you can afford, (this will be similar to the bus speed on the motherboard(bus speed is the speed the data moves across the board or memory basically), In addition bus speeds are reduced in laptops, again creatin bottlenecks you are not aware of. this is normally due to a size restriction.

also cheaper or older laptops have slower harddrives i.e 4,500rpm so the read, write speed and access speed is reduced dramatically compared to a regular tower pc drive of 7500rpm, at best you need to have 5400rpm.

It is amazing how many resources are used up on a pc,when downloading webpages and it's graphics etc, noramlly directed at CPU and memory, so at least make sure you don;t blow you money on something that is going to last you five minutes. what you have to remember is an OS like W2000 or XP are VERY heavy OS's and take alot out of a machine to run them without any pauses or hanging , I have a 2.8 ghz 16" 1gb ram 5400 rpm harddrive laptop and alot of the time it is still slow.

One other thing to remember is alot of application revisions are requiring alot more from machines to be able to run all the features comfortably.

I have dual cpu machine as my workhorse and the apps open in flash, but in comparison the laptop takes soooooooooooooooooo much longer and just shows how much heavier apps are becoming.

and yes you DO need a cdrom without question, dvd's are now replacing cdrom as cdrom just don't hold eneough data anymore. at best get a dvd rom which are standard in 90% of new laptops.

Minimum 256mb ram if you wana run W2k or XP anything below this just won;t cut it believe me DON'T BOTHER, you'll get so frustrated with it, you'll end up hating it. recently DDR 266 (double data rate) has become the norm, before this was SDRAM Single data ram 133mhz was the norm, if you can afford get ddr, but remember the board will need to be DDR also to match again chedck this out, read up.

For cpu get as fast as your money can get, for cpus before the centrino get as high as you can get basically, although the more power the more battery consumption, and same with screeen size, however you have to draw a line somewhere, i.e. i need mine for grahics work and have to be able to see what i'm doing, if you have a power supply it doesn;t make much differnce as i always find myself close to a power source.

but if it's a centrino chip then 1.8ghz apparently matches a pre centrino 2.5ghz say as the centrino's have a smalller core, uses less power to create the same throughput, and therefore create less heat and is more efficient, the hotter cpus get the slower they become.

I would advise just check spec of lots of machines to get an idea of what your buying and if it will do everything you need in the longrun, else it WILL run out of balls just when you need it not to.

hope this helps

-=KEv-

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

thanks for all this great information mate.it did help a lot of course . i shall check a few machines before i buy one .

Forum Moderator Joined: 16 Feb 2004 Posts: 1356

"but if it's a centrino chip then 1.8ghz apparently matches a pre centrino 2.5ghz say as the centrino's have a smalller core, uses less power to create the same throughput, and therefore create less heat and is more efficient, the hotter cpus get the slower they become."

That doesn't make sense

Spammer Joined: 27 Jul 2004 Posts: 5717

Soneji wrote:

"but if it's a centrino chip then 1.8ghz apparently matches a pre centrino 2.5ghz say as the centrino's have a smalller core, uses less power to create the same throughput, and therefore create less heat and is more efficient, the hotter cpus get the slower they become."

That doesn't make sense

dont tell me ,nothing about computers make sense to me Laughing

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

Elviscat, if you have that spec and it still running slow then you have problems. IF you can get a P4 M ( i think thats basically what the Centrino chipset is) then get one, their based on the PIII archtecture with some P4 bits bolted on (bus and instruction set IIRC), best of both worlds Very Happy

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

schakal wrote:

Soneji wrote:

"but if it's a centrino chip then 1.8ghz apparently matches a pre centrino 2.5ghz say as the centrino's have a smalller core, uses less power to create the same throughput, and therefore create less heat and is more efficient, the hotter cpus get the slower they become."

That doesn't make sense

dont tell me ,nothing about computers make sense to me Laughing

Basically, what I think he's saying that the Centrino 1.8 Ghz is the 'equivalent' to a Desktop P4 running at 2.5 ghz. Sort of right, see above post for reasons (yes i know i could have just edited this on...but you know...)

Forum Moderator Joined: 18 Feb 2004 Posts: 7432

huwwatkins wrote:

. IF you can get a P4 M ( i think thats basically what the Centrino chipset is) then get one, their based on the PIII archtecture with some P4 bits bolted on (bus and instruction set IIRC), best of both worlds Very Happy

P4M is different to Pentium M, Centrino is Pentium M combined with an Intel wireless adapter and chipset

Some sellers also sell laptops based on the Pentium M but with a non-intel wireless adapter. This is functionally identical to Centrino, but for legal reasons, they arent allowed to call it 'Centrino'

Mines an HP/Compaq NX7000

1.6GHz Centrino
512meg
40gig HD
Radeon 9600 64mb
15.4" widescreen 1680*1050 (screen is absolutely awesome)

Had it over a year, been totally happy with it.

Site Subscriber Joined: 10 Jun 2004 Posts: 2317

Neal 19 16v wrote:

huwwatkins wrote:

. IF you can get a P4 M ( i think thats basically what the Centrino chipset is) then get one, their based on the PIII archtecture with some P4 bits bolted on (bus and instruction set IIRC), best of both worlds Very Happy

P4M is different to Pentium M, Centrino is Pentium M combined with an Intel wireless adapter and chipset

Some sellers also sell laptops based on the Pentium M but with a non-intel wireless adapter. This is functionally identical to Centrino, but for legal reasons, they arent allowed to call it 'Centrino'

Mines an HP/Compaq NX7000

1.6GHz Centrino
512meg
40gig HD
Radeon 9600 64mb
15.4" widescreen 1680*1050 (screen is absolutely awesome)

Had it over a year, been totally happy with it.

Thats sort of what I meant....just didnt come out that way Laughing

Level 6 User Joined: 04 Nov 2004 Posts: 134

although it is good spec, problem is i use max & maya alot and anything bar a dual machine wil seems slow trust me, these apps hog power.

schakal, read up on how cpu's work, basically if you half a cpu's temperature then you can theoretically double it's speed. there are some machines you can by with basically fridges in the bottom, piped straight to the cpu, reducing the temperature to something like -30 meaning the electrodes inside the cpu can work twice as fast.

the faster a cpu goes the hoter it gets due to the electrodes inside creating friction, and in turn drawing power, if you cool it it's still able to do the same job but with no friction at the same time therefore run faster until friction happens but at a faster speed(overclocking). the smaller the core the less power it needs to drive it, therefore the less heat is created, and inturn the less friction and the less the heat has to be disipated. just makes it a more efficient chip with say a fan cooling it. but if you can afford super cooling then you have an advantage