I just bought an expensive laptop - was it a $2500 mistake?

[itznfb]

with the speed of today's RAM and Processors, the HDD is the most limiting factor. the difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm drive is night and day. the difference between 4 and 8gb of RAM is negligible; as is the difference between 2.0 and 2.66ghz. these can be noticable, but almost never justify the cost difference.

 

[Wilynn]

with the speed of today's RAM and Processors, the HDD is the most limiting factor. the difference between a 5400rpm and 7200rpm drive is night and day. as is the difference between 2.0 and 2.66ghz. these can be noticable, but almost never justify the cost difference.

I didn't know that there was that much of a difference in speed between the 5400rpm and 7200rpm hard drive. Luckily mine came with the 7200.

 

[Don Kondra]

I say good for you, unpack that puppy and enjoy

FYI I followed the popular advice that a 15" laptop was big enough. WRONG. The extra couple pounds would have been worth it to have a 17" screen.

Cheers, Don

 

[digital flower]

Forget about the money and move on.

Time to start thinking about that next upgrade :mrgreen:

 

[dxqcanada]

Windows 7 will be a great performance improvement over Windows Vista.

Your new laptop will be efficient for what you need.
You may still find that some program's will not take advantage of your hardware, so you will encounter some slowdowns.

Did you check the specs on the graphics card ? Does it used shared memory ?

 

[itznfb]

I say good for you, unpack that puppy and enjoy

FYI I followed the popular advice that a 15" laptop was big enough. WRONG. The extra couple pounds would have been worth it to have a 17" screen.

Cheers, Don

after lugging around a 17" for a couple years with my personal laptop, and having a lightweight 15" for work,,,, i may have to disagree. but, the 17" is very useful.

Windows 7 will be a great performance improvement over Windows Vista.

Your new laptop will be efficient for what you need.
You may still find that some program's will not take advantage of your hardware, so you will encounter some slowdowns.

Did you check the specs on the graphics card ? Does it used shared memory ?

Vista SP2. use it. love it.

 

[bigtwinky]

I say good for you, unpack that puppy and enjoy

FYI I followed the popular advice that a 15" laptop was big enough. WRONG. The extra couple pounds would have been worth it to have a 17" screen.

Cheers, Don

Docking station + 22" monitor at home, 15" on the laptop for when needed on the road.

I like the idea of having a laptop for on the go, but prefer to do most of my long houred work at home.

But I agree, unpack it and get it going. Seems like you have a good machine, regardless of the price you paid

 

[clarinetJWD]

Vista SP2. use it. love it.

You do realize SP2 hasn't been released yet, right? So either you are thinking SP1, or you are a beta tester and fully aware that you shouldn't be recommending widespread use of beta software.

To the OP:
As for the computer, yes, it's overkill. There comes a point of diminishing returns, and for every performance boost you get, you lose battery life, and in a laptop, that is a very big deal. The laptop I always recommend is a mid range Core 2 Duo with 4GB ram and moderate hard drive, or SSD if you can afford it. That is an excellent compromise with a system that will last a while on battery, but still not be too slow.

As far as your hatred of all slowdowns, good luck then, because as often as high end hardware makes a difference, you'll get very inefficient software that can't make use of it.

 

[itznfb]

You do realize SP2 hasn't been released yet, right? So either you are thinking SP1, or you are a beta tester and fully aware that you shouldn't be recommending widespread use of beta software.

actually RC has been out for over a month and it's highly recommended to install.

 

[clarinetJWD]

actually RC has been out for over a month and it's highly recommended to install.

Yes, I realize that, but it doesn't mean that it should be recommended for widespread use. Release Candidate still means there could be unfound, crippling bugs. It's a trial run of what could be released so long as nothing major crops up. For people like us, there's nothing wrong with installing beta or RC (for the record, I was using beta to mean unreleased, still being tested, not excluding RC) software, but recommending it for your average computer users is asking for trouble.

As for it being "recommended", that's only by you. Microsoft sure as hell doesn't recommend it to the general public, let alone a primary computer. It needs to be manually uninstalled when the final version comes out, it will change by release, it could contain a number of undiscovered bugs, and it's time limited.

 

[itznfb]

it's a final release candidate. which means it's the version that will show up in windows update. and yes, microsoft recommends it. if you call in for support, the first thing they will ask you is if you've installed SP2 yet.

 

[clarinetJWD]

it's a final release candidate. which means it's the version that will show up in windows update. and yes, microsoft recommends it. if you call in for support, the first thing they will ask you is if you've installed SP2 yet.

Microsoft does NOT recommend it, Microsoft does say it will change, Microsoft did put a time limit on it, Microsoft does say it's for testing purposes only, and Microsoft most certainly would not ask if it's installed if you called it up (At least not as a recommendation).

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Vista SP2 Beta

And I'm not arguing here anymore, it has absolutely nothing to do with the original topic.

 

[stsinner]

That's the most trouble I've ever seen anyone go through to brag about a new laptop.. Sheesh..

Who would buy a new laptop, not open it when it arrives and blog about it and how concerned they are about it and look over their shoulder at it.. This whole thread's premise is just silly and doubtful.

 

[stsinner]

D
I don't understand why MS dosn't just burn windows into a compact flash card, just insert the card and windows is ready to go. All you would have to do is migrate your programs over so they would run on the hard drive. It would be nice, No more installing windows, no more corrupt windows files, no more piracy.

That's an interesting idea.. You could just carry around your licensed copy of Windows and whenever you come across a computer, just plug it in, and it's you're computer. Pop it out, and it's a dummy terminal with no operating system on it. Next guy plugs in his operating system and it's his computer..

Microsoft was toying with the idea a few years ago of Software as a Service to end pirating. Under this concept you would have no programs on your computer, but instead they would be kept on the respective software company's servers and you would "rent" it. Of course one problem is the speed required to run programs through the Internet.. Can you imagine starting up Photoshop from the Adobe servers?? Maybe with fiber optics, but not DSL or cable..

 

[clarinetJWD]

That's an interesting idea.. You could just carry around your licensed copy of Windows and whenever you come across a computer, just plug it in, and it's you're computer. Pop it out, and it's a dummy terminal with no operating system on it. Next guy plugs in his operating system and it's his computer..

Microsoft was toying with the idea a few years ago of Software as a Service to end pirating. Under this concept you would have no programs on your computer, but instead they would be kept on the respective software company's servers and you would "rent" it. Of course one problem is the speed required to run programs through the Internet.. Can you imagine starting up Photoshop from the Adobe servers?? Maybe with fiber optics, but not DSL or cable..

That's not a bad idea, except for the "CF Card" part. CF cards do not have the small file read write speed that OSes require. A better solution may surface as eSATA makes it on to more and more computers, or when USB 3.0 comes out. Pocket eSATA SSDs would be more than a match for the OS demands.