Notebook computers???

davev

Hi guys.

I haven't bought a computer for 2 years now, and I seem to be behind the
times. There are so many different CPU's, I don't know whats good, or
what to avoid.

I'm looking to by a notebook computer before the Zion-Bryce shoot.
My target price is $1000 or less.

The things I want on it are:

512K of ram, or more
80 gig HD, or more
Wide screen, 14" or larger

Circuit City has this one: http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Compaq-Presario-Notebook-PC-V2565US-/sem/rpsm/oid/141422/catOid/-12963/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

That looks like it fits the bill.

Any info or links talking about, Turion™ 64 ML-32, Pentium® M processor 740 , Celeron® M processor 380, Pentium® M processor 725, AMD Mobile Sempron™ 3000+.

Can anyone tell me which is better for battery life, editing photos, surfing the web with a wireless hookup. (I have always been hard wired so this is new also)
Speaking of this, can I somehow still have my home computer hard wired to cable internet, and at the same time have a wireless signal also?

Like I say, any info with help.
Thanks.
dave (lost in cyber space) v

1ibandit

davev wrote:

Hi guys.

I haven't bought a computer for 2 years now, and I seem to be behind the
times. There are so many different CPU's, I don't know whats good, or
what to avoid.

I'm looking to by a notebook computer before the Zion-Bryce shoot.
My target price is $1000 or less.

The things I want on it are:

512K of ram, or more
80 gig HD, or more
Wide screen, 14" or larger

Circuit City has this one: http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/Compaq-Presario-Notebook-PC-V2565US-/sem/rpsm/oid/141422/catOid/-12963/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

That looks like it fits the bill.

Any info or links talking about, Turion™ 64 ML-32, Pentium® M processor 740 , Celeron® M processor 380, Pentium® M processor 725, AMD Mobile Sempron™ 3000+.

Can anyone tell me which is better for battery life, editing photos, surfing the web with a wireless hookup. (I have always been hard wired so this is new also)
Speaking of this, can I somehow still have my home computer hard wired to cable internet, and at the same time have a wireless signal also?

Like I say, any info with help.
Thanks.
dave (lost in cyber space) v

If you want to do a little checking yourself I would go to www.tomshardware.com He seems to have the best reviews. I don't keep up on hardware to much any more.

I always use to be an intel man, but times have changed. Now it's AMD all most all the way. I didn't compair the chips you have listed, but AMD has been winning most test.

Celeron chips are disabled chip, and most people don't like them. what most people don't know is the math part that is disabled is not needed in most processes. I don't know how much it is used in editing photo, but I would think it would be used alot.

So other things you will want VIDEO CARD.. If you want to do some of the picture editing you will want to spend more on the video card. The biggest problem is most good cards are on on systems more then you want to spend.

Next most ram you can put in it. More ram will help some if you get a cheaper video card (not much but some).

Hardware and wireless, are fine together if you have the right hardware. Your wired router needs to have more then one port on it so can have the wireless router linked into it. If you have a wired/wireless router you are set already. Just remember to use WEP (encryption), because you don't want linux people like me to watch what you are doing.

If you need more help with networking email me. I have my A+ Net+, MCSE, and someday finish my cisco

One last thing I would get the warranty ( if you are bad I can tell you why, but not here) Sorry to say, but I like best-buy best warranty out there.. no questions.

Hope that helps. I am sure other may feel differnt many do.

ian408

Tom's Hardware is a great place to look.

However, before you decide on a hardware combination, take a moment to
decide what you need in terms of software.

If you plan on running XP, 512M is nowhere near enough memory. You will
probably want at least a 1G if you want to run tools like PS.

Ian

davev

1i, Ian, thanks.

Maybe I should say what I have at home.

I have an HP Media Center PC m470n, about 2 years old.

Intel pent 4, 3.0 gig with HT tech
512 pc3200 ddr sdram
2 160 gig HD
dvd writer
cd rom
built in 7 in 1 card reader.

I'm using a old (6-7 years) Quantex (out of business) monitor (19")

I want a windows notebook. I use PS Elements 4 for post work.

This does everything I want it to.
With more ram I'm sure it would load the photos faster, but I'm not in that
big of a hurry.

Games. I play Quake 3 Arena and GTA Vice City, when I have a bad day
and want to kill something.:D

I did have an AMD CPU once, a few computers ago. It had trouble running
some programs, so I kind of stayed away from AMD chips. Hopefully they're
better now.

Will the computer that I linked in the first post run these programs as well
as my home computer?

Thanks.

ian408

I don't know too much about the AMD chips except Opteron and
that's quite a bit better than its Intel competition.

But my suggestion of more memory was so that you'd have some to
run your programs. XP is a bit of a pig in that regard :-)

Battery life is dependant on a lot of things. But probably the biggest
consumers of power are the CPU, display, disk and CD-ROM. The disks can be
spun down to conserve power or you can hibernate the system (faster
boot). Same with the display. But the CPU also needs to be oriented toward
lower power consumption (which I believe the Turions are).

As far as CPU's go, Intel is the "safe" bet. But AMD parts have caught up
in recent years. In fact, I would venture to say that they've passed Intel
in terms of performance.

If price is an object, don't forget that many manufacturers sell reconditioned
systems at a substantial discount. Most come with a warranty so if you're
willing to take a small risk, the reward will be savings.

Good luck!
Ian

Mike Lane

Wait wait wait wait wait until the Yonah powered laptops come out (Jan or Feb)!!! They will be so much more powerful and less power consuming that you'll hate yourself if you get anything else.

At the very least, they Yonah chips will drive down the cost of the pentium-M chips.

Mike Lane

More on Yonah

The Dual Core 64bit Inel Merom comes out in the 3rd quarter 2006 (after the shootout but it'll give you lots of time to save up). Merom will apparently have 4Mb of on die cache and will reduce power requirements so that smaller laptops can go more than 10 hours between charges!

Tserrof

If your using a lappy mostly for the purposes of PS 4.0 I would suggest Intel over AMD any day. AMD has been getting such a good rap lately about their performance but that really applies to gaming more than anything else (SMPs not withstanding). As for photo and video editing along with other workstation tasks the, P4 line is the king of the single core heap in this department. On the other hand you mentioned the battery life. The Battery life of P4 based latops is questionable. I would suggest going with the Centrino (aka Pentium M) which offers strong battery life and great performance - although make sure the model you get has at least a minimum 1 MB L2 cache as PS 4.0 can take great advantage of this.
The AMD Turion was mentioned in this discussion as an alternative. I would not suggest the Turion over the Centrino in this case because it has flat out lower performance along with a shorter battery life. This partly due to the latest Centrinos supporting DDR2 memory which only uses 1.8 V in contrast to the comparitively inefficient Turion's DDR which uses 2.5V.
Keep in mind that the Turion has 2 advantages over the Centrino. First is 64 bit OS support, and second is that Turion lappys are roughly $150 USD cheaper on average than a similarly equipped centrino one (the ridiculously over priced Acer Ferrari is an exception to this however).
Waiting till the next gen processors come out before you buy your Lappy was also mentioned, but to be honest, you'll have a hard time finding one that meets your $1000 budget when they come out. On the bright side, as Mike mentioned it will drive the price of the Pentium M way down.
As for the gfx card, if your trying to make a $1000 dollar budget, while still meeting the recommended spec of 1GB RAM (you could probably just scrape by with 512 if your short on cash) and a strong processor, your probably going to have to stick with Intel's GMA or ATI's Radeon Xpress 200M chipset. As far as PS 4.0 goes, you won't need anything better than this, and if your looking to the future, these two gfx cards should be good enough to handle the robust Aero Glass graphical inteface of Winows Vista just fine.

DoctorIt

Guess what I'm doing right now? Setting up the new laptop I just bought for the lab!

It's an Averatec 3300 (Centrino chip). So far its really cool. Picked it up refurbished, because the boss gave me a $1k limit, but wanted a really portable computer with a decent size hard drive.

This one cost us $800. Have a look, another professor just picked up an Averatec for himself at Staples for less than 1k. Many of them have Athlon chips, can't comment on those.

davev

Thanks Everyone.

Like I said, I'm not in a big hurry to buy one. I can wait for a couple of
months to see whats coming out, and maybe price drops in what I'm
looking at now.

From your suggestions, and from my past experiences, I think I'll go with
the Intel chip. I still think 512 meg of ram should be enough. Sure, if I can
find one with a gig of ram, I'll get that.

I looked at a Averatec at Circuit City. It had a 12 inch screen. That's just
to small for my old, tired eyes.

This is one purchase that I want to do locally with a store with a 30 day
money back deal if it isn't right for you. Trying it in the store for 5 minutes
just doesn't give me enough of a feel for it. Because I'm out of the
hareware loop, specs help, but just don't tell me enough.

Thanks for responding to my questions.

ScottMcLeod

davev wrote:

Thanks Everyone.

Like I said, I'm not in a big hurry to buy one. I can wait for a couple of
months to see whats coming out, and maybe price drops in what I'm
looking at now.

From your suggestions, and from my past experiences, I think I'll go with
the Intel chip. I still think 512 meg of ram should be enough. Sure, if I can
find one with a gig of ram, I'll get that.

I looked at a Averatec at Circuit City. It had a 12 inch screen. That's just
to small for my old, tired eyes.

This is one purchase that I want to do locally with a store with a 30 day
money back deal if it isn't right for you. Trying it in the store for 5 minutes
just doesn't give me enough of a feel for it. Because I'm out of the
hareware loop, specs help, but just don't tell me enough.

Thanks for responding to my questions.

Just my 2 cents: 512 isn't enough, after having owned a laptop for a year.

DavidTO

Look, I'm a Mac guy, so I shouldn't even be in here, but I can't imagine that 512 is enough to do anything beyond word processing and web surfing. My 11 y.o. daughter has 512, and I think seriously about upgrading her...

ScottMcLeod

DavidTO wrote:

Look, I'm a Mac guy, so I shouldn't even be in here, but I can't imagine that 512 is enough to do anything beyond word processing and web surfing. My 11 y.o. daughter has 512, and I think seriously about upgrading her...

Yuppers. Even my friend's mac sucked when it had 512 ...

Tserrof

I can't imagine that 512 is enough

Agreed, but he can always just upgrade later if he feels its not appropriate for his immediate needs or budget as of now.

FourEyes45

Notebook computers
Well I did it, I just ordered A Dell Inspiron 9300-with the 17inch UltraSharp wide scren UXGA with TrueLife, 1GB dual channel DDR2 SDRAM 1GB2D and 80GB Hard Drive.They are giving some good rebates until tuesday.Over $500.00 off.Have a Safe Night.Walter

davev

FourEyes45 wrote:

Well I did it, I just ordered A Dell Inspiron 9300-with the 17inch UltraSharp wide scren UXGA with TrueLife, 1GB dual channel DDR2 SDRAM 1GB2D and 80GB Hard Drive.They are giving some good rebates until tuesday.Over $500.00 off.Have a Safe Night.Walter

I priced this out, it comes to over $1700. That's just a bit more than $1000.

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=i9300S2&s=dhs

Mike Lane

You'll hate life if you get 512Mb of ram. I promise you.

Tserrof

You'll hate life if you get 512Mb of ram. I promise you.

Having only 512 certainly is limiting, but I think we should lay off that 'cause I'm sure he's gotten the point by now.

davev

OK, lets drive this home one more time, cause I must be really dumb.

I have 512 ram on the desktop computer that I've been using for 2 years.
For me it works fine. Now, in this alternate universe known at "Notebook land"
is 512 meg of ram different, or is it the same?
I realize that some of these notebooks say "64 meg shared video" so I
guess that would knock it down some, and I realize that if I can find one
without shared memory would be better.

I don't shoot RAW, I shoot JPGs. The files that I would be working on aren't
as large as they would be if I shot in RAW.

This would not be my primary computer. It's more of a storage/viewer for
when I'm away from the house. If I'm sitting in a hotel with nothing to do,
I may "work" on some photo's.

The thing is, I have a budget, and that budget is $1000. I can get one with 1 gig
of ram, but something else must suffer. instead of a 80 gig HD, it would be
40 gig. Instead of a DVD burner, it would be a cd burner.

I'm looking for a Chevy, not a Cadillac.

Thanks.

DavidTO

davev wrote:

OK, lets drive this home one more time, cause I must be really dumb.

I have 512 ram on the desktop computer that I've been using for 2 years.
For me it works fine. Now, in this alternate universe known at "Notebook land"
is 512 meg of ram different, or is it the same?...
I'm looking for a Chevy, not a Cadillac.

It's the same all over. The single most important upgrade you can make for your computer to improve performance is more RAM. The more PS has to write to disk the slower it is, and the more RAM you have the less PS will have to do that.

And really, if you're shooting JPEG or RAW doesn't matter. When you start to work in layers and correcting in PS it doesn't care if the source was JPEG or TIFF...it works on it as if it were (because it *is*) a Photoshop document. You ever checked the size of a PS doc? They get big really fast.

RAM isn't that much. But at $1000 budget, it definitely makes a difference. Have you checked out 3rd party sources for RAM, like crucial.com? In the long run it's true that only you can make the choice between 40gb drive and an 80....DVD or CD...it's all weighed against your time, I suppose...

ScottMcLeod

davev wrote:

OK, lets drive this home one more time, cause I must be really dumb.

I have 512 ram on the desktop computer that I've been using for 2 years.
For me it works fine. Now, in this alternate universe known at "Notebook land"
is 512 meg of ram different, or is it the same?
I realize that some of these notebooks say "64 meg shared video" so I
guess that would knock it down some, and I realize that if I can find one
without shared memory would be better.

I don't shoot RAW, I shoot JPGs. The files that I would be working on aren't
as large as they would be if I shot in RAW.

This would not be my primary computer. It's more of a storage/viewer for
when I'm away from the house. If I'm sitting in a hotel with nothing to do,
I may "work" on some photo's.

The thing is, I have a budget, and that budget is $1000. I can get one with 1 gig
of ram, but something else must suffer. instead of a 80 gig HD, it would be
40 gig. Instead of a DVD burner, it would be a cd burner.

I'm looking for a Chevy, not a Cadillac.

Thanks.

Think about it this way... the quicker it can do something, the less battery you'll be wasting, waiting for it to process something.

DavidTO

Hey, Dave,

The one thing I really admire about you is setting a budget and sticking to it. I can never do that when I buy a computer. "It's just another 100 for this, another 200 for that..." I'm hopeless when it comes to that stuff, so I just have to put off buying, cause I know I'll get top flight.

That's why I still have my 3 y.o. Titanium Powerbook. Which works fine, BTW. And it has a gig of RAM....

erich6

Dave,

I agree with everyone else about getting at least 1GB RAM.

The benefit on a laptop is much greater than in a desktop. This is because laptop hard drives tend to be slower than desktop hard drives. If you don't have enough RAM you are relying more on the page file and more disk access. This will defenitely bog you down.

I also think laptops have a bit more memory overhead because of the power-saving functions.

Erich

Tserrof

I suppose this all just depends on your usage habits. If you have a well streamlined working enviroment, that doesn't have a snowload of drivers and programs running in the sys tray, and as long as you don't open up anything too demanding alongside PS simultaneously, 512 should work out fine.
We were all just recommending 1 GB simply because it would gaurantee a smooth ride for your work. To help put an end on the speculation of how much you'll need, open up all the apps on your desktop computer that would simulate the heaviest workload you can reasonably expect on your laptop. After this, open up the windows task manager to see how much RAM your apps are using and go from there.
Hope this puts your mind at ease regarding your purchase.

By the way davev, I just noticed you and I have the same birthday. lol

davev

Tserrof wrote:

I suppose this all just depends on your usage habits. If you have a well streamlined working enviroment, that doesn't have a snowload of drivers and programs running in the sys tray, and as long as you don't open up anything too demanding alongside PS simultaneously, 512 should work out fine.
We were all just recommending 1 GB simply because it would gaurantee a smooth ride for your work. To help put an end on the speculation of how much you'll need, open up all the apps on your desktop computer that would simulate the heaviest workload you can reasonably expect on your laptop. After this, open up the windows task manager to see how much RAM your apps are using and go from there.
Hope this puts your mind at ease regarding your purchase.

By the way davev, I just noticed you and I have the same birthday. lol

Tserrof, that's probably why I can get away with 512 meg of ram.
I only use 2 programs at a time. I don't have 10 windows open.
When I'm working in PSE4, I also have a program called P.I.E. opened
for dragging pics into the work space.

When I'm on the web, 2 windows, maybe 3 while surfing. Nothing else.
I hope this explains why I think 512 will be fine for me.

One more thing about battery power. I would like to get the most I could
out of a charge, but again, I will be using this more in a hotel room, than
out on the road, or in the woods. So really, an hour of battery time
would be enough for me to down load a couple of cards full of pics.

So, if you had a choice of an HP, Compaq, Acer, Gateway, Toshiba, or Averatec, which one have you had good luck with?

PS. Don't forget to send me a card next year for my Bday.:D

GoBlue!

Toshiba
Hey there-

I've been shopping around for a notebook recently as well, primarily for word processing/office use, but will function as a photo storage device on trips, etc. I did NOT buy it do my photoshop work, etc.

I was down to a few, but then walked into Best Buy today & found that they had placed the Toshiba M55-S3293 on sale for $999 (from $1399).

Amazingly, this thing has Intel Pentium M processor (1.86 GHz), 1GB RAM (2x512), 100 GB HD (5400rpm), 14" monitor, and a CD-RW/DVD+/-RW with double-layer support.

I went to the Dell website & configured a couple different machines to come with the same specs, and I was looking at $1500+.

I snatched one up, and I'm sitting in bed typing this right now with the wireless connection fired up & working great. I'm a happy camper.

I stopped by Circuit City on the way home to pickup the wireless router, and they had the same model on sale for $999 too (their regular price $1299). Looks like the sale is going until Jan 7th.

Just something to consider. Good luck with the search.

Jim

Tserrof

Hey there-

I've been shopping around for a notebook recently as well, primarily for word processing/office use, but will function as a photo storage device on trips, etc. I did NOT buy it do my photoshop work, etc.

I was down to a few, but then walked into Best Buy today & found that they had placed the Toshiba M55-S3293 on sale for $999 (from $1399).

Amazingly, this thing has Intel Pentium M processor (1.86 GHz), 1GB RAM (2x512), 100 GB HD (5400rpm), 14" monitor, and a CD-RW/DVD+/-RW with double-layer support.

I went to the Dell website & configured a couple different machines to come with the same specs, and I was looking at $1500+.

I snatched one up, and I'm sitting in bed typing this right now with the wireless connection fired up & working great. I'm a happy camper.

I stopped by Circuit City on the way home to pickup the wireless router, and they had the same model on sale for $999 too (their regular price $1299). Looks like the sale is going until Jan 7th.

Just something to consider. Good luck with the search.

Jim

looks like this one might fit the bill davev!

davev

You may have done better than me. Today I decided to go with the one in my first post.
I spent most of the night trying to set it up. I think this will work out just fine.

I loaded pie, and PSE4. I think it loads a bit slower than the desktop, but
not by much. I worked a couple of pics, it was about the same as the desktop.

I ended up paying $979 with a $70 rebate. I got a wireless router that will
end up being free after the rebate. So, tax and everything, I'll be under the
$1000 mark.

Thanks for everyones input.