What do you need out of our laptop/what are you going to use it for? Looking for 14", 15", 16", etc?
What about something like this?
Dell Studio 1737 Series Notebook PC's | Staples®
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New Laptop
- Thread starter wesley_w
- Start date
What do you need out of our laptop/what are you going to use it for? Looking for 14", 15", 16", etc?
What about something like this?
Dell Studio 1737 Series Notebook PC's | Staples®
The thing about vista, from what I have read, is that it was bad at the start. From my limited use of it, I can tell that it has improved a ton with SP1. Note that I am fairly platform agnostic as I run Ubuntu, XP, and Vista. It all depends on the hardware underneath.
I too am excited for Windows 7 as many of its benchmarks are approaching performance parity with XP. The place it really has a chance to shine is in its ability to handle symmetric multi-processing (SMP) as computer grow from 2 -> 4 -> 8 -> 16 core cpus over the next 3-5 years.
I too am excited for Windows 7 as many of its benchmarks are approaching performance parity with XP. The place it really has a chance to shine is in its ability to handle symmetric multi-processing (SMP) as computer grow from 2 -> 4 -> 8 -> 16 core cpus over the next 3-5 years.
RTM build access is available in August, so I am guessing October for production release, don't know if there is an official date yet.
great....I just bought a laptop with Vista and I really didn't know all that much about it. Is it really that bad? Far as I know I don't have an upgrade option to 7.:skeptical:
You can get a free evaluation copy of windows 7 now, that is good for at least another year. I've been running it for the last few months and couldnt be happier.
It's not the end of the world, no. If you see a reasonable price to upgrade from Vista to 7 though I'd take it.
It's some of that, and also a lack of backward compatibility and high system resource needs. People may want to use old peripherals that they already own, and manufacturers did such a ****** job of making drivers for Vista, a lot of old peripherals aren't compatible at all. Also, you may have problems with old software.
It's also possible the average home user is just looking for a cheap PC. The problem is, you can't toss Vista on a cheap PC and expect good results. Not nearly enough system resources.
Otherwise, I'd like to say that, as long as I had Vista on my laptop and my desktop, I never really had any problems. For the most part, a lot of the bashing at this point is unwarranted and simply the popular thing to do.
(Not that there aren't some valid criticisms, but there always is)
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Yeah, these are my primary gripes with Vista. That and the typical MS moved everything around again, but I usually adapt to that fine.
Yeah, Vista isn't as hardware friendly at release as XP was that's for sure. 7 seems somewhere in between. Waiting to see how the RTM client behaves.
Apple homers don't bash! :wink:
People need to remember that XP was more of a direct descendant of Windows 2K, thus the driver writers had time to optimize before XP came out. Same goes for 7. Vista was a major divergence from XP as the driver stack was rewritten. Early Vista was effectively a beta test for new drivers. Could M$ have handled it better? Yes.
Also, keep in mind the thing that makes OSX (Mac) is that Apple completely abandoned compatibility to start anew. If you had an older Mac peripheral, it didn't work when you got a new mac. Microsoft did a little bit of this with Vista but they can't go to the extent that Apple did. You cna be much more agile when you are only 4% of the market, fewer people to **** off.
Also, keep in mind the thing that makes OSX (Mac) is that Apple completely abandoned compatibility to start anew. If you had an older Mac peripheral, it didn't work when you got a new mac. Microsoft did a little bit of this with Vista but they can't go to the extent that Apple did. You cna be much more agile when you are only 4% of the market, fewer people to **** off.
And they did...slightly, I mean Vista was only about 1/4 as painful as their ME experiment.
And when that 4% is a cult-like following you really don't **** anyone off.
The only thing I'd say about that laptop, is that it's really heavy. If you're looking for something that's just going to sit on your desk at home, no problem. If this is a laptop you want to take to class with you or to the coffee shop, I'd suggest something a little smaller and lighter. 7lbs doesn't seem like much, until you've been lugging it around all day with your other school-related supplies.
Also keep in mind that not all laptops have XP drivers available for them. If you wanted to install XP on it, check HP's website first to make sure that XP drivers are available before you do that.
Also, it's a 64-bit Processor, so you'll want 64-bit XP. I don't know how good the 3rd party support is for 64-bit XP, so you'll want to verify that as well.
Of course, you can install 32-bit XP on it, but instead of getting the 4GB of RAM you paid for, 32-bit XP will only see approximately 3.3GB, due to limitations of the 32-bit architecture.
Also keep in mind that not all laptops have XP drivers available for them. If you wanted to install XP on it, check HP's website first to make sure that XP drivers are available before you do that.
Also, it's a 64-bit Processor, so you'll want 64-bit XP. I don't know how good the 3rd party support is for 64-bit XP, so you'll want to verify that as well.
Of course, you can install 32-bit XP on it, but instead of getting the 4GB of RAM you paid for, 32-bit XP will only see approximately 3.3GB, due to limitations of the 32-bit architecture.
I won't get into the whole get into the whole Mac/PC fight, but I will say I've been pretty satisfied with Apple's laptop line. Either me or my family has owned one since the mid 90s... so laptops running Windows are a pretty foreign thing to me still.
Like the previous poster said, 7.0 lbs is really heavy for a laptop. The specs look really nice, and if you're already laptop-savvy, you know what needs to be done to take care of one. Warranties, whether with PC or Mac laptops, are a MUST for laptops, and they often pay for themselves.
Like the previous poster said, 7.0 lbs is really heavy for a laptop. The specs look really nice, and if you're already laptop-savvy, you know what needs to be done to take care of one. Warranties, whether with PC or Mac laptops, are a MUST for laptops, and they often pay for themselves.
Sorry you still put up with viruses, spyware and pathetic performance? I would be sorry to.
Airwalke, now you have me worried because I don't want to pay a third of the purchase price for an extended warranty. I'm looking at a different machine now (ASUS G71GS-RX05) and it will have a one year warranty. To me, if something is at or under a thousand bucks and it breaks after a couple years I won't feel all that bad about just getting a new one.
Anyway, I'm not arguing, just looking for advice to see what I should do. I've never had a laptop before, are they prone to problems??
Sorry that I am not some brain-washed homer that is naive enough to believe those problems don't exist in my world? No.
For the record, I have both. They both have their problems. I just like harping on fanboi mentality.
I would not be that worried about buying the extended warranty with the attitude you have. It is always a gamble but the company would not be selling the warranty if they were not making money doing it.