need laptop advice...

tgp · Feb 17, 2004

ive got a friend thats wanting to get a new laptop, im trying to convince him to let me build him up a desktop, for i know he's on the the 'i need a laptop cause i can take it to the park and blah blah' kick. he's suck on getting one though. problem is, ive only ever built up or worked on one. im used to desktop pc's and apple laptops. i have NO idea about configuring/whats normal for a pc laptop.

sooo.....
here's what hes needs it for:

-winXP
-long battery life (4hrs+)
-solidworks+various CAD programs
-maybe some slight gaming (nothing dx or hl2 wise) just some weak games
-keep it for a long time, doesnt want to upgrade soon

what processor should i look at for something on those specs? and around what price range for something like 1.7ghz+ (dont know what the current ghz on laptops is, but anything is a big jump from his old 766mhz), 40gb+hd, 15"lcd, firewire, ect.

know of any good deals or things to stay away from please let me know.

thanks for any help!

laters.
t

XWRed1 · Feb 17, 2004

He'll want a Pentium-M processor.

The IBM T40s are nice.

Tebore · Feb 17, 2004

IBM's are nice, but you have to watch out for the battery they had a problem awhile back I don't know if they fixed them yet.
T40's a good laptop but go a step up if you want to keep it a bit longer. Bigred should be here any minute now to recommend a custom laptop company that is OEM for toshiba and such. Get a pentium M and a Radeon 9600 video chip.

dropadrop · Feb 17, 2004

Yup, nothing else then a pentium m will give long batterylife and high performance.

AltecXP · Feb 17, 2004

actually i just got a HP w/ a AMD 2500+ mobile and the battery lasted me 3hrs and 50min yesterday writting a report and running aim and webrowsing

Pinky · Feb 17, 2004

It's tough to get a proc fast enough to do 3d drafting/cad and still last 4+ hours.

tgp · Feb 17, 2004

thx for all the imput guys. ive never heard of the pentium M, hows that stack up against the Centurion (?) thats all ive ever heard.

he wont be doing any SUPER serioius crunching, like i said, he is using a 766mhz right now so anything, even in a laptop will be rockin for him.

but still needs to run solidworks and autocad ok.

AltecXP · Feb 17, 2004

celeron? the pentium is teh Celerons bigger better brother

Ebola · Feb 17, 2004

i think he ment centrino which everyone thinks is a processor but is actually a marketing ploy from intel. centrino= pentium M + intel wireless networking card

tgp · Feb 17, 2004

yeh, centrino, thx for clearning that up

Yuriman · Feb 17, 2004

A 1.5ghz Pentium-M will be more than fast enough, they do a lot more work per mhz than a P4.

tgp · Feb 17, 2004

hey guys. update.

he says best buy has some pretty good deals on some laptops right now. he said they have a out of the box HP.

how do hp's stack up in the laptop dept?

never had one myself.

thx!

AltecXP · Feb 17, 2004

i just got a HP llove it, hp and compaq are the samething for reference

baqai · Feb 18, 2004

my friend had a HP he just sold it for ..... another HP i have used that machine and its solid, i would suggest that if your friend wants longer battery life than he should check out Centrino definately not sure about CAD and other applications but since a 1.4 Ghz Centrino is said to be equivalent of a 2.4 Ghz PIV i think a 1.5-1.6 Ghz Centrino with good amount of RAM "should" be able to do the job, i haven't touched the video aspect till now as far as i know there are many notebooks already coming with fast nvidia and ATI graphic chips

Question is that a lappy even Centrino running a hot graphic chip as ATI or Nvidia running CAD ouch that's gonna be hot .. tell him never to keep the laptop on his lap unlike the name suggests

tgp · Feb 18, 2004

allright, thanks for the input guys! much appreciated! ill pass along the info.

t

Staz · Feb 20, 2004

Solidworks and cad. You can do that with intergrated graphic cards. That is CPU and RAM intensive. Solid works is really RAM intensive. He will either want a fast HDD (not something found in most laptops) or about a gig of RAM. But he probibly knows that already.

Make sure to save enough cash to upgrade the RAM.

Also another vote for a pentium m CPU.

new_novice · Feb 20, 2004

yeah, HP are making up for the past, it's pretty good now actually.

Captain Slug · Feb 21, 2004

3 year warranty is a must since it's next to impossible to fix laptop hardware problems on your own.

need laptop advice...

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