vista on a mobile

I will be buying a laptop for college this summer and want it to be good for the next 4 years. Should I be worried about the lack of 64-bit processors for mobile computers, and there role in vista? Knowing that there will also be an x86 version of vista makes me think this really isn't a big deal, but should I get more than 1gb of ram due to the requirements of vista? Also, how much is too much as far as mobile video cards go? I will be doing some gaming but don't need max settings. Thanks.

Im not sure but 64 bit does run better. if you want 64 bit find a laptop with an AMD Turion 64 in it.

I tried running Vista on my z60t, 1Gig of ram, 1.4 Celeron M and Intell 900 grfx, I couldnt run Aero and the normal Vista was relatively slow. There were slow downs when hitting start circle, or opening win explorer and I would much rather stick with Windows XP. So even though soemthing like x300 will run Aero, I dont think it will be pleasant or smooth. As for 64 bit, as fo right now it really makes no difference, not enough programs to use it. So I wouldnt base my buying decision on that.

I will try to run it on the t60 next and see if I get anything better to say, it has dedicated grfx card.

id wait till conroe, the turions arent amazing as of yet and the core due are amazing but I think there will be better.

will there be mobile conroe chips? also i figure running aero will be more dependent on the video card, since aero is run by the gpu. i'm just worried not having 64-bit will hurt me 2-3 years down the road. dell, toshiba, sony, etc., don't support turion processors and while I'll pay up to $2000 i'm not ready to splurge for falcon northwest, alienware or the like. any other way i can get turion from a reputable dealer?

edit: Also, a strange question. I'm on vacation in Bermuda right now and I visited the dell website. Instead of showing the E1705, E1505 and such under the inspiron models, it showed the inspiron 9400 and 6400. Now I can't see any difference between the E1705, from the US website, and the inspiron 9400 model, and when identicallly configured teh 9400 is ~$300 cheaper. Should I be worried about ordering the 9400?

arent they the Core Duo 2 and Core Duo Extreme chips/.

Merom is the Conroe mobile verson. It will be released in August. Amoung other things Merom will bring 64 bit support. Merom will be a drop in replacement for currect Core Duo platforms. A bios update is all you should need.

About 9400/6300..I'm not 100% sure what is going on there but I know the E1705 and the 9400 are the same, the model numbers are interchanged. I'd have to check into what dell is doing, but I know for a fact, and you can search the forums here that the 9400 is the E1705.

Shelnutt2 said:

Merom is the Conroe mobile verson. It will be released in August. Amoung other things Merom will bring 64 bit support. Merom will be a drop in replacement for currect Core Duo platforms. A bios update is all you should need.

About 9400/6300..I'm not 100% sure what is going on there but I know the E1705 and the 9400 are the same, the model numbers are interchanged. I'd have to check into what dell is doing, but I know for a fact, and you can search the forums here that the 9400 is the E1705.

Click to expand...

so I am also looking to buy a new laptop soon, preferably a t60 or T60P, should I wait for the memrons.

The meroms will be available in august, but when will the likes of Dell get a hold of them and actually put them in their products? Basically I have a laptop already configured for ~$1800. I'm hoping, come august, I'll be able to just switch the yonah for the merom. How unrealistic is it to expect not only the same price, but also availability from an OEM in august. Thanks

My friend is a beta tester for vista and he has it running on a vaio

vista is going to suck for a long while yet

it took allot of us a year just to switch to xp-sp2 let alone a hole new os

all i see is a resource hog and 2 years of bugs before ill play with it

well assuming that I stick with xp then, what oem availability and prices can i expect from merom.

I'm running Vista on a Dell Inspiron 6000, 1.6ghz, 2 gig ram. It won't run Aero Glass but rest runs fine. Also it is just as fast as XP was. I'm very happy with it.

The only problem I have is figuring out a way to overide the BIOS to allow the shared video memory to use more ram and allow aero glass to function.

M

I've managed to install my beta copy of Vista on one of my ancient Thinkpads. It worked, but the graphics were, uh, weak at best. (With 16 whole MB of video memory, what did you expect?)

The computer in question, was a P3 1.2, with 640 MB of memory. It worked about as good as my AA8XE, with DDR2 512 MB and a 2.93 Celeron (at 3.8) and a weak PCI-E video card.

I'm with Outhouse as well. In my (never to be) humble opinion, XP STILL sucks! I'll stick with 2000, for a good long time.

steve

The OS is a bit limited on laptops as yet. The dual cores run fairly well, but there are two major bottenecks according to WinSPR(Windows System Performance Rating). These are graphics cards and storage subsystems. I have some inside data, but am NDA'd on specifics since the specs are not finalized. Most high end graphics cards are scoring in the 3.5 to 4.2 range. This will allow Aero to run without problems, but presents a challenge for the future due to power constraints. Storage is a differing problem. The rating is, in part, based on storage capacity and 2.5" platter drives are not scoring above a 3. Since WinSPR bases system score on the lowest score, a 3 is the highest overall score I've seen.

If you are basing a purchase on eventually running Vista, plan on a dual core at least 2.0Ghz, at least 1GB of dual channel RAM(2 strongly preferred), high end graphics card with at least 256MB of dedicated RAM. Plan on upgrading the HDD as higher capacity drives become available. Hybrid drives are expected to score better, but I haven't heard any definitive answers on chipset support.

In relation to the comment on the Z60t, integrated graphics chipsets typically score a 2 and will not be able to run Aero.

I'd be tempted to wait for memron, since they will be available very soon. The Yonah dual cores score 5 in WinSPR and meet the highest current requirements. Either way you should be fine, but if getting Yonah a T2500 is as low as I'd go.