If that's all you're doing, I'd recommend even going a Celeron processor, but then again I'm a cheapskate . I have never owned an AMD processor, so I'm clueless in answering this question.
I'm looking at replacing my laptop computer and have a question for the computer geeks folks on the board: If you have a choice between an Intel Pentium Dual Core T3200 Mobile Processor (2.00GHz, 667 MHz, 1MB L2 Cache) and and AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual Core Mobile Processor RM-70 (2.00GHz, ?MHz, 1MB L2 Cache), which would you recommend? Justing doing basic things on the laptop - email, word, excel, QuickBooks, DBR
Thanks for your opinions.
If that's all you're doing, I'd recommend even going a Celeron processor, but then again I'm a cheapskate . I have never owned an AMD processor, so I'm clueless in answering this question.
I agree. Go for the cheaper one, unless you foresee using applications in the future that are graphics intensive. Truly huge spreadsheets or documents might also pose a problem.
I snapped up a $400 back to school special on a laptop, I forget the specs but I think it ran at 1.83 GHz. (intel T2390). My 4 year old desktop runs a single 3.2 GHz processor.
I noticed no problems with ordinary apps but I did try Stellarium (planetarium software) on it and it ran noticeably slower. I don't do gaming but my guess is the same thing would happen with games. My son runs his games (Madden 08, NBA, FIFA, etc - all the EA ones) on my desktop and they run great. After seeing stellarium on the laptop, I would think that it would be poor - even by laptop standards - for games. A good gaming laptop is VERY expensive.
But for ordinary stuff you should be plenty fune.
If those are your requirements, the main distinguishing characteristics that might be of interest would be power consumption and heat produced. Having a lower-power chip that puts out less heat can make for a better experience. I'll have to do some research to see if these processors have a difference.
I'm getting the sense that it will come down to RAM and hard drive size. One is 3Gg RAM and the other is 4Gg. I'd rather stay with Windows XP but appears that they are all coming preloaded with VISTA.
I'm just going to offer this up since you said you are looking at new laptop and b/c I frickin' love my Macbook... check one out if it's in your price range. I got a basic model with a 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 3MB L2 cache, 2GB memory. I constantly have firefox, excel, word, powerpoint and adobe windows open simultaneously and the thing just flies. Doesn't get hung up. Doesn't get too hot. Best computer I've ever been lucky enough to own.
You'll need Boot Camp or Parallels, then you can install Windows on your Mac, then run most, if not all, of your Windows applications on the Mac.
Honestly though, and this is coming from a Mac lover and software developer, if you're not ready to make the switch and start using the Apple native software, I really can't see the value in purchasing Boot Camp or Parallels. All of the applications you list below are also developed for the Mac, so the learning curve might not be bad at all, the downside would be having to purchase all of the Mac-native apps.
Feel free to PM with any questions, anytime.
You hit the downside - it is bad enough that my current computers stopped working. I don't want the added expense of new software. Of course they are both 5+ years old - I guess I shouldn't expect them to last forever. I will try one last attempt to bring the laptop back to usable status before I succumb to spending money.
Don't get me started on my Timex Sinclair...
I remember working on a NEC with dual floppies - the program in one and the data in the other. When we upgraded the IBM from 10MB to 40MB, we couldn't conceive of filling up the memory.
I have fond memories of learning BASIC programming on our old Commodore VIC-20 with its 5K of memory.
OK, I remember typing punch cards in the Engineering building or AROD building, and feeding them into the machine to send the program to TUCC, and waiting for hours for it to tell me that there was an error in line 5 of my Fortran IV program, and then line 17, and ... . And our own Jarhead was the IT person (before there were IT departments) working for DUCC that was responsible for the system. We discussed this very subject at our last tailgate.
Ozzie, your paradigm of optimism!
Go To Hell carolina, Go To Hell!
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