i'm buying a new laptop and have a few questions. first of all, i will be using the computer for internet surfing, with some occasional game (halo) playing. also storing music and burning cds, and also watching dvd's.

I'm buying an XPS m140 from dell.

how big of a difference is there between

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 770 (2.13GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 760 (2GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 750 (1.86GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)

theres about a hundred dollar difference between each one. is it worth it to upgrade? will it make the computer a lot faster?

also

memory choices

512MB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms
512MB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 1 Dimm
1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms
2GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms

again, about one hundred dollars difference between these also, i dont really understand what memory is. what would you guys recommend?

 

I take a middle of the road processor and max the RAM before I went the other way. Although you could get the best processor and add the RAM later...upgrading the processor is more complicated than just adding ram

 

I would buy an iBook or a macbook pro...

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPL...097&nclm=iBook




but if you must buy a PC I definately agree with Vader

 

i was thinking of going with

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 740 (1.73GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB)
and
1GB Shared DDR2 SDRAM 2 Dimms


or would it be definitely worth going to the

Intel® Pentium® M Processor 750 (1.86GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB) or higher?

i dont do a lot of complicated things with the computer, mostly just gaming and surfing.

 

i want to stick with a non-mac. and i heard that the dell XPS machines were good machines, did i hear wrong?

 

although im currently running at sloth speed- i built an xps, and this laptop on their website to the max on both...they were exactly the same mine actually was a bit better than the XPS, top of the line, mine was 2k cheaper, and doesnt have the ghey XPS on the cover, and no led's...

 

I don't think you'll see a huge difference in speed across those processors with 99% of the softward that most people run. I'd go for one of the slower processors on the list, and pack as much RAM in the machine as you can afford. Especially with a new release of Windows on the horizon, you'll want as much RAM as possible.

 

I agree, get the 2Ghz or 1.8 Ghz processor and at LEAST 1GB RAM if not 2GB!
Also opt for the top o the line video card if you game much at all! the rest is insugnificant really. I built a XPS also, Dell ROCKS!

 

The video card will make more of a difference than anything with gaming. Get something like a mobil x200m or better. stay away from the intigrated intel BS. Unfortunately the dell XPS M140 only has the intel crap. The M170 has the 256MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ Go 7800 GTX wich is a great mobile video solution. The inspiron E1505 series has the option for a redeon series video card X1300 and x1400. Those are both good too. My vote would be for the Inspiron if you do't want ot spend the money on the 17" XPS and you want to stick with dell.

HP and Acer have some decent laptops out too and both offer the AMD processors wich are comparable to the intel in speed. Intel holds the edge for power consumption and performance with the duo processors. Another thing to consider is the bigger video cards also draw more power when being used. You won't game very long on a battery with a 7800gtx.

 

As much as I hate Gateway I bought the MX6450. I liked it so much that I bought two of them so the wife could have her own. Very happy so far. Plays movies very good. I'm not a gamer so I don't know how well it would be for that, but it turned out to be a great photoshop machine.

http://www.gateway.com/home/products...t_mx6450.shtml
Here is a link to it if you are interested.

 

well i ended up going with a inspiron 1505 with a Dual core processor (whatever that means), and 1 gig of ram. and since someone mentioned video card, i got a 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 HyperMemory, for Inspiron 6400/E1505 video card. i hope this all works out and its as good as they said it would be.

 

Sounds like a good machine. What the dual core is in a nutshell is two processors inside one chip. When programs utilize the dual core it will use both at the same time. If a program doesn't support dual core it will use one processor but the other processor will do another task if something else is running. Example being, you are watching a DVD and have a large file zipping in the background. You won't notice any lagging in the video becaue each program has it's own processor. New games will support dual core. There's a few out now that do.

I think this article gets into some of the specifics. http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...oc.aspx?i=2648

the 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1400 is one of the bigger video options available so that should do well. Just remember if you try to play games while on battery it won't last too long. That laptop should run things like doom3 quake 4 etc without any problems. The new Unreal torunament 2007 (due out sometime this year) should run pretty nice on that too.

 

hey thanks, thats a lot of good info. it sounds like i made a good choice with this one.

 

X2 and remember now you can run windows on Intel based Macs