Re: "budget" laptop?

["Edgar D' Souza" <edgar -dot- b -dot- dsouza -at- gmail -dot- com>]

On Tue, Sep 16, 2008 at 10:05 PM, Rob Hudson <caveatrob -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> I'm getting into some ID work that includes Camtasia, Snagit, Word,
> MindManager and some web development (IIS, Visual Studio). What kind of
> laptop do y'all recommend for this kind of thing? I have an aging
> Inspiron 9300 but want something more powerhousey.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Hi, Rob,

If you can do without the Aero eye-candy and tone down Vista's
interface to Classic (or can downgrade to XP Pro) then IMO a laptop
with 3GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo T8100 processor
(http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SLAP9 ) with 3MB
of L2 cache should be pretty good, as well as fall within the "budget"
class. I expect a 120 GB HDD will be your minimum storage space... but
upgrades to higher-capacity drives aren't that expensive.

The real question for me is graphics card and screen size (though my
intended usage differs - I want to use it for work, as well as casual
gaming once in a while, and I like eye-candy too), since the more you
have on-screen without having to switch between programs, the better,
right? Since you're already using a 17" screen, that's probably
settled for you, I guess? :-)

The Dell Studio 17, which I've been looking at thoughtfully, also has
an internal bay for a second HDD - useful if you want to set up RAID 1
for one or two partitions, mirroring your drive data, so that even if
one HDD bites the dust, you can still carry on working... that, of
course, depends on your usage scenario. Still, lugging around 7.87 lbs
(IIRC not counting a second HDD) is not a fun idea... I need to think
about it more. The availability of the ATI Mobility Radeon HD3650 on
that laptop is pushing me towards it, though...

Cheers
Ed.
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