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With a laptop, the expected life-span is very important to me. Because it is very difficult to upgrade anything else except the RAM, and even that is expensive, once the laptop is a few years old, it may not be able to handle the applications of the day. I know that with my four-year-old laptop (knock on wood), which is a Centrino 1.4, I can't open too many applications at once anymore, because they are too heavy. I have stopped most windows services that look unimportant, I only have very few icons in the system tray, etc. No heavy graphics, like screen-savers, I can't even run heavy flash (10) applications, as these will cause my CPU to overload.
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Schmuli wrote: Because it is very difficult to upgrade anything else except the RAM, and even that is expensive, once the laptop is a few years old
Not always. I spent $22 US to go from 1GB to 2GB on my Dell D820 because windows 7 thrashed a lot with only 1 GB of ram and it was impossible to use for programming even for test projects because it was always thrashing. Now with 2GB things are much better. I have to say the install was not easy being that there were no instructions and I had to figure out where the second dimm was located. Google was not much help at that because there were thousands of hits and the first 100 or so were not about swapping ram. After I found the secret (second dimm is under keyboard the install was easy..
John
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Just wondering where you found a gig of ram for $22 US.
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Okay who was the idiot who univoted voted me?
John
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Earlier this year, I bought 2 Gig of DDR2 PC8500 RAM for my Dell laptop for under $50 at Frys. RAM is not that expensive for a laptop, not any more. (Unless you buy it from the OEM.)
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Eddie Kuns wrote: RAM is not that expensive for a laptop, not any more. (Unless you buy it from the OEM
Or buy it at Best Buy. I have seen ridiculous prices at Best Buy for computer hardware. I sometimes feel sorry when I see confused individuals asking questions about products that are 3 times the price that you can buy them online. To me I feel that it's like watching someone being mugged but doing nothing..
I would have added compusa and circuit city (the other two major electronics / computer stores in my area but both closed their doors..)
John
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Disk speed + CPU + Memory are the main factors. You must have a quick disk as this makes a massive difference. I have worked on machines that boost good memory and CPU speeds but had a slow drive speed (1400 rpm). It was like walking an old woman across the road. However, Using a disk speed of 10000 rpm or more will give you a very noticeable difference with SQL server and Visual Studio 
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Do they even make 10000 rpm laptop drives?
John
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Not to my knowledge. I just got carried away and forgot about the Survey title 
However, I would love to go for a SSD drive but would settle for a 7200rpm.
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 No problem..
I am waiting on the price of ssd drives specifically when the OCZ Vertex series 60GB model becomes the current price of the 30GB model. $129 is the right price just not the right capacity..
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227393[^]
I expect to be able to get what I want in 2011. For me this will be for desktop usage and I will still need either a network drive (at work) or a local disk at home. I would put the OS and development partition on the SSD array with data (I process medical images) on a > 1 TB hard drive.
John
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Very nice, I wanted SSD before I got my last laptop but none that I saw would support RAID. 
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I bought OCZ Vertex 30gb drive few weeks ago and boy it's called speed But there is small problem if you want to make RAID0 with SSDs. RAID controller simply cannot handle that throughput 
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No... but, IMO, 7200rpm on a 2.5" disk is pretty comparable with a 10k rpm on a 3.5" disk.
The angular speed on the edge of a 2.5" disk is greater than on a 3.5".
On the other hand... this is a laptop.
Unless you always use it on your desk or anywhere near a plug, a 7.200rpm disk will dump your battery much quicker than with a 5400rpm disk.
To take full advantage of a 7200rpm you need to be at full power, no power saver mode enabled... so bye bye battery.
Don't get me wrong, currently I have a ASUS G1S with a 350Gb 7200rpm disk but it's the only computer I got, I need it powerful yet portable but usually don't need much time away from a plug.
So, choose wisely based on what you need your laptop for. You can't have it all... Powerful, lightweight, thin and with a 4h battery.
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AlexCode wrote: No... but, IMO, 7200rpm on a 2.5" disk is pretty comparable with a 10k rpm on a 3.5" disk.
The angular speed on the edge of a 2.5" disk is greater than on a 3.5".
That is true and it is one of the tricks scsi drives had been using for years (one reason for their smaller capacity), however comparing a laptop drive to a desktop I have yet to own a laptop drive that I thought was fast. The speed of current generation 7200 RPM laptop drives reminds me of 4 years ago performance from 7200RPM sata desktop drives.
John
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db7uk wrote: I have worked on machines that boost good memory and CPU speeds but had a slow drive speed (1400 rpm).
unfortunaltly many are.
I keep my eye on the rpm and refuse to take anything less than 5400rpm with 7200 being the ultimate goal. 
Yusuf
Oh didn't you notice, analogous to square roots, they recently introduced rectangular, circular, and diamond roots to determine the size of the corresponding shapes when given the area. Luc Pattyn[^]
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they are for a desktop. we're talking about laptop here :p
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more disk speed = less battery 
"He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail."
- Abraham Maslow
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would be a major factor...
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Agree with all these feature but price is too high, I will not buy it and will look for alternative 
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So no macs for you then?
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well i never buy macs before  also dont know how much it cost here, But i am very happy with my window os 
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Absolutely!
One uses a laptop only because it's inconvenient (at the time and place) to use something better.
Best Use for a Laptop? Tapping into someone else's broadband and connecting to countless torrents for illegal downloads.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to stop bothering them and just go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment. Sadder still, if that's where you need to find it." - Balboos HaGadol
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