Advice for a laptop

[Brad]

Im buying a laptop in 2 weeks and unsure of what the best suited model would
be. Im hoping some of the savvy people here can tell me what is good.

I want it for business use. I go to different offices to work on the
inventory so the programs will be spreadsheets and related low demand
software. But it must have a good video card for games when Im killing time
in between on the road and have a dvd -rom ( or burner would be nice). ..
and must be able to accomadate a steel security cable

Ive looked at the panasonic "toughbook". Nice large screen and yet still
compact with a titanium body for taking a bit of abuse . The layout was best
i thought. A spacious layout with no wasted space to keep fairly compact..
but it had a shit video card as the only down fall. If there is another
model with a better video card and cpu, i would be sold on that. I would
rather have a 3.06ghz chip ( or something like that ) over a 1.1- 1.7ghz
centrino ( My simple understanding of the centrino is the lower ghz is a
trade off for power saving. I'll have a 2nd battery most likely but it'll be
plugged in 80% of the time so power saving centriono isn't a concern.

What can you ladies and gents suggest that may fit those parameters ?
Thank for any advice you may have to share

 

[badgolferman]

Im buying a laptop in 2 weeks and unsure of what the best suited
model would be. Im hoping some of the savvy people here can tell me
what is good.

I want it for business use. I go to different offices to work on the
inventory so the programs will be spreadsheets and related low
demand software. But it must have a good video card for games when Im
killing time in between on the road and have a dvd -rom ( or burner
would be nice). .. and must be able to accomadate a steel security
cable

Ive looked at the panasonic "toughbook". Nice large screen and yet
still compact with a titanium body for taking a bit of abuse . The
layout was best i thought. A spacious layout with no wasted space to
keep fairly compact.. but it had a shit video card as the only down
fall. If there is another model with a better video card and cpu, i
would be sold on that. I would rather have a 3.06ghz chip ( or
something like that ) over a 1.1- 1.7ghz centrino ( My simple
understanding of the centrino is the lower ghz is a trade off for
power saving. I'll have a 2nd battery most likely but it'll be
plugged in 80% of the time so power saving centriono isn't a concern.

What can you ladies and gents suggest that may fit those parameters ?
Thank for any advice you may have to share

Whatever you get beware many newer laptops don't have serial ports or
parallel ports on them. They may have those ports on the docking
station but since you are buying for business purposes this may be
something you should think about.

 

[MrGrumpy]

You should also maybe look at battery usage, many Laptops are sold with a
basic battery that give v.little life, upgrading a battery is a significant
expense.
My Sony lasts 45 mins, and Sony swaped out the battery, fortunately I
allways have mains pwr. But a portable it is in name only!!

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Im buying a laptop in 2 weeks and unsure of what the best suited model
would be. Im hoping some of the savvy people here can tell me what is
good.

I want it for business use. I go to different offices to work on the
inventory so the programs will be spreadsheets and related low demand
software. But it must have a good video card for games when Im killing
time in between on the road and have a dvd -rom ( or burner would be
nice). .. and must be able to accomadate a steel security cable

Ive looked at the panasonic "toughbook". Nice large screen and yet still
compact with a titanium body for taking a bit of abuse . The layout was
best i thought. A spacious layout with no wasted space to keep fairly
compact.. but it had a shit video card as the only down fall. If there
is another model with a better video card and cpu, i would be sold on
that. I would rather have a 3.06ghz chip ( or something like that )
over a 1.1- 1.7ghz centrino ( My simple understanding of the centrino is
the lower ghz is a trade off for power saving. I'll have a 2nd battery
most likely but it'll be plugged in 80% of the time so power saving
centriono isn't a concern.

What can you ladies and gents suggest that may fit those parameters ?
Thank for any advice you may have to share

You have some very wrong ideas about processors, the P4 requires a higher
clock speed because it's a very inefficient design. Both the Centrino and
the AMD64 do much more in a clock cycle then a P4 which is why they can
operate at a much lower clock frequency. I haven't used any Centrinos so I
can't give you a relative performance of the Centrino to the P4 but I have
several AMD64 machines and a dual Xeon machine. My HP3000z laptop with an
AMD64 3400+ (2.2GHz, 1M cache) is twice as fast as my Xeon (the Xeon is
the server version of the P4). The 3400+ is a desktop chip and yet it runs
cool enough that the CPU fan only runs when I'm doing very heavy
processing such as doing a Verilog simulation. The AMD Turion is a low
power version of the AMD64 which is meant for laptops, it will be much
faster then a 3GHz P4M at a fraction of the power. A Centrino will also
run at least as fast, probably faster, then a P4M at a fraction of the
power. Centrino laptops tend to be much more expensive then AMD64 laptops.

 

[kony]

You have some very wrong ideas about processors, the P4 requires a higher
clock speed because it's a very inefficient design. Both the Centrino and
the AMD64 do much more in a clock cycle then a P4 which is why they can
operate at a much lower clock frequency. I haven't used any Centrinos so I
can't give you a relative performance of the Centrino to the P4

<snip>

Centrino laptops tend to be much more expensive then AMD64
laptops.

Centrino isn't actually a CPU at all, it is only a marketing
gimmick for a system with intel's overpriced wifi card in
it... necessary to get that Centrino designation. Wifi
cards are a rather low percentage of system power usage to
begin with.

One can get same (roughly speaking, spec-wise if not same
exact model from an OEM) Pentium M notebook cheaper with
(anybody else's) wifi adapter, or buy one aftermarket) and
have similar low-power benefit over the P4 alternative.
Essentially, Centrino= (send Intel more money for the
namesake).