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My Dell E1705 with a 7800 Go video card was bought Jan 2006. Originally had 2 gb of memory and a 100 TB hd. It's been upgraded to 3 gb of memory + 3 swappable hd's from the removable hd tray. This laptop had a convenient hd tray design where you can easily swap in a different hd mounted to a tray for another install configuration. Plus this laptop is 1920 x 1200 screen resolution.
I only use this laptop for vacations, gps, or portable moments for web browsing and emails.
In 2010 when my 4 yr warranty expired I bought a 2nd Dell E1705 with a 7900 go vc as a backup laptop. I use this for mainly web browsing and some programs while on the go. Somehow this laptop was buggy for GPS using MS Streets & Trips 2010. I have an auto power adaptor that converts 12v cigarette lighter power to laptop power. I'd say a laptop with a gps dongle is the best kind of gps device available for a car. Seeing gps guidance on a 17" laptop screen can't be beat by those Garmin gps devices.
When I first got my E1705 in Feb 2006 it became my main computer. It was more powerful than my AMD XP 2400 desktop, so I used it for everything and gaming. It made me wait longer to buy a new desktop. Finally, when desktop cpus and video cards got way better than any laptop version [around Dec 2008] I bought an i7 920 Geforce 260 OC 216 computer. So then I switched to a desktop as my main computer. Then when I tried dual monitor computing in 2009 I was hooked on desktops as a main computer again. Only briefly from 2006 to 2008 did I think a laptop was good enough to be a main computer. And my laptop broke down about 4 times during that time, but I had a great Dell warranty and quick service.
So now I will wait until 2013 to get a new Intel Haswell CPU laptop [better than Ivy Bridge]. I think both my Dell E1705's can survive and I rarely use them to preserve them. They're powerful enough to play Neverwinter Nights 2 with great graphics, but Crysis on low settings only. If my Dells break I will get spare parts from ebay, if the price is within reason. Because sometimes a Nvidia 7800 or 7900 go laptop video card can be expensive.
NJBest - why settle for a 100 GB hd when you can have a 750 gb or 1 tb one? My misprint!
You just got something Nov 2011 and now you want Ivy Bridge? You really should wait for Haswell!
I'll have to see what the launch schedule is for Haswell. I might get Ivy Bridge, then upgrade to Haswell when it comes out. It's hard to tell for sure when I'll upgrade. But I generally don't like to depreciate hardware too much before flipping it on eBay.
The other factor I am looking at is Windows 8... since my new laptop has a touch screen... and It's likely I'll stick with touch screens going forward.
Mine is a HP from 2003. I use it for work and it still does everything I need it to do perfectly but it has gotten to look like a dinosaur so "Santa" is bringing me a new one for Christmas. I have used it so much, the color and texture is worn off of a lot of keys and the mouse pad. lol
I don't upgrade very often because there is no point in it as long as the one you have is getting the job done. Everybody is running out and buying new computers with quad core processors but there is very little software written to take advantage of the multithreading capabilities. The level 2 and now the level 3 cache has been moved to the chips to speed up memory memory access but for the most part you aren't getting much if any increase in your everyday computing. Same thing with RAM, most computers very rarely ever use over 1.5 to 2 GB of RAM but everybody seems to want 6 or 8 GB. The only advantage to it is if you use a lot of applications and programs in a short time and don't turn your computer off, the application data will still be loaded up in the RAM if you need it again later, other than that its pretty much useless.
Mine is a HP from 2003. I use it for work and it still does everything I need it to do perfectly but it has gotten to look like a dinosaur so "Santa" is bringing me a new one for Christmas. I have used it so much, the color and texture is worn off of a lot of keys and the mouse pad. lol
I don't upgrade very often because there is no point in it as long as the one you have is getting the job done. Everybody is running out and buying new computers with quad core processors but there is very little software written to take advantage of the multithreading capabilities. The level 2 and now the level 3 cache has been moved to the chips to speed up memory memory access but for the most part you aren't getting much if any increase in your everyday computing. Same thing with RAM, most computers very rarely ever use over 1.5 to 2 GB of RAM but everybody seems to want 6 or 8 GB. The only advantage to it is if you use a lot of applications and programs in a short time and don't turn your computer off, the application data will still be loaded up in the RAM if you need it again later, other than that its pretty much useless.
That's not really accurate.
Try:
- Playing a computer game
- Editing a photo
- Editing home videos
- Programming
- Running VMWare
- HTML5
Right now, I only have Word, IE, FireFox, Chrome, Notepad++ and Winamp open, and my utilization is at 3.3GB. All of these programs are essential to what I am doing right now, other than Winamp.
Same thing with RAM, most computers very rarely ever use over 1.5 to 2 GB of RAM but everybody seems to want 6 or 8 GB. The only advantage to it is if you use a lot of applications and programs in a short time and don't turn your computer off, the application data will still be loaded up in the RAM if you need it again later, other than that its pretty much useless.
Just this past week I upgraded from 4 GB to 8 GB's of RAM. I was routinely maxing out. Applications are a lot bigger nowadays than they used to be, even programs like web browsers and word processing programs. If I had my web browser with multiple pages open, Word, and my email app, it would not be uncommon for it to use over 1 gig. For people who do photo editing, video editing, music creation, web development, etc., those applications also very memory intensive. Also, when running virtual machines like I do, it's very easy to use up 8 gigs of RAM. In that instance, it's worth having more RAM since it's essentially like running multiple computers on one.
I have a MacBook Pro that I bought in 2007. It's 4 years old at this point and it still does everything I need it to do. It's mostly used for personal use like web browsing and e-mail, but I also occasionally use it for contract work that I take on from time to time.
My company-provided laptop is a much newer Mac, but honestly, I could do most of the work on my 4 year-old Mac if I needed to.
I'll probably upgrade once something catastrophic happens to it and it stops working.
I have a newish (bought earlier this year) Thinkpad W520, Core i7 with 8GB of memory. It's a corporate standard for developers and managers in product development. I ordered it without realizing how much heavier it was than the 14.1" T-series I used to have. I'm not terribly impressed with how it performs on single-threaded workloads. I'll probably consider a MacBook Pro or whatever is closest to a mobile workstation from Apple for my next laptop.
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