Which notebk to buy for US-bound students?

[woods]

Can recommers who r computer-savvy advise on which notebk to buy for US-bound pure sc students.Is Dell Inspiron640m as advertised in the Star good enough?Is it cheaper to buy online?Dell only sells online.What about Acer,NEC or Toshiba?

Moved to Hardware and Software Issues --qedx
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GS500F (http://www.cyclechaos.com/wiki/Suzuki_GS500F)

Can recommers who r computer-savvy advise on which notebk to buy for US-bound pure sc students.Is Dell Inspiron640m as advertised in the Star good enough?Is it cheaper to buy online?Dell only sells online.What about Acer,NEC or Toshiba?

Did you consider to buy after arriving at US? (Since the pin size different there...and the voltage range....)

Toshiba and Sony notebook, I think, have better reputation than Dell. But the prices are bit higher. Decide your budget.

[qedx]

I have been using a Dell inspiron 6400 for about a month now. no problems so far. /touch wood

the voltage difference is not really a problem as most adapters use auto switching, meaning you just need to buy a cable with a plug that fits the outlet. so it really up to you whether you buy it locally or overseas, although you mught have an easier time with services and warranty issues if you buy it overseas.

when comparing dell and acer, dell's build seems better. their hinge is less flimsy. And i love the white plastic border lol. sony vaios seem to be overpriced to me /shrug and i dpnt really have experience with any other brand.

[DecentMerson]

Can recommers who r computer-savvy advise on which notebk to buy for US-bound pure sc students.Is Dell Inspiron640m as advertised in the Star good enough?Is it cheaper to buy online?Dell only sells online.What about Acer,NEC or Toshiba?

Moved to Hardware and Software Issues --qedx

unless u are into graphics and designs and gaming, or else, any laptop, from the lowest end to the highest end doesn't really matter... even a pentium celeron is enough for a pure science student...

but if you are going to the states (i suppose pretty soon), no point buying it here(in Malaysia). If you are for the budget, and value-for your bucks, go for Dell... get the 3-year warranty too... u'll need it(and the moral hazard of getting such a warranty is that you don't have to take good care of ur laptop... like leaving it on for a couple of weeks before really restarting it... get online deals... or get some magazine deals... check techbargains.com (they will have online coupons which are pretty good deals most of the time...)... and if you really cannot afford it, you can take the effort of going to the computer lab to use the computer... chenchow survived his 4-years at Cornell without a personal computer... :)

but of course, having a laptop/desktop in your room is much more convenient...

[chiunlin]

unless u are into graphics and designs and gaming, or else, any laptop, from the lowest end to the highest end doesn't really matter... even a pentium celeron is enough for a pure science student...
Not really, a high end computer does help sometimes. Evaluating an expression on mathematica, or running your CS project sometimes may take hours. But then again, you can always go to comp lab to do such things and the computers are usually the latest(heh, the comp in the labs here have 2 gig memory).

My computer architecture professor once told the class that whenever she shopped for a laptop, she would go for the second latest generation laptop, which should be much cheaper than the latest, and the rest of the budget would go towards buying memory(most laptop today doesn't come with enough memory, especially if you like to multitask or are used to running a lot of programs simultaneously)

[digimushu]

Buy a pentium M laptop, dual core is overrated. Take it from a guy that owns a Pentium M laptop, a Pentium D desktop and an Athlon 64 X2 Desktop.

Pentium M should suffice, I do research in multibody dynamics and finite element and My pentium M with 2.0 Ghz and 1 MB ram is good enough. I own an ASUS z33ae and am loving it. This thing is so thin and light, its so easy to stash away on my backpack on a neoprene sleeve. To find out more about my laptop, go to:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2442

You can find other user reviews on the website as well, complete with photos. Have fun!

[youngyew]

the rest of the budget would go towards buying memory(most laptop today doesn't come with enough memory, especially if you like to multitask or are used to running a lot of programs simultaneously)
And also if you run firefox.. :P

[kelvinlym]

Buy a pentium M laptop, dual core is overrated. Take it from a guy that owns a Pentium M laptop, a Pentium D desktop and an Athlon 64 X2 Desktop.

Pentium M should suffice, I do research in multibody dynamics and finite element and My pentium M with 2.0 Ghz and 1 MB ram is good enough. I own an ASUS z33ae and am loving it. This thing is so thin and light, its so easy to stash away on my backpack on a neoprene sleeve. To find out more about my laptop, go to:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2442

You can find other user reviews on the website as well, complete with photos. Have fun!

Wonder how you get any work done with 1MB of Ram... :)

I own a Compaq. Works well for 2 years with no problems whatsoever.

If you run CAD software get lots of Ram and graphics card for better performance.

[strikingstar]

Haha, first and foremost, for me, the laptop should at least have a decent graphics card. Not integrated sucky graphics crap.

Should be light too with good battery life.

[Thirdshifter]

Buy a pentium M laptop, dual core is overrated. Take it from a guy that owns a Pentium M laptop, a Pentium D desktop and an Athlon 64 X2 Desktop.

I beg to differ. The dual core beats the pentium M in all levels. Which include processing power and battery life.

there are many sites that have done a side by side comparison and dual core comes out as the winner in almost all benchmark.

[qedx]

wait for conroe, or merom rather.

[digimushu]

Ah crap, I mean 1 GB of ram. Damn, still a bit hungover over my beer binge on 4th of July.

Third, I beg to differ. Whilst Merom and Conroe have dual core advantage, that does not mean that the software is equipped to take advantage of that. It is just akin to buying a Ferrari to drive in M'sia, whilst it is cool to have one, there is no where you can go the maximum speed. Intel is pusing distributors to sell Sonoma cheaply, so you can expect centrino laptops to be a dime a dozen in a month's time.

Currently, a few of the toolboxes in Matlab are not supporting 64 bit processing or multiple cores. Hence for stuff like pure symbolic manipulation of equations, etc... core duo is useless. In addition to that, Core Duo suffers from bugs because of driver problems. such as:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/01/30/intel_core_duo_usb_bug/

Don't get me wrong, I like core duo as well, since I also have desktops with that, but only because i use those machines as hardcore number crunchers. It is wiser to let technology mature first before you buy it. I like my centrino because I have ~7 hrs of battery life, and as long as windows XP and Ubuntu runs ok on it...I do not mind.

Remember, the early worm always get the bird.

[Thirdshifter]

It is expected that students will be using the same laptop for aprox. 3-4 years if not more.

So it will be a better investment in my opinion to get the dual core.

p/s: i'm typing this on a Pentium 4 M.

[yeithau]

hi... i m new here...

i was just wondering if my budget is RM 4000. what is the best note book i can get.....

[qedx]

Third, I beg to differ. Whilst Merom and Conroe have dual core advantage, that does not mean that the software is equipped to take advantage of that.

That's not entirely true. Yes, some applications do not fully exploit dual-core technology, but that is only a drawback if we run only one app at a time. A dual core CPU is sort of like two CPUs, meaning we are able to do crazy stuff like, burning a DVD while encoding a video, or playing games while running BOINC (http://www.recom.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1375) (shameless plug :lol:). In short, if we multitask, more cores will always be good.

Now, there are two reasons to wait for the next generation of processors. 1: to get the latest and the greatest. 2: to get the next latest and greatest, cheaper. Either way, waiting 2 months won't hurt.

@<hidden>:
You can get a pretty decent notebook for RM4k if you don't mind Acers (http://www.acer.com.my/product/prod_overview.aspx?category=Mobile+PC&model=Aspire%205540&series=Aspire%205540%20Series) and Dells (http://www1.ap.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/inspn_6400?c=my&l=en&s=bsd). There are some Toshiba (http://www.notebookshop.com.my/ntbk_product_detail.asp?ID=40&Name=Toshiba) and Thinkpad (http://www.notebookshop.com.my/ntbk_product_detail.asp?ID=26&Name=ThinkPad) notebooks within that price range, but they seem to be a bit weak to me /shrug i guess you trade off specs for service and quality(?)

[chiunlin]

That's not entirely true. Yes, some applications do not fully exploit dual-core technology, but that is only a drawback if we run only one app at a time. A dual core CPU is sort of like two CPUs, meaning we are able to do crazy stuff like, burning a DVD while encoding a video, or playing games while running BOINC (http://www.recom.org/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1375) (shameless plug :lol:). In short, if we multitask, more cores will always be good.

That's not entirely true either. When you measure a CPU's performance, there are a lot of other aspects that you need to at. When you have a dual-core, you are basically sharing system resources such as L2 cache and memory between them, and without proper optimization, your computer won't perform any better than a single-core. And dual core requires a different operating system and softwares to optimize its advantages, and so far, the dual-core technology hasn't really matured yet in terms of software development, so it's better to stay away from it for the moment.

[Ic3b3rg]

awesome. i like the fact that i understood everything written above.

sorry. that was a digression. back to the topic.


*techie wannabe*