Laptop Recommendations

[Jazcash]

http://www.amazon.com/HP-Envy-17-1190NR ... B004BSFSEK

$1,899.99
+ $12.37shipping

lol no ty

Think I'm gonna go for it. Also gonna get an extra stick of 4GB DDR3 for it seeing as it's only an extra £18.

[AF]

You would be better off going for an i5 and the smallest HD possible and using the extra money you saved to sort out an SSD.

[Jazcash]

You would be better off going for an i5 and the smallest HD possible and using the extra money you saved to sort out an SSD.

I don't actually know that much about SSD drives but from what I understood they're basically just superfast HDs right? Which means that managing files, loading storage into memory and things would be sped up. But heavy tasks like Photoshop, playing Crysis and things would benefit more from extra RAM rather than an SSD drive?

I can see why and where some SSD storage would come in handy, I just think I'd benefit more from an i7. Then again, I really don't know, but SSDs can be bought at any time right? So seeing as I'm looking to use this laptop daily for at least 3 years, so I thought it would make sense to just buy an SSD in the future if I needed it. Where as if I needed more processing power, upgrading that is a little more complicated.

[AF]

i7:

• Faster CPU
• 3channel DDR
• More expensive

SSD:

• Silent ( no moving parts )
• Weigh less
• Increased battery life
• Orders of magnitude faster than HD ( think 10MBps sustained rate vs 400-700MBps sustained rate)
• They get very expensive as the capacity rises.

I would pick the SSD every time, I'd argue that a 5 year old machine will feel faster and snappier ( and boot quicker ) with an SSD, than the top of the range current gen laptop with the fastest HD available. It's quite simply the biggest improvement you can get for your money by a long way.

If you can grab a 120GB or a 160GB SSD and stick a 500GB in a portable caddy for when you need to store big things, then do that.

[Jazcash]

I'm currently using 717GB on my desktop which I've only had for about 2 years. I could see me just ending up having to lug a HD around with me everywhere if I opt for SSD as primary storage.

At 5400 Rpm, it's really not a machine I'd be clawing at for not being fast enough. On my old laptop which took about 6-7 minutes to boot, I'd have certainly have gone for an SSD if they were available, but these days, I'm not that fussed if it takes me a few mins to copy a couple GB because I won't be doing it very often at all. And with 8GB RAM, 8 logical, 4 physical processors, and a video card with its own onboard memory, the only way I could see SSD making any major impact on my system was if I installed the OS on to it which would speed things up here and there when doing stuff with Windows.

Although, most the time I'll be using it I can see myself either being in Chrome, an application such as Photoshop or Notepad++ or playing a game. I won't even shut down, just put it to sleep every time so there wouldn't be much to look forward to when it came to boot times.

And as I said, I can upgrade to SSD any time, whereas upgrading to i7 or w/e is pretty much out of the question.

[hoijui]

if your OS takes 6-7 minutes to boot, it is not your HDs fault.

[AF]

An SSD made the biggest difference for me booting windows, loading and using Photoshop, and making Chrome super hyper zippy ( superfast compiler builds woo )

Eitherway you're going to run out of space on your machine wether you pick an SSD or not so you'll be in the same situation anyway. An i7 will make barely a dent to your performance in comparison to an SSD.

Feel like having all your programs instantly load and boot times shorter than BIOS POST? What about waiting for the HD to spin up after a hibernate?

[Jazcash]

Ok, you've convinced me Now I just some help deciding which SSD to go for, also I have no experience with installing SSD or anything. Don't even know what they look like.

[AF]

They look and work exactly the same as HD's only they come in a 2.5" form factor ( usually with an attachment to let you put it on a 3.5" ). They also tend to be thinner than HDs. They use the same SATA connectors and power sockets, and are pretty much a drop in replacement.

OCZ Vertex 3 and the Crucial M4's seem to be the bees knees right now.

[smoth]

you can always sit on my jazz mmmmmMMMMmm

[donaldbracy]

Samsung Rv511 ... good price, good quality and uses intel core i3, i5 or i7.. all fast processors.

[==Troy==]

Jaz, SSDs are not worth it in your situation... you can get much better hardware performance if you prefer to take HDD + system spec upgrades. It will also allow you to get a "boost" later on, if you start feeling that your laptop is getting older.

If instead you opt out for SSD, you end up getting lower hardware specs, without much room for future upgrade.

SSDs are indeed much faster and have very good RAM properties, but they are not a must-have in most situations. There are indeed a lot of fanbois of those (and I am one of them), but tbh, its only an option if you have nowhere else to put your money into.


As for netbooks, slightly offtopic, AMD E450 netbook chip can run modern warfare 2 at ~20-30 fps average at medium settings.


Also, if you DO end up getting an SSD, check if your laptop has SATA2 or SATA3, since most high-end SSDs will get bottlenecked by SATA2 bandwidth.

[AF]

I would also check to see if it's cheaper to buy the SSD seperate and upgrade later too, some companies are happy to charge over and above