Re: This is best place to get shopping help for new PCs, honest !!!

Donald L McDaniel wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2006 14:42:19 GMT, Mark Conrad
<jumpingjack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <clund-E42E59.09181216082006@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, C Lund
<clund@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Need a PC laptop, any size, with these min' features:
(built in, not added via a plug-in card)
1) 512MB ram (would like more, say 2GB, hopefully ECC ram)
2) USB 1.1 and USB 2.0
3) Ethernet 10/100/1000 autosense, full duplex
4) Firewire 400 and 800
5) High speed DVD read _and_ write, plus ordinary CDs
6) At least 120GB fast quiet internal drive
7) A seperate DVD with Windows XP Pro plus SP1 and SP2, but this DVD _minus_ all the nagware 3rd-party junk that normally comes with Windows, so I can load up the PC
minus all the 3rd party junk that normally comes with it.
The Intel Mac laptops don't come with these features? (I wouldn't know, since I've never been interested in laptops)
Oh of course the Mac Intel MacBooks come with these features, that is
the whole point, namely I wanted to buy a PC that "plays nice" with my
existing stable of Macs.

Using shrewd anti-logic, I flipped a coin on a page of various PCs in a
magazine, figuring I would buy whatever PC that the coin landed on.

The coin landed on a Toshiba "Satellite" A105-S4134, so I hopped down
to Office Depot and picked it up.

Man, you must be some rich dude.

Heh, he goes and buys computers on a whim, and I'm still trying to save for an AM2 upgrade for my year-old homebrew desktop.


Has most all the requirements I listed above, except the darn thing is
loaded with the XP Media Center version of the OS, instead of XP Pro.

Think the app' I want to run on it requires XP Pro, so I picked up a
seperate copy of XP Pro just in case.

...besides, Bill Gates needs the money, he confided to me.

The ram on that model can be increased to 4GB, however Toshiba has an
ominous disclaimer that "When using 4GB, the amount of ram available
for system processes will be considerably less"


Being video shares the ram on that model, I assume they mean that the
added ram will go mainly for video uses.

Anyhow, I intend to max the ram out, disclaimer or no disclaimer.

The "sweet spot" for PCs with XP Pro is 2GB. Any more, and any
expected performance gains don't materialize.

Because processes can't address more than 2G of RAM on a 32-bit desktop version of Windows NT. More RAM is always a good thing though, since many people run multiple applications at the same time.

BTW, the 'sweet spot' is a moving target. It represents the 'most bang for the buck', which isn't a concern for everyone. Some people have enough money to focus entirely on performance or not enough to afford the best value.



This will be the first modern PC that I have had in years, being I gave
away all my older PCs.

Supposedly, it will run Vista when that finally comes out, we will see.

I doubt that a machine which uses shared video memory will "run
Vista", or at least not at it's best.

Anything using Intel's 950GMA or better should fully support Vista's graphics (Aero Glass and everything). If you were wondering, the Macbook uses this chipset.
.

Relevant Pages