Hello Jon, Wednesday, January 14, 2004, 11:08:41 AM, you wrote:
My 2 cents: I have some experience choosing notebooke (recently bought one) and here is my opinion: Notebook consists of 4 very importatn components: - CPU - Video card - Memory - Hard drive - Case - others ... 1. It is not very important what kind of processor installed (of course I mean modern Pentium 4 family, I mean speed first of all) - if it is Pentium 4 or Centrino, but if you are going to run Linux on it (I hope you are) so Centrino is not good choice (not supported completely by kernel right now), and if look through processors prices (MemEx for example) difference in price between P4 2.2 and P4 2.4 - 50 $ and diff. in speed - ~3%, difference in price between Centr. 1.4 and 1.7 - 300 $, diff. in speed - 10%-15% (I think). So you see that you can pay for 300$ more and get almost the same! 2. Video card - I think it is very important - if you buy good notebook for 2000$ but it will be equipped wuth embedded on mb graphics card (some kind of Intel or Ati chips) with shared memory for video, how do you think this machine will work in most application with comparison to the same model equipped new (for example) FX 5200 Go (for low-end level in graphics right now)? You right second one will run faster for about 30-40% (to such speed increas you need almost double CPU speed and memory speed, and the price would be same mulplicative). 3. Memory - important, sometimes notebooks equipped with different kind of exotic memory, but most popular - DDR SDRAM PC 2100 or PC2700, so diff. in speed - about 3-5% (compare PC2100 to PC2700), there is a 5$ diff. in price (MemEx - 256Mb PC2700=90$, 256Mb PC2100=85$, but 256Mb SDRAM PC133=135$ and you can imagine speed decreasing) 4. Hard drive - also important (40gB ~ 200$, 60gB~270$) 5. Case - there is a long story... Conclusion - to do notebook by hand: I think the best way - to buy a case with good videocard and ports and add here CPU (as you want), memory (512MbPC2700), hdd (as you want), and you will get powerfull system (if you choose godd videocard at least Gefroce FX 5200 Go). And you can buy that case (I know that it is possible in MemEx = Asus L5GM Barebone Notebook w/ Hyper-Threading, CDRW/DVD, 15in SXGA, GeforceFX Go 5650 64MB = 1390$) and add in it memory, CPU, hdd and if you try then find the same configuration from for example Compaq - you can find it but price - ~ 3000$ and You've got such system for ~2000$ - the same components! Am I rgiht? -- Best regards, Alex mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
