Pentium, AMD or Celeron?

[Timothy]

How important are the RPMS on the hardrive? Say, 5400 vs 7200? Is faster better, or does it decrease life expectancy?
Thanks
FQ13

A hard drive isn't a single disc.  It's a stack of them little pieces of plastic stuff.  One file could be spread all over those discs so the speed will effect the time it takes for the read head to find all those little pieces of the file.

For the average user, it's negligible.  For what I do at my job, it's huge.  Solid modeling files are very large, very mathematical and tend to drag a slow system to a crawl.

[Texas_Bryan]

FQ,

The main things you need to look for are non performance features, because it sounds like your needs are pretty basic.  Four gigs RAM and one of those dual cores is going to do you good, but do you need a ten key pad?  Web cam?  How much storage?  My guess is no but it would be nice to have on all those.  The HP Pro on the top of my list, that is what I'd buy, or set as my shopping benchmark.

Decent size screen, four hour battery, ten key pad, and solid performance.

[Timothy]

Bryan, Path and FA are giving you sound advice.

I opted for an eight hour battery pack for mine but nothing else.  Heck, I bought mine for about 450 and today it's listed at 379 with a better processor.  These things change before you send in the warranty paperwork. 

Path is right on the bloat software that gets canned on big box store machines too.  Some of it is damn hard to get rid of if you try.

Anyone ever try and completely remove AOL?

[Texas_Bryan]

Bryan, Path and FA are giving you sound advice.

I opted for an eight hour battery pack for mine but nothing else.  Heck, I bought mine for about 450 and today it's listed at 379 with a better processor.  These things change before you send in the warranty paperwork. 

Path is right on the bloat software that gets canned on big box store machines too.  Some of it is damn hard to get rid of if you try.

Anyone ever try and completely remove AOL?

I put a clean OS of Windows 7 on all my machines, don't even mess with the factory one.  Look for Professional Editions of Windows, less junk, though not completely without it.

Got three desktops sitting in my place and not one of them has bloatware.  Its also one of the reasons I prefer to build by own machines.

[fightingquaker13]

FQ,

The main things you need to look for are non performance features, because it sounds like your needs are pretty basic.  Four gigs RAM and one of those dual cores is going to do you good, but do you need a ten key pad?  Web cam?  How much storage?  My guess is no but it would be nice to have on all those.  The HP Pro on the top of my list, that is what I'd buy, or set as my shopping benchmark.

Decent size screen, four hour battery, ten key pad, and solid performance.

What exactly is a ten key key pad, is it diffrernt from a five or fifteen key pad (Honest question, I just don't know)? I get the battery life, and I will pay extra for it, but I can live without the Web cam unless I want to pull a Rob Lowe, and I couldn't afford it if I wanted to. Seriously, I made these things my hobby, many, many moons ago when you needed to worry about megahertzes and the BUS link to the mother board. . Now, I don't want to go through the learning curve, I just don't like them that much. If I were a newbie posting a gun quetion like this about an SD handgun, most of us would say buy a Glock or a J frame, at least you won't hurt yourself with it. That's kind of like me with computers. Model advice? Anyone?

[Sponsor]

[Texas_Bryan]

What exactly is a ten key key pad, is it diffrernt from a five or fifteen key pad (Honest question, I just don't know)? I get the battery life, and I will pay extra for it, but I can live without the Web cam unless I want to pull a Rob Lowe, and I couldn't afford it if I wanted to. Seriously, I made these things my hobby, many, many moons ago when you needed to worry about megahertzes and the BUS link to the mother board. . Now, I don't want to go through the learning curve, I just don't like them that much. If I were a newbie posting a gun quetion like this about an SD handgun, most of us would say buy a Glock or a J frame, at least you won't hurt yourself with it. That's kind of like me with computers. Model advice? Anyone?

Ten key pad?  You know that cliddy thing with the numbers so you can fast typed numbers with out chicken peckin the top of the letters, lay out like a phone pad.  That one at the top of my list didn't have a web cam, but had solid performance, no frills, get the job done setup, with Windows 7 Professional.  Appeared to have an all aluminum case, so it should be pretty durable.  Buy an HP, or ASUS, for the best value.

And I don't know who Rob Lowe is...

In closing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157533

...just buy it.

[fightingquaker13]

Ten key pad?  You know that cliddy thing with the numbers so you can fast typed numbers with out chicken peckin the top of the letters, lay out like a phone pad.  That one at the top of my list didn't have a web cam, but had solid performance, no frills, get the job done setup, with Windows 7 Professional.  Appeared to have an all aluminum case, so it should be pretty durable.  Buy an HP, or ASUS, for the best value.

And I don't know who Rob Lowe is...

In closing...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157533

...just buy it.

A
Thanks for the advice. I'll probably follow it. And Rob Lowe? He's a pretty boy actor (most recently on West Wing) who got busted for statutory rape for video taping himself having sex with an underaged prositute. I guess its a generational thing. Personally, I have never contemplated comitting a felony and then saying, "You know, I really should film this and then post it on the net. Yeah, that's the perfect crime"!   Anyhow, thanks for the feedback, more reponses welcomed.
FQ13

[philw]

go one of the Intel i5's or i3's


I just got a new Work MacBook Pro  and it has a i5 in it


also has a 5400 rpm drive,

for what you would use it for FQ  it would be all you need



my home Lappy is broken atm  and I am waiting on the new Mac Laptops that will be out soon  

[billt]

I'm no computer whiz, but this has been my experience. I HAD, as in past tense, a HP Pavilion with what was supposed to be a "top of the line" AMD Processor. I had nothing but trouble with it from the first day I plugged it in and booted the thing up. I did all sorts of weird, crazy things I never had happen on a PC before. I finally got totally fed up with blue screens, "crash dumps", lock ups, and about a dozen other things I'm forgetting, and bought the exact same model HP with an Intel Quad Core 2 Processor and it runs like a dream without an issue or problem. I've heard the Celeron is the only thing to avoid from Intel. It is known as the "Ford Fiesta" el cheapo model of their line.

Now, perhaps it was something else other than the Processor. I don't know. But all I do know is AMD = FAIL, and Intel = NO PROBLEM. At least in my book. Because of that I will never own another computer with AMD anything "Inside". Your mileage may vary.  Bill T.

[Texas_Bryan]

I'm no computer whiz, but this has been my experience. I HAD, as in past tense, a HP Pavilion with what was supposed to be a "top of the line" AMD Processor. I had nothing but trouble with it from the first day I plugged it in and booted the thing up. I did all sorts of weird, crazy things I never had happen on a PC before. I finally got totally fed up with blue screens, "crash dumps", lock ups, and about a dozen other things I'm forgetting, and bought the exact same model HP with an Intel Quad Core 2 Processor and it runs like a dream without an issue or problem. I've heard the Celeron is the only thing to avoid from Intel. It is known as the "Ford Fiesta" el cheapo model of their line.

Now, perhaps it was something else other than the Processor. I don't know. But all I do know is AMD = FAIL, and Intel = NO PROBLEM. At least in my book. Because of that I will never own another computer with AMD anything "Inside". Your mileage may vary.  Bill T.

It was something else.  I'm running one Intel based desktop with a Core 2 Quad Q6600 over clocked to 3.2Ghz, and two AMD base server boxes, one Sempron and on Athlon with zero problems.  Got an HP laptop running AMD Turion as well.