Advice pls

gabbogalway

Hello
If you could choose from these two laptops which would you pick. I'm pretty sure i'm going to get one or the other pretty soon. Thanks.

1/ - laptop which has no serial/parallel ,no infared with this configuration

Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4 processors at 3.06GHz
512 KB Pipeline Burst L2 cache
533MHz front side bus frequency
AGP 4X Bus
Intel® 852PM AGP Chipset with 4X AGP
Internal 56Kbps V.92 capable modem and 10/100 Ethernet LAN on Motherboard
One type I/II PC Card slot
Ports: USB 2.0 (x2), VGA, Headphones, Speaker, RJ-11, RJ-45, S-Video, IEEE1394
Fixed 8x (max) DVD-Rom drive - upgrade to CD-RW/DVD Combo or DVD+RW Drive

15" UXGA (1600 x 1200) TFT Colour Display

256MB 333 MHz DDR SDRAM

40GB Hard Drive

ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 64MB Graphics Card

Integrated 8x DVD/24x CD-RW Combo Drive

Planet 21 Luxus-Nylon-Rucksack

All for: EUR 1.755,84 including vat & delivery. Including one year warranty

*************************************************************
Or you could choose:

2/ Laptop with serial/parallel & IR

Intel® Pentium® 4 processors-M 2.0GHz
512 KB Pipeline Burst L2 cache
400 MHz front side bus frequency
Intel® 845MP AGPSet Chipset with 4X AGP
256MB to 2048 MB 266 Mhz DDR RAM
Internal 56Kbps V.92 capable modem and optional 10/100 Ethernet LAN on Motherboard
One type I/II PC Card slot
Ports: Parallel, Serial, VGA, S-video out, 2x USB, IR (IrDa v.1.1), IEEE 1394
Modular Optical Drive: CDRW or CD-RW/DVD Combo
Integrated DualPoint - TouchPad & PointStick pointing devices

15.4" WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) UltraSharp Wide

256MB 333MHz DDR SDRAM

40GB Hard Drive

NVIDIA® GeForce4 Go 4200™ with 64MB DDR video RAM

Modular 8x DVD/24x CD-RW Combo Drive

Planet 21 Luxus-Nylon-Rucksack

All for: EUR 1.783,44 including vat & delivery. With one year warranty

Thanks for any advice or suggestions!

Villain

I would advise laptop 2, more scope with connectivty. Mind you I know someone who knows more than me will come on and advise you a lot better.

But I bought a laptop many years ago and I'm still using it and I find the Infared port very useful for connecting my mobile to.

Now theres bluetooth and loads of other ways to connect, although the IR port is by far the easiest.

The spec is much the same.

As i said someone will advise you a lot better than me, but thats my 2 pennys worth.

maxheadroom

Laptop 1 - It has a better processor, better graphics, USB 2.0 , and you can always buy an IR dongle if you want.

Are you sure that's a P4 - M though, if not you'll have reduced battery life, possibly reduced performance in battery mode, probably incerased heat build-up.


What do you want the laptops for?

Yrthilian

I would suggest Laptop 2

ok yes it is a little slower and to be honest they will both get slow when they heat up so speed it not the main factor here.

from the specks i think that the graphic card in 2 is better because it has DDR ram on it not like the radon. dont get me wrong on this i have a radon card in mine and yes it is great but unless it is ddr then you dont want it.

as for the buss well it only matter if all the card are DDR ram as it is only realy gootd that way.

as regard the IDR port it causts more money to go buy a IR port so why not get the system that has it already?
and that way you dont have more bits with the system it is already built in

and haveint the modular drive is much better that built in ones meen it is easer to replace broken drives and they are hot swapable.

well there is my ramble on for what system i think you should get
the second on come with more and is more versatile and has a lot more option for a few quid more.

I have to say the laptop 2 would be the one i would get

Yrthilian

gabbogalway

I'll be using it for college, will have to do a final year project in Electronic Eng so serial/IR ports could come in useful. Has any everyhad problems using a USB to Serial/Parallel adapter? The 3.06Ghz is a new Mobile P4, compared to the old P4m! There are both Dell laptops. i5150 & i8500

Is the ATI graphics card better than the Geforce?

Thanks for your help. Still undecided-I had been sure on getting the 2.0Ghz (i8500) until recently!

Villain

Why not start a poll??

Col_Loki

If that 3.06 Ghz is a mobile processor i definetly would go for the Comp1. The mobile processors produce less heat and require less power. I have IR on my laptop and i never once used it, if your main concern is Performance -> comp1 , Batterylife ->comp2 .
The serial ports & Parallel , shouldnt make any difference all USB and 1394 (firewire) now.

Not sure about the mobile graphics, the GF4 Ti4200 is a good bit better than the ATI 9000 in desktop pc's. - presume the same apply's in the mobile market.

maxheadroom

Actually, I was wrong, I thought it saif GeForce Go440...


The Nvidia has a slight edge over the ATI, but the processor in 1 is much better.


If you're looking at dell, have a gander at the lattitude D series (you have to pretend to be a small business on the website)...

Col_Loki

If the processor 1 is a mobile, you shouldnt notice that much of a battery difference between the two as depending on your power saving settings it will vary in speed of the processor.

Would definetly go for the 3.06Ghz Comp 1. As Maxheadroom said theres only a slight advantage in the graphics cards, but a big diference in the processing power.

beegee1234

Hey gabbogalway, where can you get such a laptop that cheap? I would like to get one myself.

bg

gabbogalway

I'm on work placement in Munich Germany so the dell prices are not so expensive as in Ireland! Am leaving at the end of August so want to get it pretty soon-takes ten days to deliver. I think I'm still leaning towards the i8500, it's not as fast but better graphics, more ports, widescreen. You can upgrade to a 2.6GHz but there's no way I could afford that, plus I think I'm going to get a three year warranty(+€300!)

beegee1234

Will you able to get me one there?:D

gabbogalway

Which one would you want!?

LFCFan

what's the story with the Sony Viao? Are they a good machine?

Col_Loki

Sony viao is pretty good in general, one thing about the one ive used is the sound is dreadfull. Turn the volume up and you can barely hear it, worth testing the model before you buy cause its very annoying.