New Dell Laptop - Advice required on Spec

construct06

Is this a good laptop? for €499?

i think the specs are pretty good.

Intel® Celeron® M Processor 380 (1.60 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 400 MHz FSB)
1024 Mb ram (2 x 512),
8x Dvd RW,
60Gb HD,
14.1" Wide Screen WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display,
Win Xp Home Edition,
4 Cell, 29Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery,



http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?cs=iedhs1&kc=npie5&oc=n01136&x=7&y=11

Im not sure where in the league table of processors the above one falls. These days i have no idea what is better than another in relation to processors.

Adivce woulld be welcome. Hoping to buy if advice/feedback good!

stooge

Depends really what you are going to be doing with it... the processor is fairly bog standard but if all you are doing is word processing and lightweight tasks then there shouldnt be a problem. If youre planning on gaming or multitaksing be prepared for poor performance...

Personally, I'd go for a dual processor and a bit more HD capacity (maybe 80Gb). 1024 RAM is ok I suppose.

construct06

thanks stooge.

is there somewhere that will tell me the league table of processors, ie - i have no idea which ones are better/faster than each other....

stooge

I havent got a lot of time to search for a better link but this one shows a table of some of the different intel processors:

http://www.intel.com/support/processors/mobile/pm/sb/CS-007967.htm

In terms of technology the prcoessors go in this order
celeron->pentium->coreduo->core2duo

Now obviously you could have a higher speed celeron which could outperform a lower speed pentium so don't just look at the name as a guide. The dual processors are really geared toward multitasking (i.e running more than one program at once). so you could have a core duo (two 1.66GHz) processors on the one chip, one doing one thing, the other something else.

As I said before, you'd need to say what youre using it for for someone to recommend a specific processor. Hope this helps a bit , maybe someone else can give you a better description...

construct06

use of laptop will be for

autocad (drafting program)
word processing
surfing web
music......


basically a sort of home office come home entertainment computer
but definetly wont be used for watching dvds or playing computer games so wont need all the associated jazz that goes with those.

Tom Dunne

construct06 wrote:

use of laptop will be for

autocad (drafting program)

Well that rules the 1300 out straight away. You will need something with much more horsepower, and possibly a better graphics card.

Look for a model with at least a Core Duo or Core 2 Duo and as much memory as you can afford (I would say 1Gig at a minimum).