New laptop and router

boomshackala

Hi, I'm looking at the following spec from Dell. I use it for my home office and want something fast and with good connection to the wireless router. I'm also looking for a good router, I believe one with the new N class protocol is fast, but which router is reliable on this standard?

Here's one by Belkin on Komplett
http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=343017

Here's the laptop spec

Dell™ Latitude E5400 (L0254001)

T7250(2.0GHz,800MHz, 2MB),
Unit Price € 1,115.00

Base Latitude E5400 - Intel® Core™ 2 Duo
T7250(2.0GHz,800MHz, 2MB)

Memory 4GB 800MHz DDR2 memory (2 x 2GB)

Hard Drive 120GB serial ATA HDD 5400RPM
Optical Devices 8X DVD-ROM Drive (with Software)

Intel WiFi Link 5100 (802.11 a/g/n 1X2) 1/2

Comments on both welcomed please

johnciall

In all honesty unless your going to be moving files around on your LAN much wireless N is pointless as your Speed will still bottleneck at your internet connection [unless you have a 300Mbps Connection]

In my parents house my brother in law se them up with wireless N routing and they have seen exactly 0 Performance increase across the board.

Now if you do have Network shares and use stuff across it alot Wireless N Is handy, Gigabit LAN is better

boomshackala

I'm upgrading to Eircom 7mb, is that 7m bits/s? If so then even my lowly b class 11m bit/s eircom router is not woth upgrading?

johnciall

Well how many computers are you going to be connecting to it?

I would consider the cost of a wireless g router worth it for the [probably] Increased security options on a new router,


having said that does your laptop/pc have a wireless G card?

Alanstrainor

That laptop is woeful and horrendously expensive! Steer well clear. You're paying about double what i'd expect for that spec. Get a vostro, or an xps far superior spec wise for similar or less money, if all you want is home office, web browsing and something quick on it's feet, a basic vostro with a core 2 duo processor and 2Gb of RAM would more than suffice, it's up to you how large or small you want the machine to be.

boomshackala

Yes the Laptop I'm buying (most on offer it seems) has wirelss n (I presume u mean 'n').

I have a downgrade to windows xp and also the cost of ms office in there which makes it seem expensive... nearly doubles the price

Alanstrainor

boomshackala wrote: »

Yes the Laptop I'm buying (most on offer it seems) has wirelss n (I presume u mean 'n').

I have a downgrade to windows xp and also the cost of ms office in there which makes it seem expensive... nearly doubles the price

Can i ask why you're downgrading to XP? It's probably not the best of ideas at this stage. Xp is an 8 year old OS, and although it was great, it is effectively dead. Vista is more secure, better equipped and an all round better OS. If there's no reason other than people claiming vista is rubbish etc etc, All i'll say is they are living in the past, the above machine will handle vista flawlessly. It might take a couple of hours to get usedto the layout but it's quite intuitive.

boomshackala

I've heard all sorts of horror stories, my friends one tells him its an illegal copy!