On Thu, 5 Feb 2009 18:36:42 -0500, "Kathy" wrote:
HP Pavilion $699
AMD TurionT X2 RM-72 Dual-Core Mobile Processor
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9166635&ty pe=product&id=1218041148373&ref=10&loc=01
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You’ve got my vote just being HP. Hope you never need support, but I’ve found that HP along with Walmart support can’t be beat by any companies.
Not so sure about ATI though. I was an involuntary Beta tester for 10 years with ATI.
I read the review specifically aimed at the graphics. It would seem that it CAN benefit from a plugin video card. I’d say shop around now for one. My machine was a year old when I went shopping for a video card. Computer tech really does fly. The new stuff was technically out of reach for this 1 year old machine. I had to settle on a card going into obsolescence.
For PS4 get a card with a good GPU. And as much ram as you can find. All those speed complaints could be traced to the DDR2 memory. If you could have a Ferrari or a model T, which would you choose ? DDR2 is the model T of memory. The reason for DDR2 is price.
Disregard.. Reading the specs, you’re STUCK with that video card. It does have the required GPU. So maybe PS4 can use it.
Maybe being owned by another company will clean up ATI’s act. I read all the reviews. There were a few sour apples. and the main one being speed. One guy showed how to get it to a good speed. Disable all the crap installed in the startup. Then reboot & fly.
The extremely hot power adapter sounds like real trouble.
I have no idea about battery life. 2 hours doesn’t sound like much to me. to me, it’d be dead before breakfast.
I’ve never owned & don’t intend on having a laptop requiring batteries. Only thing I use batteries on is the TV remotes. I just threw out 10 AA’s that I never even got to use.
Hmm… checking out the video specs, there’s a glitch. It reports only 256 mb. 256mb video ram was good in 1998. Dxdiag shows the 1918MB available. Didn’t dig into why the anomaly since it wasn’t spelled out as to what the 2 meant.
Ouch. NO INTERNAL slots. Except for the expansion to 8 gigs ram, it looks like WYSIWYG.
I think limiting yourself to selection by price may bite you.. That 4gb ram is flash.. to hide all the drawbacks. A 320 GB HD isn’t a lot for graphics usage. I’m at 2 tera bytes drive space now and 2 gigs ram. 1st being, a laptop for a graphics machine ? Graphics eats up HD space faster than anything else. It also eats up RAM. Graphics usage requires a power horse, not a dog cart.
No expansion slots, only 4 USB slots, [I have 4 on the back, 4 on an external USB island, and a single USB on the front. And there’s only 3 free. no TV tuner, slow 5400 rpm Sata drive, another thing to slow things down. I’ve been spoiled with a 3.2ghz Pentium processor, and now a 2.8 ghz dual core on Vista HP. This 2.1 ghz AMD shows 50/50 reviews.
With high tech, you really can’t trust the salesman. they just want to sell the goods and get their commission. They most likely don’t know any more than you do.
The dealers manufacture items BY price that are really little more than the bare minimums, and cheapest materials. This laptop is the bare minimum.. Not real sure about why anyone mentions fingerprints as a drawback, or why the machine comes with a special cloth to wipe fingerprints..
Unreadable keyboard.. This sounds like an odd problem if it hadn’t bit me with my old machine. I took the keyboard on my special build back the next day, It seems there is such a thing as a children’s keyboard that DOESN’T sell and gets stuck on things as one more example of installing the cheapest, and un able to sell items.
If price is the selling point, I’d say go for it. You probably can’t find one cheaper. I’m wondering if Vista 64 isn’t one of those [can’t give it away items]. It is true that 64 bit drivers are few and far between. You need to make sure PS3 can even run on Vista 64.
If I were shopping for a laptop, I’d pass on this one.. Too many limitations. I read the gripes over the praise. I do know that a lot of those gripes should be taken with a grain of salt due to user ignorance. But you can’t ignore a hot adapter, slow everywhere, battery life, and visual problems..
I spent 2 weeks 8 hour days shopping online JUST for this video card. But I’m more than happy with the video card.
Hello There:
I am going to learn Photoshop (Cs3 version) to be able to improve my family photos as a hobby and since I travel often, I am going to buy a newer laptop for this
purpose.(Windows environment)
My friend was telling me that Intel processor is better than Amd and make sure it has a dedicated video card rather than built-in. I could afford expending
around $700 (maybe $800). Would I be able to get something nice for that amount?
Any brand? Any advice? I heard that Dell are overpriced, is that so?
Thank you in advance,
Kathy