New Laptop

[USWhoFan]

I am totally geeked!!! 0:)

I got a bonus from work and I'm splurging and buying a near top on the line laptop.

 

I just ordered the following:

HP Pavilion dv9700t

Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9300 (2.50 GHz, 6 MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)

17.0" diagonal WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050)

4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)

512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GS

Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone

Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth

320GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive

LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW with Double Layer Support

Digital/Analog TV Tuner

High Capacity 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

 

I also got a leather bag and a docking station.

 

Any comments on what you think of my selection I'd be glad to hear them. :P

[hayden]

that is one hectic notebook!! its got more juice than my pc.. The only downside of such an amazing notebook would be its size i'd imagine? 17" display with all that would be an inch and a bit thick maybe? I went down the same road as you about a month ago, and ended up in the middle ground. I wanted something with awesome performance such as you, but also in a slim design. I ended on the new macbook pro. mainly because it was the only one offering a dedicated graphics card in its size

(only 128 but). and its got 2.5Ghz core 2 duo 150gb hdd, 2g ddr2 sdram @ 700mhz.. Plus with the intel chips i can just run windows on it no worries ^_^

 

But i was unbelievably close to getting what you did, sounds great.. i love the idea of the gaming possibilities all neatly packed up in a notebook. awesome.

[TetsuoShima]

Woot, that is a monster mate. :D

 

The only negative points about it, could be weight and size, but that all depends on what you expect from a laptop. The internals must be top of the line! It must be costing them a small fortune. :cyclops:

 

nice! :)

[vystral]

good god, what a beast.

 

can't wait to get my economic stimulus check so i can get a laptop...

[USWhoFan]

Thanks for the comments, looks like I did well.

 

And it was the best price I could find for what I got, $1600 USD.

 

I am soooo itching to get this in. :P Won't be built till the 24th. :(

 

And HP is crewel, >:D they shipped me the bag and docking station to stare at while I wait another week for the laptop/notebook. :grr:

[hayden]

wow, that is cheap as chips.. haha makes the rest of us not so jealous, but only a little bit! :P

[x5315]

i'd probably downgrade the hdd to a smaller size, and then replace it with a 7200 rpm one.

 

[vystral]

i'd probably downgrade the hdd to a smaller size, and then replace it with a 7200 rpm one.

 

Not a bad idea.

[USWhoFan]

i'd probably downgrade the hdd to a smaller size, and then replace it with a 7200 rpm one.

 

Not a bad idea.

 

Maybe? But what would have it REALLY bought me? Performance wise.

I know it's a faster HD, but you really don't see much of a difference until you get to the 10K RPM disks.

 

But with the specs of the rest of the system I should have probably gone for the 7200 drive.

[TetsuoShima]

It depends on what you use your laptop for. Some uses see big improvements from a faster hdd, others see hardly any.

 

Personally, I always choose size over speed, reason being, the bigger the hard drive, the faster it becomes, in terms of max throughput (within the same generation), though access times usually suffer a bit (if you're into large files (anything over a few dozen MB), access times hardly matter though).

 

However, if you don't care about noise and power usage, and don't have a need for very large hard disk sizes, then a 7200 rmp hdd would always be the better choice. For me, noise and power usage are big issues however. You could always go for one of those new flash drive thingies (only costs $600 for 64 GB or so, LOL), if access time is your thing. :D

[x5315]

i wouldn't use an SSD on a machine that has a swap.

SSDs have limited writes. If you're sticking windows or linux on their, they'll rip through the writes really quickly.

 

with linux you can use it in "cd" mode, or whatever, which allows you to not use a swap.

[TetsuoShima]

Actually, the number of writes allowed on flash are so high by now, that you won't even end up having used them all in the next 50 years. All flash drives have build-in balancing which means that the same sectors are not used all the time. Because of the incredible access speed compared to hard disks, files do not have to be contiguous. Aside from a whole chip failing at once, it's much more secure than hard disks.

 

Then again, who needs a pagefile if you've got 4GB of ram... Sure, you can make one for compatibility reasons (some progs just don't work properly without one), but I wouldn't expect it to actually see some use. I've got 1GB in my old computer and even that one NEVER actively uses the page file. If it would, I would instantly shut down some apps, since paging means too much speed loss.

[x5315]

Windows funnily enough will use your pagefile before it fills your RAM.

That's where the speed up of

ConservativeFileSwapUsage=1

in msconfig comes from.

[TetsuoShima]

That's a thing I've heard mentioned many a time, but no-one has ever been able to show it to me, as my computer miraculously does not have that 'problem', I don't use that "ConservativeFileSwapUsage" switch either. As such, I've needed to conclude that this statement that I keep hearing from lots of people is a load of bull. Sure windows uses some 5-15 MB of swap all the time for god knows what, probably something that's never needed but needs to reside in mem anyway. Truthfully, my active swap never exceeds 15MB, not even when I have 950MB of RAM in use. These 15MB that just resides in the pagefile won't make a difference in new computers. I presume they may be related to the 'some apps won't run properly without a pagefile issue'.

 

In any case, starting from win2k (I've very little experience with NT4), excessive pagefile usage has never been a problem on any system I've used. Win9x, well, it was reasonably fast and efficient if it worked at all (it had numerous memory management related problems, among others), but let's all just forget about it, since it's no longer relevant.