[khanak]

thats cos u need to buy a wireless card in order to acess a network and its not inbuilt.my roommate has a celeron based ibm laptop nd i have a compaq one. after using other processors i personally feel that you should stretch your budget that little bit more and get a centrino. i felt that i wouldnt need one but if your gonna use it a lot you should get a centrino. a decent centrino based compaq system should be around 35k if u pick it up from the US in Indian ull get a compaq system for that much

[turbo_lover]

hey dippy

the cheapest Compaq V series model is a celeron ..
in delhi it was starting at 32 -34 k's...

celerons do consume a lot of battery power ... but i think the V series come with 2 battery packs at least mine did ...
celerons heat up as much at P4's ... and hence can sometimes be noisy or switch off on its own ... cooler the operating environment the better ...

[turbo_lover]

again ..wireless is basic in all laptops nowadays
but you can save money on the inbuilt bluetooth feature ...
you can just purchase a bluetooth USB device..most of them have a larger range than the inbuilt ones ... 100 metres being the highest (that i know off for home use)....they cost 700Rs. maybe cheaper now...

[tsk1979]

Anything more than 30K for a celeron entry level notebook is "overpriced"
Thats the reason I prefer sempron
Search google for "Sempron vs Celeron"
A full test report http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid...=expert&pid=12

[Selective]

Dippy,

My suggessions.

1. Build - Go for IBM/Lenovo they are well built, sleek, not bulky & heavy compared to DELL, HP.
2. Heat factor - nothing to worry, almost all laptop will heat up after sometime. And I am sure you will not keep the laptop on your lap for more than 30 mins! And I suggest not to.
3. Battery life - With the time all the laptops battery life will come down, as in cell phones. Centrino will work for almost 4 hrs for 1 year and goes down after that. And it is the same with all brands.
4. Wireless - You can add separately. But, I suggest go for the pre-installed as you will get the right applications installed for it. Centrino is my suggession again.

My experience.
1. Used non centrino/wireless IBM/Lenovo for 2.6 years. No issues with the laptop, battery life as I said above was reduced to less than a hour.
2. Using Centrino IBM/Lenovo for 1 year, battery life is still good for 4 hours.
3. Wireless connectivity is good in centrino, atleast had no issues with it so far. And I suggest you to GO for wireless as, wireless broadband modems from BSNL/Airtel are catching up and soon it will become a must.

Go for CENTRINO. The centrino package (mobile processor, wireless card, battery life) as a whole perform really well. They are made to work together to give the best performance and experience to user. It is not a eye wash or branding trick.

Hope it is useful for you.

Selective

[turbo_lover]

hey ... tsk

these two processors are not GAMING softwares ..they are not cut out for that...
these are tested on games like Unreal tournament and Quake !and MP3 encoding ..
in the business and networks software processing it is at par if not better than the AMD ..

he doesnt need hyper performance ..he needs to type, preserve documents for on the road work ..
he doesnt want to watch movies or play need for speed ..he needs it for internet and banning rowdy newbies get on msn ..

i have always given AMD a fair chance to prove its capabilities against the Intels somehow i have always been disappointed ... intel is always the better buy ...

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by Selective

4. Wireless - You can add separately. But, I suggest go for the pre-installed as you will get the right applications installed for it. Centrino is my suggession again.

Go for CENTRINO. The centrino package (mobile processor, wireless card, battery life) as a whole perform really well. They are made to work together to give the best performance and experience to user. It is not a eye wash or branding trick.

Hope it is useful for you.

Selective

Its actually a gimmik. Been in that field seen that. All wireless cards(chipsets actually) which are designed by good companies are tested with laptops from 25 different brands. There is remote possibility of your 802.11g card not working properly with some obscure laptop makers laptop, but with known brands is never an issue.

Infact thats what standards are for. If a card is 802.11g compilant or 802.11a compliant etc., it does not matter who made it or wether its external or internal, the data rates will almost be same.

[tsk1979]

I beg to differ. In past few years I have used AMD K6/Athlon/Duron/Athlon64 and Intel Celeron/Pentium 4/Pentium 3 and also seen many benchmark tests.

The benchmarks I posted were not just quake, but also "Business Winstone 2004".

AS for dippy's use, he needs a DVD drive. I guess that means watching DVDs, and on a celeron based PC its going to be a more painful task. If the computer is doing any mundane task in background the DVD will frame skip.

I am yet to come across a benchmark test where similarly priced intel CPUs beat AMDs. 5 years ago I would have gone with bigger brands, but being in this industry for more than 4 years has shattered the myths I harboured about big and small.

And another thing. Centrino is not a processor. Centrino is what intel calls the combination of a pentium m processor, an intel chipset, and a wireless card.
For watching DVDs its better to get a centrino or a sempron, celeron is nowhere near in the performance charts

[Dippy]

Thanks so much Selective, tsk , turbo and all you guys

I see you have studied my needs very well. Though the DVD may not be really used to watch movies, I really dont I will watch movies when I'm working on the lappie. One reason why I do need the DVD is because I have staretd keeping data on dvds and I need the DVD feature to read it. Apart from that , I have a huge collection of TG and 5th Gear collection copied onto DVDs. I may not watch movies but I will certainly watch these at times. Now we are car guys arent we ?

After alot of thinking, I feel I should get the the Thinkpad R51 with the wireless included. I will be using this lappie for a long time and I guess having wireless will do no harm. As Selective said, wireless will catch up soon and I dont want to find myself regretting for not having got that

My journo work does require me to use the net and of course cant stay away from Team BHP even on the laptop. So wireless does make sense.

Should pick up a machine in max 2 weeks time

About the Acer didnt get a very positive feedback about those I wonder why?

[tsk1979]

Wireless inclusive will cost you 10000 more than if you get a wireless card aftermarket(AFAIK R51 has atleast 2 wireless slots). You just need to buy a 1500-2000rs card and plug it in the slot. Also the special offers page lists them at 33990 and 44990. With extended warranty you are getting the 52k deal for wireless or non-wireless?
R51 is a good buy since its 1.6GHz so no problems watching DVDs.

Also is the price inclusive of windows XP? Otherwise for home edition you need to put in 3000 extra and around 8000 extra for professional.

[Dippy]

tsk

The 52 k deal I have is for the one costing 48250. Thats the price with one year warranty. With extended to 3 years its coming to 52k

So if i go for the one costing 44990, I think I should get that one for around 48 or 49 k with 3 years warranty

Only difference I see is that the former comes with Windows XP Home and the 44990 one comes with only DOS

Honestly I could make do with only DOS since I would anyways prefer installing XP Professional rather than having XP Home

[devarshi84]

FOr people looking to buy a desktop, now is the best time.

get amd fx-57 (wait for a week for the fx-60 dual-core) or get the dual cores
nvidia sli 7800


to buy a laptop I will advise to wait until march.

AMD and intel are both supposed to release mobile specific cpu's (pentium M and turion are both based on desktop chips with lowered voltage)

65nm architecture (lesser transistors than 90nm)
64-bit (a must for windows vista)
dual-core (helps in multi threaded applications

mated with the new 90nm gpu's from Ati and soon to come from nvidia.


desktops -buy now
laptops-wait until march.

[turbo_lover]

am yet to come across a benchmark test where similarly priced intel CPUs beat AMDs. 5 years ago I would have gone with bigger brands, but being in this industry for more than 4 years has shattered the myths I harboured about big and small.

thats not true ...
here is one of the incidents -
my current laptop is backdated 3 yrs ... its a presario EVO N with a P4 1.7ghz
at the same time my buddy bought the presario 900 with AMD Athlon ..it was clocking more that mine infact initially i though it was a great buy coz it was cheaper ... as the only difference was the processor ..
but none of the games ran as smoothly as it did on mine ...his computer froze all the time .. internet browsing was pathetic ...it took him ages to load winamp write CD's ..everything in terms of performance was blow mine ..he sold it off in 8months ..
a similar model was bought by my current housemate, he sold it off in a year for 300 dollars !!

i have always looked at the bang for the buck aspect ...
AMD always has something to show in charts as against intel..but with the full package it really doesnt deliver as much ...

[tsk1979]

3 years ago!
AMD had completely different architecture then. 3 years is like a lifetime in the chip world.
As for compaq presario 900 notebook you are talking about the processor it used was Athlon XP 1700+. This is a 1.467GHz CPU, and is a completely different architechture. Its also prone to overheating. Infact this processor was run at lower voltage(resulting in lower speed) to control heating. At that time athlon on notebooks was a disaster.
For gaming performance its the graphics card and chipset which matters more than the processor.

[tsk1979]

Originally Posted by devarshi84

65nm architecture (lesser transistors than 90nm)

Nope 65nm means transistor size is less. Which means "more transistors" on a similarly sized die.

As for waiting, if you want the uber cool machine, wait till march, for very basic applications its buy anytime!