Korean Job Discussion Forums

[I_Am_Wrong]

I've decided to buy a laptop in Canada before I return to Korea
I've decided on a centrino chip 1.6 or 1.7, 512 mb ram-1gig ram. I have a 80 gig portable harddrive so a smallish hard drive isn't a concern. I'm thinking between 40-80 should be fine. I can't decide on graphics. I will use the notebook for movies, music, office and publishing programs. I rarely play games but occasionally I like to fire up a round Wolfenstein Enemy Territory. Will I be fine with 128 shared intel integrated graphics or would I be better of with a radeon x300 or x200m?

a)Dell Inspiron 6000, 1.7ghz pentium m, 1 gig ram, 80 gigs hdd, radeon x300, dual dvdr/cdr, battery life around 4 hours. $1,309 cdn

b)Lg s50-AGHU1, 1.7 ghz centrino, 1 gig ram, 40 gigs hdd, choice of ATI mobility radion or intel 900 integrated graphics, dvd/cdrw, 6 1/2 battery life. $1,110 cdn

c)Acer travelmate 4061, Centrino Pentium 1.6, 512 ddr,dual dvdr/cdr
Intel 900 Integrated graphics. $1169 cdn

d)Toshiba m70 celeron m380 1.6 ghz. 512 mb ram, 100 gigs, ati radeon xpress, dual dvdr, low battery life 2.5 hours. $1099.

My original decision was the toshiba but then I learned that the battery life is short and that I might not be happy with the celeron m processor? Now, I'm debating between the dell and the Lg. I've also seen some pretty nice HP notebooks in my price range that have the integrated graphics. Any advice?

[BigBlackEquus]

If you want to do anything with graphics other than the basics, cut out B and C.

The low battery life in the Toshiba isn't because of the celeron, it's because the battery is cheaper.

Intel likes to perpetuate the myth that the Pentium chip is a lot better in the battery department than the celeron, which is bull. The only time the Pentium saves any juice over a Celeron is when it is just sitting there doing nothing... and then it saves only a few watts difference maximum. How many of us run on battery power, yet let it just sit there?

The Celeron M still has the chip speed throttling, and a low-power state. It just doesn't step down quite as far as the Pentium when not being used at all.

The difference is very, very small.

The reason the battery life is less with that is because they ship the cheaper computer with cheaper batteries to increase their profit margin. The performance figures between the Celeron M and the Centrino systems are close enough that more than one site I've seen suggested buying the Celeron machine, along with a second (full power) battery. You'll still end up saving some cash, and have more overall battery life. Unless you are running certain applications, you won't notice the difference.

Celeron M's now run on one meg of cache. Centrinos run on 2 megs. Cache only makes a difference with certain programs, and 1 meg is quite a nice amount. Desktop Celerons 3 years ago had as little as 128k of cache, while the desktop Pentiums had 512k!

For what you want, though, I'd go with machine A.

[Bulsajo]

[I_Am_Wrong]

I ruled out AMD's immediately because I was looking at machines that still had 512k cache.
I heard the same thing about celerons actually as Bulsajo. However, it looks like the Hewlett Packards and Gateways only get about another 30 minutes of juice on them.

I know that the toshiba has a better screen and better software which is good. Apparently is has a very smart design and a very good way for switching wireless or something (I'm talking out of my ass).

So, you're basically saying that I just buy a better 6 volt battery and carry two batteries with me for longer airline trips and such? How much would such a battery run me? It would also be cheap for me to upgrade the ram to 1 gig would it not?

What I like about the Dell is that I'll get a gig of ram and a decent graphics card. A 64 meg dedicated graphics card should do the trick for me but I'm thinking about spending a little more and getting the 128 card. I figure I pretty much know exactly what I'm getting with Dell whereas I'm not 100% on the toshiba.

What about wireless? I noticed there was like a,b,g wireless and b-g wireless. What's the difference? Also, the toshiba comes with a bluetooth port and for the dell it's a $50 upgrade. What is bluetooth and will I ever need it?

Thanks

[Bulsajo]

Toshiba towers over all others for this simple reason:
A solid international warranty, and first hand experience with the Toshiba after service centre in Yongsan confirms that it's worth its wieght in gold. Find out about warranties for the others- you could be really screwed if you had to ship it back to Canada to have a hdd or some bad ram replaced.