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Date: | Mon, 14 Aug 2006 11:44:43 -0500 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Harold" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 2:53 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] New laptop purchase
<snip>
Minimum requirements should be:
- dual-core (Core Duo) CPU unit
- 1GB minimum with upgrade to 2GB down the road of RAM
- 80GB hard drive (or 100GB), you can upgrade this later
- display resolution greater then 1024x768
<snip>
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I've been considering buying a laptop for some time now (in spite of the
fact that they are very bad deals and extremely inflexible). One of the
things that I've noticed and thought was silly in a laptop was the dual-core
cpu. However, I see here that you recommend it, and I'd like to know why.
(It may be moot soon enough, because most new laptops seem to be coming out
with them.)
Here is my take on it. While desktops may be multitasking (working a
spreadsheet or downloading email or whatever while you are playing
Freecell), most laptops will not be. Generally laptop users will be using
their laptop for a single cpu intensive task. Certainly with modern
operating systems there may be fifty processes going on in the background,
but these processes will take almost no time slices away from the foreground
task. So, it doesn't seem that the vast majority of people need a dual core
cpu. On the other hand, the dual core cpu will run hotter and drain more
battery current than a single core unit. Heat and off-cord run time
(battery life) are critical problems with laptops. Therefore, it seems to
me that a dual-core cpu is something to avoid, not a requirement. (For most
people.)
Since so many of the new laptops are coming out with dual core cpu's, I
suspect that there's some significant advantage to them that I'm unaware of,
or, the power cost is not as high as I suppose. I'd sincerely like to know
why one would really want to purchase a dual core cpu in a laptop. (BTW, I
have a dual core AMD FX 60 in my desktop, and I like it pretty much.)
Dean Kukral
PCBUILD maintains hundreds of useful files for download
visit our download web page at:
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