Buyin' a laptop
 

Like the title says, I have decided I is in the market for a new mobile-computationing accessorizement. Basic requirements are 1. runs autocad good 2. plays the occasional video game 3. doesn't look stupid (IE no Dell XPS or any shit like that) 4. is as un-flimsy as possible and with as non-shitty of keyboard as can be reasonably acquired 5. Like a 15-inch monitor or so 6. is about twelve hundred bucks. So any advice anyone has that accounts for those general parameters would be not unappreciated.

Also if someone has some overwhelmingly convincing reason why I would want Windows Vista on this thing I guess I'm open to listening though I lean strongly towards XP.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834115458

Fits all your requirements, doesn't list the OS- Doesn't matter either, because with that particular model I can hand-send you every driver you need to install for XP if need be.

reasons I link this one in particular:

1) It's Acer, and that shit NEVER BREAKS, I mean I'm on like my fourth HP monitor and yet my primary Acer LCD 17" is like 5 years old or something now and it still works like a fucking dream, my acer laptop has had 0 issues besides being chronically old, and all my acer periphrials NEVER break.

2) It's everything asked for.

3) It's not going to go, "hey, fuck you!" even if it has Vista. Acer, in my experience, just does better overall with their stuff.

Just chiming in on the Vista matter:

Vista has actually made quite a number of improvements on power management, specifically processor throttling. If you're getting a laptop that has the specs for Vista, I'd recommend using it. However, if you're going with lower specs, XP will run more smoothly, and that's probably better than a slight increase in battery life.

On another bonus Vista moment, it suprisngly is very fast on laptops, seeing most Vista enabled laptops have the ram, and it's special type of hard drive never hurts. I cannot think of the name at the moment. Eltargrim can help you there.

Looking at the specs, that laptop will run Vista like a dream, and get your gaming on. 3 gigs of ram and 250 gig hardrive, with a GeForce 8600m is a good deal for $1.2k. I say there's what your looking for.

Note EDIT: The hard drive is 5400 RPM, just to put that out there. But so is a lot of them. I found a sony:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16834117642

Just posting that, because I have had good experiences with sony computers. It does only have a 14.1 display. It si widescreen, and has other stuff to make up for it though.

Vista has as many problems as benefits. First, having just dumped my Vista drive, I can tell you it's absolutely necessary to have a driver disc. Vista doesn't come with much past basic Plug and Play, and it isn't very intuitive about using the proper drivers if it has them.

Second, Vista can ruin your drive by accessing it in a way that resembles OCD. It also does a few funky things with external hard drives and other data-holding peripherals. Especially because the Safely Remove Hardware feature is nowhere near as good as XP's. If you have an external drive, regardless of what they say, it's just safer to hibernate or otherwise shut down your computer to take it out, because Vista doesn't put it through a basic shutdown with the Safely Remove feature and you end up doing the equivalent of just pulling the plug on the power.

Third, it eats both RAM and your processor like nobody's business. I've got a gig of RAM and have never seen it below 45% usage, and usually closer to 60% just browsing normally. Also, my 2GHz Sempron is constantly getting flooded.

Lastly, it offers no more security over XP unless you're into being hassled by "features." I turned off User Account Control and Windows Defender, which are really the only things it has to boast about other than Windows Firewall being turned on by default. UAC is an annoyance and asks for administrator permission if you want to so much as scratch your ass. Windows Defender has an annoying tendency to mark things like other anti-malware programs as "suspicious." And any free anti-malware probably beats it out in capability anyway.



Past that, I've had nothing but problems with various other things. There have been constant software glitches, Explorer errors, files I needed to find online for my programs to work, permissions annoyances, and generally tons of minor things that make me want to slap my computer, only I know it's not my computer's fault.

NMR, are you thinking of ReadyDrive? That's the name for Vista's support for hybrid drives (Drives that have large caches of flash memory on the disc). If you get a hybrid drive, I'd highly recommend Vista. If not (as they're somewhat pricey, last I checked Scratch that, it's $105 for 120GB, but hard to find), it depends on whether you'll use ReadyBoost or not.

For those not in the know, ReadyBoost is hooking up a flash drive for use as a fast paging file. It's good for laptops, as it uses less power and lappy hard drives are slower anyhow, but it's always bad for the flash drive, as it uses limited read/write cycles.

I tend to stay away from the portable market, so I can't help with specifics or pricing, but those would be the primary advantages for Vista on a laptop.

EDIT: On the RAM issues Blue mentioned, that is a good thing. It's pre-caching programs that you tend to use at that time. It is also fairly good at releasing the RAM. RAM being used is not a bad feature; true, it will need more even without pre-caching, but only about 512 MB from what I've read. 2GB is the standard recommended amount, now.

Vista is certainly not without it's flaws, which is one of the reasons I'm waiting for SP2 before adopting it. But it has it's advantages, especially in the portable market. If the potential for longer battery life isn't enough for you, I'd recommend XP. I know that my next laptop will be running Vista, however.

As an aside, Blue, were you using 64-bit Vista? It's known to have a lot more driver issues, and more issues in general. If not, that's some bad luck. All of my experience with Vista so far has been positive.

32-bit. With dual-channel 1GB (2x512) RAM running. And I don't do much multitasking. When I do, it usually leads to SUPREME slowness and/or programs not responding for several minutes on end. This is without Aero. Also, I've run into issues that we were unable to switch user accounts due to "Insufficient resources to log in. Please log into an account that has already been used" or some similar bullock. We had to restart the computer to access my brother's account. I'm going for 2x1 GB in the next couple days, and hope to God that I get a running machine out of it.

Edit: This is not to say that there aren't some neat toys. There are. As I continue to stumble across things that actually make my life easier, I realize little by little that there are redeeming qualities, but so far, those are still outweighed by me getting fish-slapped every time I boot up.

Well, running it with a dual channel 1GB could be part of the problem. I'd go with 2-4, 4 being optimum for 32bit. It'll eat up 512 all on it's own, and I've heard it can also dump some memory in favor of your vid card. (Mine only shows having 3.5GB, as an example, because I have a 512 vid card. I think it has something to do with the memory allocation tables or something. Not sure.)

My mobo only supports up to 2GB. My mom got it for $400US with the express intention of never having a game on it, as it's my "school computer." It also happens to be our only computer at this point, but we haven't missed much gaming so far due to Flyff for Phantom and Devil Summoner for me. :J

Not a mod, but really, the vista vs XP thing has been gone over a thousand times and it's nowhere near the topic. He wants a laptop. The Acer one I linked would be perfect- if he really wanted to, he could even write in and ask for the XP disk + Drivers for that particular laptop. I double checked, they DO offer that.

But jeez, let him fuck around with it first at least. :P