<p>I've had a part-time job at the biggest computer store in my country, have built over a dozen PC's and fixed more computers than you can even imagine. I've configured systems for die-hard gamers, business people, photographers, video editors, auto-CAD people and servers. I've configured systems that ranged from $200 to over $10.000. Tell me your budget, tell me what you want, and I will give you advice. </p>
<p>Ask me anything. I think it's fun giving good advice to people who ask for it.</p>
<p>Okay. In your opinion from your personal experience, which laptop computer brands are the most reliable. 2nd, if you could only choose between a Dell with Windows 7 Pro or a MacBook, which would you choose? (Due to scholarship funding my daughter may have to purchase her laptop through the university bookstore and we may only be able to choose between the two brands - but I won’t know for sure until late May.) If not I am probably going to go with Sony.</p>
<p>First, tell me what its primary use will be and what you want to spend.</p>
<p>From my personal experience, brands don’t really matter that much. In the end, the same components are used in most systems. The biggest difference between them is the shell around the components. You can’t go wrong with the common names like HP, Asus, Toshiba, MSI etc. </p>
<p>Sony Vaio laptops are good. They are considered high end ish in laptop terms. Their screens are better than most of the competition, they have some nice unique features like multitouch touchpads, they are durable and they look great (metal instead of plastic). You do pay a bit extra for all that and the name, though. If you’re fine with all that, go with the Sony, you won’t regret it. </p>
<p>Apple is cool and has a style that a lot of people like, but it has the disadvantage of not being as compatible as a Windows PC. If you have a Windows PC, you have the guarantee that everything will **always **work with it. With a Mac, not so much. Plus, Macs are really damn expensive for what you get as well if you look at the hardware. You get the exact same hardware in a $1000 HP laptop as in $1799 Macbook Pro. In the end it’s up to the buyer. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it by a long shot, but a lot of people do.</p>
<p>I’d have to disagree with your HP statement. The vast majority of HP laptops work fine, but when they die it’s a headache to deal with HP’s customer support. From my own and many friends’ experiences, HP and Dell had the worst customer service, while Asus, Acer, and Sony had the best. Toshiba was a mixed bag, because while I had great experience with them with their lower-end laptops, two friends of mine have complained about how they handle users of their high-end Qosmio series laptops.</p>
<p>And because I know this question will come up eventually:</p>
<p>Which is better for college, a laptop or a desktop? Is it reasonable to get both?</p>
<p>That’s just because HP and Dell are the most popular brands. A lot of people have HP’s and Dell’s, so a lot of them are going to have trouble. If you look at it in relative numbers, it doesn’t really matter what brand you pick. If your laptop breaks down, you’re basically ****ed anyway. You are lucky if customer service helps you out fast and good. Sony might be an exception.</p>
<p>On a side note, a lot of problems aren’t the fault of the manufacturer. A lot of people don’t know how to treat a laptop and don’t realize how vunurable it acutally is. Many people take their laptop on their lap or use it while in bed, blocking the air intakes. This causes overheating and massive dust collection. Most overheating problems are caused by dust. Do you know anyone who blows out their laptop with compressed air once in a while? Almost no one does that, and you really should do that at least once a year or so. You’ll be shocked at the dust cloud that usually comes out of it. If a laptop gets hot, it clocks itself down to prevent overheating, which makes it slow. Excessive heat degrades all components like crazy.</p>
<p>Another thing a lot of people don’t know. You shouldn’t move your laptop around while it’s on. Hard drives are still very vunurable to shock and bumping your laptop into something or putting it on the table a little too harsh can easily crash it. Say bye bye to your data.</p>
<p>I personally have a powerful desktop with a 22" screen to do my main work on and I have a 10" netbook to make my notes and do stuff on the road. It’s the perfect combo for me. The netbook is really light and small and the battery lasts forever. It’s perfect for simple stuff like office apps and browsing. When I get home, I transfer my quick notes to my desktop and work it out on that.</p>
<p>I really like my desktop for the big screen. It allows me to have two pages at the same time in word. Plus it is really fast and I can play games if I want to. I’m a bit of a power user, so I don’t represent “what you really need”.</p>
<p>To sum it up:</p>
<p>Laptop:
Portable
Good enoungh for 99% of standard stuff like web browsing, e-mail, Word, Excel etc.
Not good for gaming/heavy CAD stuff/heavy Photoshopping
Get at least an i3
i5 or i7 is faster but more expensive
Dual core AMD processors are also fine
Get at least 2GB Ram
HD’s are big enough for anyone these days, unless you’re a heavy downloader
Get deticated graphics if you want to play games</p>
<p>Desktop:
Lots of speed and power, better in every aspect of that
Not portable
You can upgrade everything</p>
<p>You can also go the middle of the road. You can connect an external screen to your laptop. Some people I know have a 15" laptop that they take to college, and when they get home, they hook it up to a 24" screen and a seperate mouse and keyboard. It works great these days, especially with Windows 7. </p>
<p>You really only need a desktop if you’re a demanding user or a gamer. Most people I know in college do just fine with a laptop. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Almost. You’ll probably need a DVD player/writer and a Windows license as well. If you want to play some games on it as well, I’d throw in a graphics card as well. A 5770 is nice. If you wanna go hard core you can get a 5850 or even an 5870.</p>
<p>If you’re going to college, I’d look at mATX and mini-ITX cases/motherboards. They are much smaller and more suitable for the college life (cramped desks and annual moving). If you have the money for it, I’d suggest a Silverstone Sugo SG05 mini-ITX case with a Zotac S1156 motherboard, along with a Core i3 (if you’re on a budget) or a Core i7 860 (if you’re not on a budget). The power supply included in the case is one powerful one, so I’d stick in a HD 5770 if you’re going to game. Finally, the only Zotac S1156 mini-ITX motherboard listed on newegg comes with integrated wifi, which is a definite must if you ever end up rooming with others in a house or an apartment.</p>
<p>Do you know any online site where one can backup one’s data for free as opposed to paying a premium every month? I know Dropbox allows you to but its only restricted to 3GB. Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Is there any chance you’d be interested in an external harddrive? The big manufacturers (Western Digital, Seagate, etc) all have programs included with their externals that automatically back up all your files for you. The disadvantage to the external harddrive is of course, cost, but you get more GB/dollar and you have the added benefit of not having to download all your backed-up files.</p>
<p>It’s a limitation of the architecture of the operating system itself. If I remember right, it was the memory addressing that’s the limit.</p>
<p>If you ever have a choice of 32-bit or 64-bit, always choose 64-bit, even if you have less than 4GB of RAM. The available RAM is only one of the many benefits of x64 architecture.</p>
<p>We need a replacement computer. Ours is 10 year old and getting very slow. I’ve purged it several times, but age is taking its toll. It was a high end Dell and I’ve been very happy with it. A Laptop would be nice, but cost is a factor. I also have a Mac laptop for portability, but AutoCad runs VERY slow w/ VM ware, and I don’t like having to shutdown if switching between Bootcamp and the Mac Programs.</p>
<p>Main future uses: AutoCAD, Revit, and Adobe Creative Suite (plus email, web, MS Office, etc.). Someone told me I need to get a dedicated graphics card for the newer versions of ACAD or Revit. Most inexpensive packages and laptops do not include that. What is the best route for me? I have no idea what specs. I should be looking for.</p>
<p>I have a great monitor which is only 3 years old, so if desktop, I only need the tower/CPU.</p>
<p>“With a Mac, not so much. Plus, Macs are really damn expensive for what you get as well if you look at the hardware. You get the exact same hardware in a $1000 HP laptop as in $1799 Macbook Pro. In the end it’s up to the buyer. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth it by a long shot, but a lot of people do.”</p>
<p>What everyone is forgetting is that Windows and OSX are completely different operating systems with DIFFERENT hardware requirements. Mac OSX requires MUCH less power to run smoothly than a Windows PC. So, yes you will always get more bang for the buck on the hardware side for PC, but OSX does not need the most powerful components to run smoothly and that goes for all of the programs that run on OSX also. Just go to your local apple store and see for your self. A prime example is startup times. A mac with a 7200 rpm hdd will start up in about 34 seconds or less; however, my dads studio xps with a core i7 quad and a 256 gb SSD drive takes around 54 seconds to boot up. And as you can infer, the mac also shuts down much faster than the pc. This is all due to the software.</p>
<p>Believe it or not, the hardware is only as good as the software. And Apple definitely has some of the best code around. I’m not saying windows stinks (I love windows for many reasons and hate it for many also), but I will say that OSX is definitely more efficient overall. Go to the apple store and open almost every application on the system (open at least 15) and you still will not see it even stutter. This will prove to you the efficiency of Apple’s underlying code.</p>
<p>It can also be a limitation of the CPU. 64-bit doesn’t run on most netbooks. </p>
<p>There are some more benefits, but the one you will notice the most is being able to use more RAM. I’ve seen some benchmarks and there really isn’t a real-world difference between them besides that.</p>
<p>There is no point in choosing 64-bit when you have less than 4GB Ram. When you use 64-bit, everything in your memory will be bigger. So if you have 2GB (and not planning on upgrading), I wouldn’t install a 64-bit OS.</p>
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</p>
<p>Expect an extensive reply tomorrow. What are you willing to spend? Ballpark. My quick guess is that you’ll have to think in the $700-1000> range, depending how fast you want it to be.</p>
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<p>First of all, Windows 7 doesn’t have high requirements at all, it can even run on a Pentium 3. Second, you’re posting unhelpful nonsense which doesn’t help anyone. Software shouldn’t be the reason why you pay way much more for hardware, that’s why I don’t like Apple. They are ripping you off because their software can run on any hardware you put in your home-built PC as well, which you paid half the price for. But like I said earlier, if you want to pay a whole lot more for your hardware, be my guest.</p>
<p>I don’t know what crazy things your dad has done with that Dell if it takes that long. I don’t believe that story, because Windows 7 just FLIES, especially with the hardware you listed there. You’ll be looking at booting within 15-20 seconds. Windows 7 is at least just as efficient, safe and fast as OSX. Get off your high Apple horse, it just isn’t that special or exceptional as Steve Jobs wants you to think it is. It’s a Unix core with a nice skin on it, just like Linux, but only you have to pay (a lot) for it.</p>
<p>The reason why computers in stores are faster than your own is because they are completely clean. They only have the OS installed and nothing more, this goes for any computer.</p>
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<p>No. If your RAM (memory) is full, Windows uses your hard drive as virtual RAM. It is a whole lot slower than your RAM, but at least your computer does not crash. Don’t turn it off or mess with it unless you really know what you’re doing.</p>
<p>Unix is the core of Apple’s operating system. See it as the engine just like in a car. The shell (the stuff you see and the stuff you can click on) is the steering wheel and the pedals. </p>
<p>OSX is based on Unix, as well as a whole lot Linux distribution and BSD distributions (which you can download and use for free. They are open source). Some examples of Linux distributions:</p>
<p>You can download and install these on any computer and use them for free. I recommend you read about it before you start out though. It’s nothing like Windows or Apple. You gotta be a little bit of a geek to get the most out of it.</p>
<p>Windows has a whole different core which is used by Windows only.</p>
<p>Virtual memory is only used when you don’t have a sufficient amount of RAM. Your windows computer will automatically use a few hundred megabytes on your hard drive as RAM. This is a very bad thing because your hard drive is WAY slower than your Ram. So when you are using a program, part of the program will be in your ram and the other part is on your hard drive. Because of this, you will have a huge decrease in performance! Advice: Buy more Ram. At least 2gb, but anymore 4gb offers the best price/performance ratio.</p>
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