<p>dell is having another one of their awesome 750$ off selected inspirion model laptops (600m and 6000) heres the link : its only good for tomorrow April 22 starts at 8:00 central time and its only good for the first 6000 uses enjoy!</p>
<p><a href="http://www.dealsofamerica.com/#2005042003%5B/url%5D">http://www.dealsofamerica.com/#2005042003</a></p>
<p>cheers
-marshall</p>
<p>thanks for the link. I have a laptop but the screen kinda broke (don't ask about it, it's depressing). So now that I have to get a new computer, should I get a desktop or a laptop? Does it even matter?</p>
<p>not really, unless you are a hardcore gamer or something or like to mess with/upgrade your hardware. today's laptops are not far behind most desktops performance wise. i personally would get a laptop. (i have a laptop now as my main comp.)</p>
<p>I would get a laptop. You can take it wherever you go, for studying and for LAN parties. I'm a pretty hardcore gamer myself, and my Dell laptop runs Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 well enough...</p>
<p>Blah 1.5 ghz... though I'll probably take my desktop (Athlon XP 2800+) to college too and remote desktop to it w/ my laptop (which i hope to be getting soon) when i'm not in my room.</p>
<p>Pentium-M's are suprisingly powerful, dont judge them by their Ghz rating. a 1.6ghz P-M is roughly equivalent to a ~2.8ghz P4...so maybe like an athlon 2600+? (i dont know AMDs that well).</p>
<p>Ah yes, the pitfall of clock speed. This is where many otherwise knowledgeable computer users stumble face first and lose it. Clock speed, in terms of bragging rights, is very important. However, in the real computing world, it's only sometimes important. What's more important is architecture. Remember that in a mobile environemnt, your clock cycles suck up your battery life. So, the Pentium Ms were designed to have a high instructions per cycle rate and short pipelines. In effect, the processor does more work with fewer clock cycles. </p>
<p>This is better for the end user, because it means you get similar performance to the desktop with longer battery life.</p>
<p>Couple of sources to prove that I'm not nuts:
<a href="http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030205/index.html%5B/url%5D">http://www6.tomshardware.com/mobile/20030205/index.html</a>
<a href="http://www.cpuscorecard.com/all_cpus.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.cpuscorecard.com/all_cpus.htm</a></p>
<p>u know u're not nuts UCLAri =)</p>
<p>The Pentium M is plenty fast. The new Sonomas (2nd generation Pentium M processors) have a 533mhz frontside bus and 2mb of L2 cache, giving it the processing power of a Pentium 4 desktop processor. If you go with the Intel wireless card you can get a Centrino label for your laptop and resell it at a higher price later on.</p>
<p>oh i didnt know those 533 mhz ones were 2nd gen M processors =)..</p>
<p>I still laugh at the Centrino label. Not because I think it's stupid, but because it's deceptively brilliant.</p>
<p>"Blah 1.5 ghz... though I'll probably take my desktop (Athlon XP 2800+) to college too and remote desktop to it w/ my laptop (which i hope to be getting soon) when i'm not in my room."</p>
<p>What software do you use to remote desktop?</p>
<p>-Ender</p>
<p>I think Remote Desktop software already comes with Windows XP Professional, but I'm not sure. I use it to access the SEASnet lab computers though.</p>
<p>people dont realize how useless clock speed is until they get annoyed with 1.5 hr max battery life laptops =)</p>
<p>and also, frontside bus is very important too (for accessing memory... i think its the factor that slows down comps the most, in addition to type of memory) those 800 mhz ones rock!</p>
<p>"I think Remote Desktop software already comes with Windows XP Professional, but I'm not sure. I use it to access the SEASnet lab computers though."</p>
<p>So do you just use a username and password to connect remotely?</p>
<p>-Ender</p>
<p>Yeah I use XP Pro. You just type in the IP and then username + password.</p>
<p>I know that doing more work per cycle makes up for the slower clock speeds, but 1.5 is still a bit slow, my 2800+ runs at 2.1 ghz (I guess my standards are a bit high, especially for a laptop) . But, CompE right here, so I need my technology fix :)</p>
<p>I'm guessing you didn't look at the benchmarks I provided that showed that the 1.5 might even compare to yours...oh well.</p>
<p>ah sorry i missed that. Well, I shouldn't even be on this thread (waiting on UCLA appeal, lol). I guess i'm trying to pass off as being more knowledgeable than I really am. I'm not familiar with laptops (never had one) and I haven't been keeping up on new CPUs ever since I built this box.</p>
<p><em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Oh c'mon, friendly banter anyone? </p>
<p>Should I have written out the [banter] tags before I dare poke at anyone at this board?</p>
<p>I guess so. Oh wait, [/banter]</p>