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Laptop choice: better CPU or more RAM ?

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wraith808:
And I'd get discrete video if at all possible.  Shared memory sucks *really* bad.  But it's one of those things you don't notice until you have it.

Darwin:
Excellent point from wraith - I suffered with shared video on two notebooks before I got my current one and what a difference! Granted, each machine has been progressively higher spec, so one would expect graphics performance to improve along with everything else, but I've played around with Vista and Windows 7 (both OS'es have been on this machine) notebooks with onboard graphics, but otherwise similarly spec'd, and they simply do no compare. Having said that, if all you are doing is basic Office stuff and e-mail, it won't matter much but I suspect that you will probably be doing some more graphics intensive work, so...

f0dder:
And I'd get discrete video if at all possible.  Shared memory sucks *really* bad.  But it's one of those things you don't notice until you have it.-wraith808 (October 27, 2010, 08:38 PM)
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That depends a lot on what you're going to do with the laptop.

I've got Intel GMA on mine, and one of the relatively low-powered versions at that. The machine isn't suitable for gaming, but it works perfectly for Win7/Aero, Visual Studio 2010's WPF-based GUI, and watching HD movies (720p only though, the CPU can't handle 1080p).

Tomos: what's the machine going to be used for?

tomos:
thanks for the comments :)

Tomos: what's the machine going to be used for?
-f0dder (October 28, 2010, 02:23 AM)
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nothing much - I mean some office type work, ordering stuff on the net. *Maybe* something like InfoQube to try keep track of things.

That's why I thought get the one with more memory - as it's shared, there should be enough to go around then.
I've seen Windows 7 with 2GB memory and it's a lot slower than I'm used to with XP and 2GB ram, but then that could have been cause of a crappy CPU and absence of graphics card too :-\

There is a version of this machine with a 256MB graphics card for about 550, but according to reviews that's a bit noisy then...
(They probably would stretch the budget if I said it was important/worthwhile.)

It's not supposed to be that great a laptop - it's pretty low on the Thinkpad scale, and I know they havent so good a rep any more, but who does these days - especially for under 500 euro? (keep in mind hardware is a lot more expensive in Europe than in the States)
For that price I havent found anything better...

Here's a summary of reviews
http://alatest.com/expert-reviews/laptop-reviews/lenovo-thinkpad-sl510/pe3-87102410,30/

f0dder:
I've seen Windows 7 with 2GB memory and it's a lot slower than I'm used to with XP and 2GB ram, but then that could have been cause of a crappy CPU and absence of graphics card too :-\-tomos (October 28, 2010, 05:22 AM)
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I've run Win7/x64 on my 2GB laptop for quite a while, and comfortable used it for both Java and C# development - both Eclipse and Visual Studio are relatively RAM-hungry, and I've been running SQL Server Express on the machine as well (granted, very small development databases, but it's still SQL Server :)).

There is a version of this machine with a 256MB graphics card for about 550, but according to reviews that's a bit noisy then...-tomos (October 28, 2010, 05:22 AM)
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I wouldn't go for it - dedicated GPUs tend to use more power and get hotter (not nice in a cramped laptop), be noisier, etc. Especially not when you indicate the machine won't be used for anything graphics-heavy.

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