amd turion

[TheGeek]

hi

there is going to be a sale at bestbuy after thanksgiving and i need help deciding from the two notebooks below.

 

here are the two options:

 

1)

hp dv6108nr

price: 379.99 + tax

link: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1158317339111

 

2)

gateway mx6453

price: 699.99 + tax

link: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1157067806537

 

please help me choose. things to consider- price, speed, and quality.

 

i'm new to notebooks and have not clue how well the turino processor is. please help me understand that better. The thing that confused me whas the gateway processor is x2 but the speed is only 1.6 and the core solo has 1.86. how could that be?

 

thanks

[jeremyhfht]

Do. Not. EVER. Buy. A. Computer.

 

What you do is buy computer parts separately after doing a crapload of research so you can build one damn good machine (probably BETTER) for HALF the price.

[insane_alien]

jeremy, that may be true for people who have the knowledge, time and ability to assemble a computer but there are cases where just buying a stock computer is preferable. i still use a computer i bought pre assembled. sure it was expensive but at least i didn't lose money when the hardware crapped up. i even got free data recovery.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

I did an experiment recently and found that a Dell computer was cheaper than one made of parts off of Newegg with exactly the same specs.

[jeremyhfht]

Depends on where you buy it. Newegg isn't the only place. Plus, most of the time you have to go to a ton of different websites to find cheaper prices with different parts.

[NeonBlack]

Building your own notebook is absolutely out of the question.

[Klaynos]

I did an experiment recently and found that a Dell computer was cheaper than one made of parts off of Newegg with exactly the same specs.

 

You must also take into account the quality of parts used in certain manufactures computers... And you get EXACTLY what you want if you build your own.

[Freeman]

Building your own notebook is absolutely out of the question.

I'm actually interested now, how would you go about building your own notebook? (With a quad core process that's liquid nitrogen cooled and nuclear powered and...)

[jeremyhfht]

actually, they do sell laptop parts, they sell the hard drives, ram, CPU's, and motheboards. You can build your own laptop, but I'm not sure about getting the case for the thing (the keyboard and monitor).

[Mokele]

I strongly disagree with jeremy. I did precisely what you recommend many years ago, doing an assload of research and building my own machine with kickass specs. At the time, I definitely had the technical know-how to do it, along with ample support from a several very knowledgable CS major friends.

 

It was a total, dismal failure. It *never* worked properly, was horribly buggy, and eventually got to the point that it basically could not work for more then 3 hours, at which time it would shut down on its own. I suspect that something was wrong with the motherboard, but by the time I'd figured that out, I'd spent about 6 months fuming over this thing.

 

I chucked it in the trash and bought a Dell. That same Dell has only recently started being buggy more than 5 years after I bought it, and these bugs are mere annoyances; it's still not only functional, but with a minor upgrade in RAM and video card has become able to run World of Warcraft.

 

IMHO, the single most valuable part of a computer, bar none, is the warranty. With that, everything else can be fixed. Without that, the slightest problem can result in having a $1400 paperweight.

 

Mokele

[Ndi]

Allow me to clarify.

 

If you have the knowledge and experience to know not only the specs for a computer but understand how it works, then buy components. You pay much more attention to what you do than some bored worker. Also you can build custom configs that suit your needs. No point in having a RAID-able hardware if you never RAID for high performance. No point in having low-latency, 4 times the cost dual channel RAM if you edit documents and surf the net. Looking at specs alone is like trying to fit a Ford truck gearbox to a Ford GT because "they both have the same HP" or "it's still Ford". You have to be able to tell whether 2x256MB of RAM is better than 1x512MB via latency, motherboard support, BIOS support, access time, voltage, minimum bandwidth and so on. "667MHz" is not enough. You get better response from 2x256 well placed than a cheap, slow, 1 Gb RAM block.

 

If you have no such knowledge, buy a brand computer. You lose because you have their config and they never have nothing-but-quality, you always get *something* ready for the trash bin. But brand computers are configured by such experts as mentioned above and they have good stability and uptime, as they test the configurations to death before selling them.

 

What you experienced with the slowdowns and the instability is the classic sign of mismatched components. EVERYTHING in a computer ticks in-sync. Current travels at 300.000 Km/s (roughly). A 3 GHz computer ticks 3 billion times/sec. That's 0.1 meters a tick. Information needs to be encoded, sent and decoded, so actually, even an extra centimeter in a wire can lead to slowdowns, a motherboard can be way better simply because the RAM is 2 cm to the left or because the AGP graphic card is too warm.

 

So basically you are all right. While if done by an expert, a modular computer is better by any standards, it can also be a huge flop that's not covered by anything. If you don't feel like risking, get a branded PC or ask a pro.

 

You can also have a blend of both. Buy the best specs on PSU, MB, RAM and CPU and consider the rest casualties. Then get yourself a nice, fast (second) HDD and DVD and cards. You're very unlikely to go wrong with those. More expensive though. It's very common for high-end PCs to have 2 video cards and 2 sound cards (one on-board and one high-end add-in card).