Laptops (again I know apologies)

[Rossi]

Rather than opening ANOTHER thread on laptops, I thought I'd just hijack this one.

Can someone that has a bit of knowledge about computers have a quick look at this one for me and let me know your thoughts.

My sister is looking to get a new laptop as she is starting uni in October.  She will just be using it for the basics - listening to music, watching DVD's, standard software apps etc.

I was thinking about getting the above and then just sticking something like this in as well - I'm assuming that there's not really any difference between the different brands of RAM?

Any thoughts would be appreciated

[Peter Venkman]

Thats a perfectly good laptop for general use...it wont play hardly any games because of the poor graphics chip but if thats no concern then yeah its not a bad one at not a bad price, I use the cheaper HP 6720s which only cost £270inc vat and that is good for a cheapy by the same manufacturer and yes dont run Vista on a lappy with less than 2gig memory.

As for the memory, buy the best you can afford as there is a fair amount of difference speed wise between ram makes but for a general use laptop the cheap stuff is perfectly fine mate.

As for the memory actually buying it tho.....make sure you buy the matching speed memory if its a PC5300 667mhz or PC4200 533mhz ram fitted as standard as the spec does not specify this.

[oxford_fan]

I have an HP Omni Book 6000 PIII 600mhz

it has 128mb SDRAM SODIMM- can i put another 256mb in there to work with it? and does it matter if the existing is 100mhz and the new 133?

[Peter Venkman]

The new Ram will run at the p100mhz speed and not at the p133mhz as it defaults to the lowest speed ram in the machine so yes shouldnt be a problem if you wish to run the ram at the faster p133mhz speed then remove the old p100mhz ram.

[oxford_fan]

do you know if this will fit it?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/SAMSUNG-256MB-SDRAM-SODIMM-PC133-256-MB-133-Mhz-144PIN_W0QQitemZ350071328586QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item350071328586&_trkparms=72%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14#ebayphotohosting

my laptop is not listed in the compatible models, but it seems to be what i need??? -256mb sdramm so dimm pc133, any reason why it woulnd't work??

thanks

[Peter Venkman]

It would appear that it would fit but the speed could be limited by your processor being able to handle p133 memory, there is more chance of it working if you buy 2 of those and discard the p100 memory you have already, then it may be a slight bios tweak to make sure it recognises the p133 memory.

In essence....it SHOULD be fine in the HP laptop as it is supposed to be compatibale with p133 memory but preferably not mix and matched with p100.

If they can cut down on the postage for buying 2 then for the sake of £2 more it has to be horth it mate.

[@MacPhlea]

Why on earth would anybody want a windows laptop/PC? they are WANK...

A mate of mine who is completely PC illiterate got through 3 rebuilds on PC in as many months simply because the windows system was not intuitive.

After the 4th time I convinced him to trade up to a macbook - he's had it 6 months and it runs as smoothly as a babies bum and he loves it because if he buys a camera or printer he just plugs it in and it just works - no software to install, no missing drivers and most importantly no virus's - oh and software updates are managed automatically.

Sorry Lady, why anyone would prefer a PC over a mac is beyond me, especially if you want it for surfing, photos or music (iphoto is the dogs bollocks - and the photobooks you can have printed off by mac are out of this world)

Just my opinion by the way..

[Samdy Gray]

PCs are for everybody; Macs are for people with too much money to waste who don't really know much about computers.

[Peter Venkman]

PCs are for everybody; Macs are for people with too much money to waste who don't really know much about computers.

I am inclined to agree 100%.

And as for the eternal bollocks that Macs are better for graphical programs....utter tosh.

[@MacPhlea]

PCs are for everybody; Macs are for people with too much money to waste who don't really know much about computers.

erm no, I disagree - PC's are for people who think PC's are the right choice because everybody else has got one - but show me one person who actually thinks PC's are reliable and a good investment?
 
I agree Macs are more expensive, but the extra cost is offset for me buy less hassle.

As for not knowing much about computers... I head up our companies european IT organisation and have to deal with these Piles of Crap everyday

[Samdy Gray]

erm no, I disagree - PC's are for people who think PC's are the right choice because everybody else has got one - but show me one person who actually thinks PC's are reliable and a good investment?

Erm, me. I've had my PC for nearly three years now and haven't had a single reliability problem. Yes, it'll be out of date hardware wise soon, but so would a comparable Mac bought at the same time.
 

As for not knowing much about computers... I head up our companies european IT organisation and have to deal with these Piles of Crap everyday

So does your company run on Windows or Mac OS?

[oxford_fan]

It would appear that it would fit but the speed could be limited by your processor being able to handle p133 memory, there is more chance of it working if you buy 2 of those and discard the p100 memory you have already, then it may be a slight bios tweak to make sure it recognises the p133 memory.

In essence....it SHOULD be fine in the HP laptop as it is supposed to be compatibale with p133 memory but preferably not mix and matched with p100.

If they can cut down on the postage for buying 2 then for the sake of £2 more it has to be horth it mate.

ta, i think i'll get a couple but is there any reason that the hp omni book 6000 is not included in his compatability list? i can't afford for it not to work.

[Peter Venkman]

It would appear that it would fit but the speed could be limited by your processor being able to handle p133 memory, there is more chance of it working if you buy 2 of those and discard the p100 memory you have already, then it may be a slight bios tweak to make sure it recognises the p133 memory.

In essence....it SHOULD be fine in the HP laptop as it is supposed to be compatibale with p133 memory but preferably not mix and matched with p100.

If they can cut down on the postage for buying 2 then for the sake of £2 more it has to be horth it mate.

ta, i think i'll get a couple but is there any reason that the hp omni book 6000 is not included in his compatability list? i can't afford for it not to work.

If you have any concerns the only way to be 100% certain is to either email HP themselves and ask for their own compatability list or to buy P100 ram of 256mb which will be very very slightly slower but will be 100% compatible.

[@MacPhlea]

Windows of course because we are caught in the trap of having infrastructure built around it. The costy of reinvestment is too high - if we were starting from scratch then Mac it would be...

[Peter Venkman]

PCs are for everybody; Macs are for people with too much money to waste who don't really know much about computers.

erm no, I disagree - PC's are for people who think PC's are the right choice because everybody else has got one - but show me one person who actually thinks PC's are reliable and a good investment?
 
I agree Macs are more expensive, but the extra cost is offset for me buy less hassle.

As for not knowing much about computers... I head up our companies european IT organisation and have to deal with these Piles of Crap everyday

I have been working on PC's building them, repairing them and supporting them since the first 186x based PC's in 1984 and parts wise PC's are totally reliable, sortware wise they are totally reliable and if you have the correct driver for them then I have NEVER in 24 years ever had a problem installing anything on a PC.

My 4 PC's at home vary from one month old to 4 years old and I have never suffered any failure of parts/drivers on any of them ever.

The only problems I have with PC's seems to be based mostly on the fact that people are trying to install software on PC's that do not meet minimum spec for the job (which is the same on macs too I might add) and that people get virused/spyware on them (again which is not sytem specific) this accounts with 90% of my PC repairs in the last 3 years.

I disagree totally with that statement you have made about less hassle as it is just not true.

And a good investment? yes totally...I built my current home PC for under £600 and it will run every game available in the next 2 years without any hassle and even if it does slow down in 2 years the parts for PC's are so cheap as to make replacement a totally cheap and viable proposition.

And yes I do have years of experience with macs as well as PC's.