Stephen wrote:
>> You obviously need a top of the line Alienware laptop.  Nothing less 
>> will do.
> 
> You have hit the nail on the head :) That is exactly what I want but I don't
> want to pay the price.

Heh, I probably wouldn't use an Alienware laptop if one were given to me 
(well, I might use it, but I probably wouldn't enjoy it).  Last 
Alienware laptop I used got so hot it hurt my legs and its battery life 
was so horrid that they should have just left the battery out of the design.

> My current laptop is a DTR with a full size k/board and a
> lot of cpu ticks. But it is old and noisy and very heavy. Have you heard the
> term "lugable"? :)

Oh yes.

My laptop is rather large (hurray, 17" screen!), but it doesn't have a 
full-sized keyboard and all.  That would just be excessive. :P

Also, pics please.  I'd like to see your little goliath.

> So I want to go for something lighter. Most of the laptops on the market seem to
> be dual processors with a lower clock speed.  As I use Ver 3.6 and don't want to
> use the beta because my modeller is a beta too. 
> What to do? I don't know what I want.
> So fix that, please :)

I CAN'T! :(

hrm...

As far as the clock speed issue is concerned, it all depends on what 
you're comparing it to.  Since the Pentium M, Intel's completely 
rethought their strategy, focusing on efficiency rather than pumping the 
clock speed as high as they possibly can.  I did some informal tests on 
my systems and my laptop's Pentium M (Dothan core) 1.73GHz CPU is faster 
than my desktop's Pentium 4 (Prescott core) 2.80GHz CPU (FSB on both 
systems is 533MHz).  If you're thinking in terms of a Pentium 4 or 
Pentium D, a 2.4GHz Core 2 is going to mercilessly kill just about any 
of them (with fire).  To make the situation even better, they don't get 
as hot.  My laptop's processor runs cooler under load (with the fan in 
my laptop set to "low") than my Preshott does idle (whose case has a 
bazillion fans in it).

So really, even if you're only using a single core on a modern laptop, 
odds are you're going to wind up with a system that performs exceedingly 
well.

>>>>> She's not a techie
>>>>> but developed the skills shopping for HiFi. Again she'd send me out to buy it
>>>>> because she got comments like "The blue interconnects, is that to match your
>>>>> curtains?"
>>>>> "No to match the colour of your face as I strangle you with them!" 
>>>> That...is amazing. :D
>>> What is amazing, the sales assistant or my wife's reply? 
>> The entire exchange.
> 
> You're young, yet :)

I'm easily amused. :)

> Yes it is a sales thing and a waiter thing (in the UK). I find that in most
> shops that sell consumer electronics the staff know more about the extendable
> warranty that the product. I've lost my interest in mega pixels I just want to
> see the quality. I don't want to hear about the number of bits in a DAC etc.

Exactly.

As far as the whole megapixels thing goes, it seems as though everyone 
gets into that.  In my class, a bunch of people got on my case for 
paying $550 for a camera that "only" takes 6.1 megapixel shots.

When you do the math, there really isn't much of a difference between 6 
megapixels and 8 megapixels.  To double the resolution of a 6 megapixel 
camera, you'd have to use a 24 megapixel camera.

I'd rather pay more for a camera that takes *damn good* 6 megapixel 
shots than a camera that's $50 less that takes crappy 10 megapixel shots 
that need to be scaled down to eliminate all of the artifacts in the 
picture.  If I wanted to have to scale down photos to make them look 
less crappy I'd use my cell phone camera.

> And to be fare to my wife, she didn't actually say that to the salesman. It is
> just what she wanted to say. 

Sure, sure... ;)

>> Buying my camera was actually a pretty pleasant experience because the 
>> person who sold it to me was a bit of a DSLR buff.  He didn't try to 
>> push me into a higher priced model, he didn't go "oh, why would you want 
>> *THAT* one."  Best customer service I've gotten at a retailer in a while.
> 
> Remember that store.

*sigh* If only it weren't a thousand miles from home. :(

Ah well, I'm still going to be in Tampa for about a month and a week, so 
it's all good.

-- 
-Ian

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