>> POV-Ray is memory-sucking? 
> 
> It does if you programmatically build scenes with lots of stuff in them. 
> Aren't there regular complaints about running up against the 2^32 memory 
> space in POV?

Don't look at me. I've never had that trouble.

> You're unlikely to use as much RAM with a Word document as you are with 
> a Menger sponge. :-) And your paging is likely to be much less with 
> Word, even if you do, due to the way you access memory in the two programs.
> 
> Or, more generally, it's not hard to write your own program that will 
> use up much more memory than you can use up using non-user-programmed 
> software.

Well, yeah.

I do recall attempting to use volumetric photon maps and being unable to 
do so because POV-Ray swallowed several times the amount of physical RAM 
on the machine, and then attempted to destroy my harddrive.

Seriously, has *anybody* ever rendered something using volumetric 
photons and had it work??

>> (I *really* hope this laptop comes with propper restore CDs. I got an 
>> HP a while back, and rather than give you a restore CD, they make you 
>> go through the initial Windows setup process, and then order you to 
>> burn a drive backup to [several] CDs/DVDs. In other words, *you* pay 
>> for the cost of something to restore from, and you can't restore to 
>> factory condition.)
> 
> The restore CDs one makes this way are usually factory-condition CDs, 
> not just a backup. They're actually generating a CD based on the files 
> on the disk, not just making an image backup.

Well, we'll see.

I still dislike having to pay for the restore CDs myself. :-P

> The more advanced versions of Vista have a "complete PC backup", which 
> is a very nice drive-image backup that will very simply do a full 
> restore from the boot CDs.

It looks like that's what my mum's Acer did. Does a complete backup of 
your harddrive - although I think you have to run the restore program 
from the PC. (So, if your HD dies, the backup is no use until you 
reinstall the restore program. Nice...)

>> The laptop comes with 2GB, and I've ordered an additional 2GB because 
>> it was cheap.
> 
> Oh. The link you gave (with the Italian) said it came with 3G. Extra RAM 
> never hurts, tho. :-)

I just hope the laptop has more than one RAM slot...! o_O

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