Laptops and shared memory for video

[tbs-Gb/NUjX2UK8 at public.gmane.org (theBlueSage)]

On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 01:02 -0400, David Kramer wrote:
> I need to buy a new laptop for my daughter to replace her current IBM
> Thinkpad T42, because it's infected with VIRTUMONDE, a very
> hard-to-remove virus, and is experiencing other weird problems, like
> spontaneously typing backwards, fonts appearing very tiny, etc.  I think
> it's a mistake because clearly this is a software problem not a hardware
> problem, but I'm being overruled ;)

I recently upgraded my laptop (read bought a new one and put the old one
out to pasture), and I think the little brother version of what I bought
would do good for your daughter.
I purchased an HP HDX18t. I think it is the most amazing laptop I have
ever seen/used/owned, even accounting for tech advances in the last 20
years of owning laptops (although my early amstraad was more 'portable'
than 'laptop'). the HDX18t is an 18 inch 1080p HD screen, dual core and
quad core options, and up to 8 GIG of memory, and a 1GIG Nvidia GeForce
GT 130M video card. (yes I went 8gig DDR3 and quad core)

Its baby brother, the HP HDX16t is basically identical, but has a 16"
screen and no quad core option, and the default CPU is an Intel(R)
Core(TM)2 Duo Processor P7450 (2.13GHz, 3 MB L2 Cache, 1066MHz FSB))
It too has the 1gig Nvidia Graphics card, and up to 8GIG of memory.
Screen resolution 1920x1080.

I cannot say enough good things about this laptop, from it beautiful
'looks' to the incredible speed with which it performs. Well worth the
money.
HP also have really really good warranty plans for 1 2 and 3 years
coverage, including 'coke care' (you pour in a soda, and they still fix
it)

<opinion>
I may be way out in left field here, but having bought 4 laptops in the
last year and a half (daughter one, daughter two, wife, and myself) I
have stuck with the thought that, moores law being what it is, you
should always get the absolute best machine you can afford to buy at the
moment you buy it. This way you have more chance of it keeping up with
software requirements over time (CPU and memory) than if you buy
merchants 'grey stock' now, and see it become useless in a short period
of time. I live and die by my laptop (as do both my daughters), and to
save $500 now, but replace every two years, as opposed to not save the
$500 and replace every 4 years, seems a bit short sighted. Of course, in
the end it should always comes down to what you can afford (as opposed
to what you are willing to spend). I used to run photoshop 2.5 on a
win95 machine with 16 MB of memory. I dont think that machine's hard
drive was big enough to contain even the installation of photoshop now,
let alone run it. 
</opinion>

so, there is my reccomendation. I have owned 3 HP's 3 Dells, I IBM and 1
Amstrad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PPC_512 lol) and in my experience,
the HP is the best of the bunch.

Richard


> 
> OK, enough bitching.  I'm looking at moderately powerful laptops.  She
> doesn't do gaming, but heavy browser/chat/email/word/photo editing.  I
> would like to get at least dual core of some sort, so it will still be
> useful when she gets up to more serious work.  She needs a good deal of
> RAM because she tends to run it for a week or more without shutting
> down.  And yes, it has to be running Windows (school work and all).
> Recommendations welcome, but that's not the reason I'm writing this.
> 
> I've always felt video cards that steal main memory were "icky".  If my
> laptop comes with 3GB RAM, I want to be able to use 3GB RAM.  It also
> seems very inefficient to me to jump across different busses to
> read/write video RAM from the video card.  But there are quite a few
> laptops with "dynamic video memory" that are otherwise acceptable.
> 
> Am I being too picky?  Is this a non-issue, as long as the system has
> 3GB or 4GB?
> 
> Thanks.
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