Mohtalim

After seven years I'm going for an upgrade. People seem to be discussing hardware less often, but feel free to chime in if you know what's up.

Jonathan recommended an i3 or i5 with DX11 compatible video card. Sounds good to me. Newegg Prices for i5 w/DX11 start at ~$750 which is not bad. I can get the i5 and the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 on the VAIO E series for $850. I figure the extra $100 is worth it to get 2.4 Ghz (up from 2.26), an eSATA port, and also to have the build quality, tech support, aesthetics, resale value, of an established brand. The display is smallish, but I'm planning on pairing it with a 23" HD monitor in the domestic environment. The hard drive might be a little on the small/slow side, but I can upgrade to an SSD in the medium term.

Taiwanese is the new Japanese, ain't you heard?

As a general aside to everyone reading, I personally wouldn't use the rated speed on my Core i5/7 parts to compare against. I'd use the max turbo speed as the point of interest, but I'm a single-threaded guy at heart. YMMV.

An i3 doesn't use turbo.

So, for instance, the i5 520M goes up to 2.93 GHz (see here: http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/ ... -specs.htm). That's a pretty big deal from 2.26 GHz.

The aesthetics you need to make your own call about. I'm not sure I buy any argument about Sony's tech support, resale, or build quality being better than Acer's. However, the processor upgrade is huge. Though anything is gonna be better than a Pentium 4.

I got an older version of this one http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+Lapt ... Id=9736955

It runs a bit hot, but pretty nice. If you dont mind small text, new egg should have a similar model at higher resolution

Joe: Fixed link. It was: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+Lapt ... Id=9736955

huh, camelbuy hasn't recorded any price change over the last 50 days...
http://camelbuy.com/product/9736955?utm ... medium=www

iPad! it is awesome.

The Asus has the 7200 RPM drive and the expensiver DX10 NV graphics card. For a comparison of the NV 260M and the ATI 5650, see here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobili ... 035.0.html
The NV 360M is approximately equal to the 260M in performance.
Edit: the hotness would be due to the NV card.

The Asus would be 10-20% faster in games than the Sony, though it'd be a 10-15% slower at non-games due to the i5 430M instead of the i5 520M. If you replaced the drive you'd be throwing away a better disk, but maybe you'd keep the drive.

Anyway, dunno if you already read these threads, Neal:
http://jonathan.pearce.name/mohtalim/vi ... &hilit=ssd
http://jonathan.pearce.name/mohtalim/vi ... &hilit=ssd