Oh, I'm well aware of Intel's 'comeback' in recent years, especially w/ it's mobile line. I'm just puzzled where the thread starter came up w/ AMD's 'blowing Intel out of the water' now. And don't get me wrong, I find the Intel/AMD fanboys one of the most ridiculous things to get crazy about. But I just haven't come across any reviews that come close to what he suggested. Any specific links?
maybe he was thinking of desktops. IMO, the bang for buck is the amd x2 stuff. But with laptops, Intel knows what they're doing with the core2duo stuff.
What kills me is that my son's HP dv6500t, with the setup I described earlier, runs games better than my PC, which I bought before PCI-Express became the standard, and have upgraded to the max. His HP is quiet, has long battery life, cutting edge technology, much lighter than the Dell it replaced, the screen is gorgeous, and has a host of features I didn't even mention. In short, it sounded pretty good when I ordered it, and turned out to be a hell of a lot better than I expected. Costco has them cheaper when ordered through them than HP does ordered direct from HP. And you can customize them like you want them. I'm thinking of getting one myself.
read some reviews on computershopper, cnet, etc before making any purchase. i'm typing all my crap on a dell laptop, no problems.
Long time HP hater........I used think they were almost as bad as Compaq........which in turn was almost as bad as Packard Bell. I'm currently not "officially" in IT anymore; I went back to being a landman........but because I'm the one with all of the computer networking knowledge, I end up supporting everyone's laptops to some extent. We're all independent contractors, so I see a little bit of everything. As much as it pains me to admit it, the HP's that I'm seeing are actually pretty impressive; they have a good feel to them, nice screens, and I don't hear that much complaining from their owners. Lightscribe is actually pretty cool too, and I like having a ten key on the big 17 inchers. My next laptop will probably still be a Dell though........mainly because I know where to look to get their best deals (which I still consider to be the best bang for the buck), and if I ever do need any support, I'm familiar with working Dell's system. But overall, I'd say the gap between the two right now is pretty narrow.
My bad I was relating that to desktops I thought that domination would crossover into the laptops as well. I stand corrected.
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6389077-1.html?tag=feat.1 I looked at this review a while back and from that point I always believe that amd was a step ahead of the game compare to intel and cheaper too, i realized that was posted back in 2005.
Thanks. computershopper.com is a great website. For shopping, it looks much better than cnet. That HPm8120n desktop is sweet for the price.
I worked for Dell for 8 years, and I own 2 Mac's, and would never purchase a Dell. I bought my dad an HP for Christmas....just my 2 cents.
Interesting thread... I used to be a Reliability Engineer for Dell for about 4 years. Dell notebooks have gotten much better, and given what you pay they're the best value. They may not look as flashy as some of the Sony, Toshiba, or HP notebooks but they're priced well and will last as long as you don't beat the heck out of it.
My wife has had 3 Dell Inspirons in 5 years. She never moved them from their place on the desk, and yet, they always seemed to break. A frayed power cord here, a malfunctioning screen there, a broken HD. Ugh. I'm not buying her another Dell laptop again. My IBM tablet has been rock solid for 2 years now, and I abused the hell out of it while I was in school. The only problem I've had so far has been the locking mechanism for the screen, which broke (but still works). Oh, and I lost 2 tablet pens, but that was probably my fault. I currently have 3 HP consumer laptops in my possession: a last-gen Compaq I used last summer while at HP, a crappy last-gen one I currently use at work, and a preproduction test unit (dv2500) I've been playing around with. So far, I've had zero problems with any of the units.
HP has some pretty fancy laptops coming out right now at comparable prices to Dell. I think all the PCs you buy from most companies are pretty much made using the same components from the same companies. There is a reason you can get a decently spec'd computer for cheap now....they're cheap!
Ah, no worries. I don't keep up much until I'm in the market again. I thought I might have been behind the times again. Anyways, this thread proves that when it comes to buying laptops...it's a crapshoot. I've just bought a Macbook recently, which I intend to use strictly for music production. I've also bought a Gateway notebook for a Windows/sandbox machine since my HP broke. I'll let you guys know how it goes in a few years.
I went to Office Depot today to check this model out. They have it for sale at $949.00 after rebates ($150 less than everyone else), which is pretty incredible. NONE of the Office Depot stores in the Houston area have any in stock. That sure makes a lot of sense!
The other stores are probably ripping people off. If you're talking about the pc that uses the quad core Q6600 chip, that chip has recently dropped from about $500-$700 to $275 or so during Intel's recent price-cuts. I don't see a video card listed for it, though... that's usually where they always get you. They give you a good processor and kill you on the graphics card. So you end up with a screaming processor and a dud graphics card. You may also want to look into E6850-based chips if you're looking into performance. For everyday use it somewhat out-performs the Q6600. If you're rendering stuff and doing a ton of encoding, that's where the Q6600 shines (one reason I just built a Q6600-based PC).
Thanks for the info. It is the Q6600. I read about Intel's price cuts a few weeks ago but didn't add 2+2. Now I'm not so "hot to trot" about buying one this week. I pride myself on never EVER buying on impulse but the longtime advice I give everyone else, "You will never regret waiting longer to buy a PC because the price always goes down" went out the window. Now I'll take a deep breath and reconsider. BTW, the most intensive task I plan on doing is video editing. The thought of recording live video (mainly Rockets games) and splicing it up excites me. I want a PC that will be relevant for 4-5 years. With this kind of deal (Q6600, 3GB RAM [max 8GB], 640GB HD, TV tuner [records live TV], DVD/CD+-R/RW, etc, etc) for only $949+tax, it seems like I can't gain much by waiting a couple of more months. The only weakness is the graphics card, which I'll switch out eventually. Doesn't this sound like a good deal? Why wait? If you don't mind, try to talk me out of it.
If you need it, get it. I don't think the Q6600 is going to drop much in price. If you wait another 2 months, one thing you will probably have a better chance of getting is a G0 Q6600. There's currently a glut of B3 Q6600's. The biggest difference between the two is that the G0 uses a lot less power (65 watts compared to 95 watts for the B3). Outside of that, just get what you need. I'm only worried about what video card that thing uses - it may be an integrated card. For gaming, that's a big negative, but for video encoding it may not be - R2K may know more since he does it a lot more than I have. The Q6600's best feature is that it's quad core and it takes a ton of "simultaneous stuff" to overtax it (if you'll even be able to do it). So you could be doing a lot of things simultaneously without a blip - much better than a dual core chip. As for the 4-5 years part... hmm... I think back to the pc I was using 4-5 years ago and there'd be no way I'd want to use that thing to encode video or rip gigs of audio today. lol. But who knows, it may be fine for you - just understand that there are VERY few apps that take advantage of 4 cores now and by the time they do, this will be a low-end chip. Such is the way of PC's....
I think the next big thing in 4-5 years for consumers would be encoding and editing HD quality video. Even then, the expense for justifying it: HDTV, HD camera, HD capable gfx card/tuner, is well above the price range for many. Most of the reasons why computers feel slower and slower are the programs that get loaded everytime you start. Quite unneccesary to have winamp, quicktime, Adobe, real player, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, google talk, etc running in the background even when you don't use it. In their rush to add features, they bank on quicker processors to pick up the slack, so every revision might not be as efficient as the previous one. Granted, more people run more apps these days, but the lowest 4-5 yr old Pentium 4 would run like new after a clean reformat and ~2 gigs of ram with 1 or 2 programs running.
