Hi all,
First post so please be gentle with me! ;-)
I'm a web developer looking for a laptop for home / work use. Home use will be mostly web surfing, YouTube, iPlayer, music etc etc. Work wize I'll be running Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010, SQL Server 2008 (server and client), Adobe CS4, MS Office and the usual other bits of bobs. NO GAMING! Purely applications.
My question is this, I've pretty much decided on a Dell Studio 1558 but I need to decide on the exact config of Processor / Ram / Hard disk, my options, based on my budget are:
Intel i5-540 2.53Ghz 2 Core / 4 Threads - 6GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £966
Intel i7-720 1.6Ghz 4 Core / 8 Threads - 6GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £984
Intel i7-620 2.66Ghz 2 Core / 4 Threads - 4GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £930
Intel i7-720 1.6Ghz 4 Core / 8 Threads - 4GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 7200 RPM HD - £903
All around the same price, under my £1000 budget, so its basically the long running battle of dual vs quad core, but throw in to the mix, dual or quad core with 6GB ram but 5400rpm hard disk vs quad core with 4GB ram but faster 7200rpm hard disk?
My initial feeling has always been quad core would equal faster multitasking performance, running a number of applications at the same time (which i'll be doing when developing), but i've seen some blog posts about most software not been able to take advantage of more than 1/2 cores and its better to go for faster dual core systems?
If i did go with the i7-720 am i going to see better performance from more memory over faster hard disk?
Also in the back on my mind is the thought that i could always buy a 7200rpm or SSD hard disk afterwards and upgrade this myself? But would this invalidate Dell's warrenty?
Your learned thoughts and opinions are greatly received!
Mike C
First post so please be gentle with me! ;-)
I'm a web developer looking for a laptop for home / work use. Home use will be mostly web surfing, YouTube, iPlayer, music etc etc. Work wize I'll be running Visual Studio 2005/2008/2010, SQL Server 2008 (server and client), Adobe CS4, MS Office and the usual other bits of bobs. NO GAMING! Purely applications.
My question is this, I've pretty much decided on a Dell Studio 1558 but I need to decide on the exact config of Processor / Ram / Hard disk, my options, based on my budget are:
Intel i5-540 2.53Ghz 2 Core / 4 Threads - 6GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £966
Intel i7-720 1.6Ghz 4 Core / 8 Threads - 6GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £984
Intel i7-620 2.66Ghz 2 Core / 4 Threads - 4GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 5400 RPM HD - £930
Intel i7-720 1.6Ghz 4 Core / 8 Threads - 4GB 1333 DDR3 Ram + 7200 RPM HD - £903
All around the same price, under my £1000 budget, so its basically the long running battle of dual vs quad core, but throw in to the mix, dual or quad core with 6GB ram but 5400rpm hard disk vs quad core with 4GB ram but faster 7200rpm hard disk?
My initial feeling has always been quad core would equal faster multitasking performance, running a number of applications at the same time (which i'll be doing when developing), but i've seen some blog posts about most software not been able to take advantage of more than 1/2 cores and its better to go for faster dual core systems?
If i did go with the i7-720 am i going to see better performance from more memory over faster hard disk?
Also in the back on my mind is the thought that i could always buy a 7200rpm or SSD hard disk afterwards and upgrade this myself? But would this invalidate Dell's warrenty?
Your learned thoughts and opinions are greatly received!
Mike C
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