My old laptop is dying a slow death. It runs only 512 megabytes of memory, and at three and a half years old, it has enough background junk that its basically running on virtual memory. A format & wipe would forestall the inevitable, but won't fix the aging battery, the frankly inadequate graphics card, or correct the fact that more and more new software just expects a dual-core processor and a gig or more of RAM. In addition, my classes now expect me to have Visual Studio 2005 and a graphics card that supports DX10. It's time for an upgrade.
Here's where I need help. I can't make up my mind. My old laptop is a tablet, so I'd like to get another. I have one picked out, in fact. The problem? Tablets come at a premium. And it's not even that it actually costs more. The competition is just on sale. And so, my options:
Toshiba Portege M700.
Pros: Tablet (Pen and Touch). Light. Long Battery Life. TurboMemory upgrade.
Cons: $300 more expensive than anything else on this list. Graphics architecture has to steal main memory.
Toshiba Satellite
Pros: 15.4 inch Widescreen. Great graphics package. 20% off.
Cons: Heavier. Shorter battery life.
Dell XPS Laptop
Pros: Light. Decent battery life. Education discount.
Cons: It's a Dell. Two of my coworkers just bought them.
I'm still leaning toward the tablet, but I thought I'd let people try to bludgeon me over the head with good sense if I'm missing something.
Most laptops use a portion of physical memory for graphics - I would double check before you lay out your quatloos what chipset the laptops you're looking at use.
Most laptops use a portion of physical memory for graphics - I would double check before you lay out your quatloos what chipset the laptops you're looking at use.
Thanks Lilith. I did almost forget to compare the exact quality of the graphics cards, but in the end I did my homework.
The tablet has an Intel G3100X system. It has a unified shader architecture and (in theory) supports DX10. It has no dedicated memory.
The widescreen laptop has a mobile ATI Raedon card with 256 MB of dedicated memory.
The Dell has a Nvidia 8400 mobile card with 128 MB of dedicated memory. I have learned since the first post that this card is actually kind of anemic.
In the end, I ordered the tablet. The widescreen was eliminated on the basis of weight. Asking nicely over the phone got me an extra 10% off which helped even out the prices, which let the tablet win out over the Dell.