My home laptop is a five year old Dell Latitude C840. I’m fed up with it - seems crappy and slow and the screen is going.
So I’m looking into upgrading and want something noticibly better. My current RAM is only 756MB, so that’s easy, but according to the Dell website I have a Mobile Intel Pentium 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz processor.
Just checking what’s about and cheapish laptops seem to be saying they’ve got anything from a 1.6GHz processor and only the more expensive ones seem to make it to 2.0GHZ and slightly above.
Does this mean that if I just buy a bigger hard drive and a big wad of memory my current laptop will perform in a similar manner to something I might buy brand new? Or am I completely mis-understanding something fairly simple here?
You advice would be greatly appreciated.
I’m guessing my one doesn’t, but some of the ones I’m looking at mention that.
Is my undertanding correct that it has two processors instead of one? Does that effectivly (in simple idiot terms) make it twice as fast as mine if I see a new shiny one listed as 2.0ghz dual core?
yup,n then you have the cheap models and more expensive ones. they`re built up on different ways. ex. one 2,8 ghz cpu can often be slower than a 2ghz cpu.
It’s all pretty complicated, really. When you actually bought your Pentium, AMD was the superior processor. Now, the tide has turned, and the Intel processors are superior. As far as the single-core/dual-core processor debate goes, dual-core processors are better able to cope with heavy multi-tasking than single-core processors. They cannot process a single thread any faster than a single-core, but they can process two threads at the same time as fast as an older CPU at the same speed could process one. The most recent single-processor CPU’s had higher clock speeds than the dual-core models, as heat was too much of an issue with dual-core high-clock-speed processors, so at single-threaded applications, they’re still a little faster, but for most applications, dual-core is the way to go.
The other big benefit is that processors are now 64-bit as opposed to 32-bit. This used to only mean that the processors could handle larger numbers (anyone remember the floating point processing back with the 486/DX?), and as a 64-bit number was unimaginably huge, it was pointless… but technology has been developed which allows a 64-bit processor to combine calculations into a single clock cycle, so the wasted “space” is filled up because processes are condensed.
It’s a lot to grasp… but the Core2Duo mobile processors are way better than what you have now.
Sorry if my answer was… uh… “slightly long winded”... There are a few things which I really know, and this tends to fall into that category. I’m keen on sharing the knowledge I do have. <s>Almost</s> to a fault…
Edit: Apparently HTML’s a funny thing on here… I can’t strike things out…
The thing is, it’s generally down to what you want to use your laptop for. If it’s simply Office and Internet then one of the cheap £350ish dual core laptops will be absolutely fine - such as this.
If you’re wanting it to run intensive graphics apps\games etc then you’ll want a core2duo with at least 2GB ram and a decent graphics card. I just bought a Dell Vostro with a Core2Duo 2ghz, 2GB ram, 160Gb HDD, Nvideo 8600mGT graphics for £600 and it flies.
Reckon I’ve got to grips with the new processor stuff a bit.
I think not bothering to look at PC hardware for about 5 years confused me when I was looking at processors which on the face of it appeared to be the same speed as what I’ve got.
Anyways, guess I’d better go counting my pennies and see what I can afford…
I`m certainly no expert.. but I`ll tell you this: buy a new laptop.. don`t bother upgrading a 5 year old one. to get it up and running you`ll have to buy ram, mother board, cpu, possibly a new graphic card. lol.
