Celeron or AMD by any chance?

I like AMDs, never had a problem, I think there was one with the k350 about twenty years ago.

Any PC, if Moore's law persists, and it has been for nearly 50 years, ie power doubles every 18 months, then any PC/laptop 4.5 years down the line will be dog slow.

I buy one of two laptop and PCs a year, at 3 years old canibalise them to make half decent ones my upping RAM and Hard disks but the limiting factor is becoming that some PC still have 32 bit Operating systems and therefore cannot properly run 4 Gb of RAM of more. at leasst 2 CPU cores and 4 Gb or RAM is already needed for speedy working and in 2, never mind 5 years it will be essential unless running non Windows OS which is still not popular.

I reckon go for a laptop that says it can run 8 Gb of RAM, DDR3 type, and uses 64 bit Windows 7. Compaq CQ56 / CQ61 is fine and can be had for £280 or a bit less.

I like AMDs, never had a problem, I think there was one with the k350 about twenty years ago.

Any PC, if Moore's law persists, and it has been for nearly 50 years, ie power doubles every 18 months, then any PC/laptop 4.5 years down the line will be dog slow.

I buy one of two laptop and PCs a year, at 3 years old canibalise them to make half decent ones my upping RAM and Hard disks but the limiting factor is becoming that some PC still have 32 bit Operating systems and therefore cannot properly run 4 Gb of RAM of more. at leasst 2 CPU cores and 4 Gb or RAM is already needed for speedy working and in 2, never mind 5 years it will be essential unless running non Windows OS which is still not popular.

I reckon go for a laptop that says it can run 8 Gb of RAM, DDR3 type, and uses 64 bit Windows 7. Compaq CQ56 / CQ61 is fine and can be had for £280 or a bit less.

The CQ will be a Celeron for that price.

Don't think power is doubling every 18months as it used to. It has slowed right down now....We are taking leased kit out at work now which is Core2Duo P8000 and the likes (3-4 years old) and replacing it with pretty much identical kit.

I think that a Core i3 with DDR3 RAM will see you for 5 years and hopefully give you a decent battery longevity.

any PC/laptop 4.5 years down the line will be dog slow.

It'll be the same speed as it was 4.5 years ago - anything that's fast enough now will be fast enough in 5 years time, and if all you're doing is sending e-mails and word-processing you don't need to jump on the endless upgrade cycle.

at leasst 2 CPU cores and 4 Gb or RAM is already needed for speedy working

For word processing and sending e-mails...?! :wonder:

Compaq CQ56 / CQ61 is fine and can be had for £280 or a bit less.

Have seen lots of issues with battery/power supplies failing within 1-2 years on Compaqs/HPs - wouldn't touch 'em with my own money, I'd go with Dell.

Despite the fact that this post is being written on a refurbished 8 year old, "Northwood" Pentium powered Packard Bell EasyNote Laptop which is built like a brick chicken house and obviously still going strong (Can't believe the capacitors haven't gone yet, its the right vintage to do so), after reviewing the kit and taking note of remarks and comments in this thread, potential user has expressed interest in a Dell Intel I5 powered, 64 bit with 4GB, Windows 7 64 and all the bells and whistles (Has previous experience with Dell machines).

So much for the user spec !

At least its future proof.

Now where to get the best deal ?

Nick

Edited 20 April, 201115 yr by Clunkclick

It'll be the same speed as it was 4.5 years ago - anything that's fast enough now will be fast enough in 5 years time...

Provided, of course, that you don't upgrade your OS and software. My 8 year old Dell laptop is significantly slower now (with XP pro SP3) than it was brand new with SP1.

On the other hand, if I just want a simple text editor, nothing beats my 20 yr old Toshiba with DOS 3.3 and WordPerfect 4... boots and starts the word processing program in about 10 secs :p

It'll be the same speed as it was 4.5 years ago - anything that's fast enough now will be fast enough in 5 years time, and if all you're doing is sending e-mails and word-processing you don't need to jump on the endless upgrade cycle.

For word processing and sending e-mails...?! :wonder:

Have seen lots of issues with battery/power supplies failing within 1-2 years on Compaqs/HPs - wouldn't touch 'em with my own money, I'd go with Dell.

I think it is the operating systems, browser and continuing expanding service packs that keep upping the RAM requirement. Just downloaded Windows 7 64 bit service pack on my half dozen PCs that run it and it was almost a Gb of download plus IE 9.

I think you need one core to run the OS and at least one other core to run your Apps.

I have 2 CQs, a 17 inch Dell Vostro 4 core i5, Acer desktop and a couple of Compaq desktops, I would put them Compaq/Dell by a nose, Dell pretty good, Acer quite poor. All have a useful life of about 4 years before I would break them up for HDs and RAM.

I think it is the operating systems, browser and continuing expanding service packs that keep upping the RAM requirement. Just downloaded Windows 7 64 bit service pack on my half dozen PCs that run it and it was almost a Gb of download plus IE 9.

I think you need one core to run the OS and at least one other core to run your Apps.

Not quite.....The service packs may appear big but they actually replace files not add to them and have little or no effect on the RAM requirement. Windows 7 RAM requirements is lower than Vista. In fact the Vista SP's reduced the RAM requirement when released and the Win7 SP1 has made my machines a lot quicker (Dell XPS 15, i5, 6GB RAM, 1GB Graphics | Dell D620, 1.8Core2Duo, 3GB RAM | HP 6220, 1.7Pentium M, 2GB RAM | Lenovo S10-3 1.6Atom, 1GB RAM | Lenovo R61, 2.0c2d, 4GB RAM etc etc.... )

IE9 is also loads quicker as this now uses hardware acceleration.

Multi core processors don't work like that....Also generally once running the OS uses very little - Just looking at Resource monitor, Explorer.exe, Svchost and system are using together an average of 1% of my CPU (i5 2.67GHZ).

If you want speed from an OS, you need a Mac OS :yes: