What is intel important for?
I'm looking at hp laptops right now, and one has intel and the other has something like turion or something sounding like that. This'll be my first computer purchase ever, I've been using my roomates from pretty much every place I've lived, because I really don't know anything about what to look for.
Anyway, I've decided on hp because my motehr keeps telling me that's the one to go with, but she has no idea about intel o rthe other one either. Also do they pretty much all burn cd's and download music? And the hp I'm looking at is a special edition which my mother says is only because it comes with a mouse, a headseet and a webcam. I'm wondering if special editions are made differently and will they be harder to fix if they break down?
Re: What is intel important for?
Intel makes the chip, CPU (brains) of the computer, from there it pretty goes to how much data the chip can handle, etc.....
calling Mast to thread....
Re: What is intel important for?
I had an HP laptop and it was a piece of crap. All I used on it was Autocad and a word processor and it crapped itself four times in less then a year. After checking around with the rest of the class I discovered that HP just sucked in general and I should've actually gotten a Toshiba. Hewlett-Packard makes decent printers but shitty laptops IMO. Intel is just the kind of processor in it. You know; Pentium, Centrino, Celeron, etc. It matters more what kind you get if you're going to be running fairly robust programs. I had to be picky when I bought my lappy because of the drafting software I'd be running.
If you want to just get one to download stuff and burn CDs it probably doesn't matter what you get since downloading is bound to screw it up really badly sooner or later anyways. Just a basic, bare bones OS and a CD burner will do. Never mind with these 'special edition' things. It probably is just because it comes with extra peripherals.
Re: What is intel important for?
Hell, even HP printers suck...let's not fool ourselves.
Re: What is intel important for?
They probably do suck and I just lucked out and got a not-as-crappy-as-most one.
Re: What is intel important for?
Intel is a manufacturer and designer of CPUs.
Their competitor is AMD.
Sometimes AMD's chips are better. Sometimes Intel's are better. Depends on the time of the year. :)
Re: What is intel important for?
Dont think itll help but I have an HP pavilion with AMD. Ive had it a year with no problems. I use it for downloading, playing on the internet, photoshop and playing games. Only problems I had was when I bought it Vista was brand new and NOTHING worked with it but all it ok now.
Re: What is intel important for?
HP's do suck, the Compaq desktop (whom HP acquired some years back) arrived three years ago DOA. I had a wonderful time on the phone with a nice lady from Bangalore whose accent I could barely understand. Eventually it was concluded that my compy was a dud. They sent me a box to ship it back in and its fine now, but I'll never buy another HP related product again.
The problem of course is that a lot of the competing product out there isn't a lot better. Look for which company has the best warranty.
As for Intel vs. AMD, I've never really seen much of a difference. Except for the optical drives crapping out occasionally, my problems have usually involved software, not hardware.
Re: What is intel important for?
Yea, ^^^ A warranty is a MUST. Oh damn I forgot
My other laptop I bought and 2 days later the screen went out! There was a 30 day in store exchange so I got another one.
a couple months later the whole thing stopped working - needed a new harddrive so it was sent to HP and replaced and worked and another year later it happened again. The best thing I ever did was buy that 3 year warranty.
I have it again with this HP. Worth the couple hundred dollars just in case. Id advise it on any brand/
Re: What is intel important for?
I recently bought a laptop. AMD dual chip less performance than intel duo 2 chips but when you compare at the same price they have about equal performances.
The best buy salesman sad intel was better because they generate less heat causing less problems.
More than specific manufacturer check the reviews of the specific laptop model you buy. Check amazon, best buy, computer buying websites. I bought a toshiba but the specific model got very bad reviews and my laptop had the same problems every one else mentioned (crashes approximately once a day). I was stuck with it because I was out of the country during the 2 week return policy. (Someone theorized the laptop problem was because it was the first AMD dual core model toshiba made)
Almost all new laptops burn dvd's and cd's and all computers download. DVD +-RW means it burns dvd's.
Re: What is intel important for?
I have 3 HP's and a 1 Compaq and no problems. The Compaq is over 10 years old and although it is so old it can no longer be upgraded, it still runs as a guest machine on my network...
>>>Sad<<<
Re: What is intel important for?
Fawn:
First off, I would say if your mom is referring you to HP and you trust her judgment, don't be a trailblazer. Do what you're comfortable with.
Before you make a laptop purchase, really try to decide what you plan on doing with your laptop. Since, in most places, you have 14 days to return it, no questions asked, just make sure you set aside some time to sit down and make sure it works well enough that you're confident it will do what you want.
If you want my personal opinions on HP, I would tell you that I don't believe in their brand in anything outside the SMB Printers.
I don't want to "Over Answer" the question, but I'll help you understand some key components.
There are three VERY important factors in buying any system:
1. CPU
2. RAM
3. HARD DRIVE.
Think of your RAM like your short term memory, and you HARD DRIVE like your long term memory, and your CPU as your ability to think.
The higher the capacity of your hard drive, the more your system will remember long term. The more RAM you have, the more your system will be able to vividly remember recent and current events, and the higher the CPU, the faster the processing is between it and the short term memory (RAM).
(Comp gurus, this is just a rough understanding scenario)
Now, in regards to your other questions:
Intel makes a really good and efficient laptop processor. Current ones of interest are the following in order of best to least choice:
Think of "Dual Core" as 2 CPUs.
Centrino Core2Duo (and Core Duo)
Pentium D (Still a Dual Core)
Celeron
I wouldn't rush over to the Turion just yet (by AMD) but if you do, be prepared. It gets HOT. It's a great chip. I LOVE AMD, but their mobile series double as hot plates
If you have any questions, or want to have an opinion in your pocket during the sales process, feel free to PM me and I will help as best as I can.
Mast.
Re: What is intel important for?
I have an HP laptop, and other than having to deal with warranty service twice for the battery and the charger, it has been a good computer. Fast, nice resolution on the screen, features I've never used like the DVD burner.
However, I bought it for a job which didn't work out (laid off after a week), and since then I have been trying to sell it at a reduced price, but nobody has wanted to buy it. The last person who looked at it said that she could get a Dell computer bundled with a printer new for less than I was asking ($499). So maybe their lack of interest might be telling you something about whether to buy a new one.
Re: What is intel important for?
Historically, the Windows operating system has been written to work on an Intel chip, with other chip makers having to go and reverse engineer an equivalent to run the same programs. In the last ten to fifteen years, Microsoft has released developer software that had enough detail and resemblance to the product to be shipped that the various chip vendors have been able to get their chips to run the software about the same.
Each still has quirks, at some point.
Many of the AMD chips have been designed to use a 64 bit operating system, and now AMD has been making multiple-core chips. I'm not certain, but I think that the intel chips are still using 32 bit cores. The difference in those is that if the piece of data being manipulated is really complicated, the 64 bit chip and system has a good chance of manipulating it faster, because it doesn't have to split, process, go back, process and rejoin things.
Nearly all of the programs available on either machine for just knocking around or doing basic video compliation or musical composition are still 32 bit, so it doesn't matter so much.
So, if you have some really special use, it may make a difference.
Now:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fawn
Also do they pretty much all burn cd's and download music?
You have to look at the specifications, but just about all of them come with a CD or DVD drive capable of burning basic CD's. Some can burn DVD's and some can burn complicated DVD's.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Fawn
And the hp I'm looking at is a special edition which my mother says is only because it comes with a mouse, a headseet and a webcam. I'm wondering if special editions are made differently and will they be harder to fix if they break down?
The mouse and the headset are somewhat generic. Nearly every computer has the sockets to operate them, and they do not pose any special risk with regard to repairs. The webcam, if it is actually built into the computer, provides one extra gadget that could break. The cameras and their connections inside the computer are not any big technological development, so they don't add much of a repair concern other than that the gadget might break like any other gadget.
I haven't heard anything special regarding problems with HP. I hear people who have problems with every manufacturer, from HP to Dell to Sony to Toshiba to Acer. I've had good Fujitsus. And if durability is your concern, Panasonic's Toughbooks are pretty much the standard (though they seem to be making them thinner and frailer for what I'm guessing are 'deployed' newspeople, since the military-spec ones are not so stylish)