Laptop Processor Choices

[etrigan420]

This will be in a Christmas gift to our 17 year old daughter.

Surfing, movies, light gaming, etc. etc. No heavy FPS'ing or Photoshop type stuff.

So which would you choose, and why?

Any input is appreciated!

 

[DonInKansas]

If she's a "normal" 17 y/o girl (schoolwork/Facebook/whatnot) the cheapest option is fine. 4GB of RAM will give more of a noticeable difference than any of those processors will.

 

[PaulieG]

For what she wants, that little i3 will be fine. Since she is doing some light gaming, you may want to consider a decent gpu, maybe a 5730 mobile.

 

[streetfighter 2]

For the purpose you stated I'd buy her a used laptop and put the extra money in her college savings account.

If you insist on a new one (with a CPU from the thumb) then go with the i3-370M as it's cheaper than the i3-350M and has a higher frequency.

 

[DonInKansas]

Does light gaming mean the Sims or Facebook games?

 

[Fourstaff]

Always thought my sister will be playing Plants versus Zombies and the likes of it (since that she says she does "little gaming", so I scoured around the internet to find good i3 based notebooks with average graphics. Turns out that she has got CS 1.6, Spore and Civ 4 installed. And she does heavy data crunching for her work. Bye bye 2 cores, hello, 4 cores. If your daughter does only light gaming and you know that, i3 would be fine. Also, I noticed that girls are split along the lines of either "big screen good for movies" or the "this has to fit in my handbag" types, so I believe size will be more of an issue.

Why is the 2010 i3 350M more expensive than the "old" 370M?

 

[Nitro-Max]

Id say windows 7 too, you dont want vista its a hog and will drain your laptop battery faster.

 

[Fourstaff]

Id say windows 7 too, you dont want vista its a hog and will drain your laptop battery faster.

Not really, Vista has been polished over the years and I think its no worse than windows 7 at this point (maybe a few other bugs here and there, minor niggles). Also, its rather hard to find Window's Vista preloaded nowadays, most of them which comes with WinVista also comes with a free upgrade voucher.

 

[etrigan420]

Thanks to all

Answers to some questions...with some more questions:

1. Dell wants $85.50 to upgrade from the standard config'd 2GB of memory to 4GB. I can do better than that price wise can't I? I've been out of the loop for too damn long.

2. Was thinking about upgrading the graphics to ATI Mobility Radeon HD550v (the only available video upgrade) for $95.00. Yea or Nay? She *does* enjoy The Sims.

3. The whole 350M being more expensive than the 370M is *really* throwing me for a loop. I even went to Intel's website thinking that the 350M *must* be better (only because Dell wants to charge more for it), but I'm not seeing how

4. OS is no problem, it comes with 7 home premium, and I've got technet if I need to change anything.

Thanks again to all who replied.

She's a good kid. A's and B's, never in trouble, will be graduating from H.S. next year and has never had a laptop (I haven't had one either, and I'm damn near 40...but *anyways*...).

I'm able to get a pretty good deal on it through the AAFES Dell portal, it's an Inspiron 15R for $445.04 base config.

Any other thoughts / suggestions appreciated!

 

[wolf]

1. Don't take that memory option, a 2gb stick of So-DIMM DDR3 1066mhz will run you a lot less and is a sinch to install in 95% of laptops

2. this depends on what it comes with stock, if it's intel integrated gfx, then yes IMO its worth the money, but it is esentially a rebranded mobility 4000 series card (around mobility 4650 performance) they just renamed it to sell old stock. it will play the sims just fine, intel gfx will not.

3. confusing yeah, the i3 370M is the clear choice IMO, that will be a zippy chip, but if you can spare the cash the i5 540M is a great performer, I have that in my current laptop and its quick alright. but I bet she would never know the difference.