When I first decided to buy a laptop, it all seemed pretty straight forward I thought, even an backward computer illiterate like me could figure it out.
No dice...
I've been drowning in a sea of specs and contradictory info for days now...
So, a few quick queries:
1. I've read that performance doesn't vary significantly past the 1GHz mark. Does this hold true for all things? Or is it that it's only true if you're not using your machine for gaming etc?
2. Specs regarding video cards are exceedingly esoteric (to me) I want dedicated video RAM, but I'm never sure if they're stating dedicated RAM levels or shared capacity. I keep reading things like this:
Quote:
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ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 4X AGP graphics controller with 64 MB DDR SDRAM
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Does DDR SDRAM stand for shared RAM?
And also:
Quote:
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Intel 852GM Video Controller with 64MB Dynamic UMA Video Memory
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UMA apparently stands for Unified Memory Architecture, which sounds awfully like shared RAM!
3. Are there any models I should avoid like the plague totally?
4. With screen resolution, I've heard some screens make text really hard to read? Is this true, and if so, does anyone know which ones are good/terrible in this regard?
5. In terms of gaming, will I suffer gigantically for getting a 4200rpm hard drive? and will 5400rpm be good/sufficient/crap?
6. Apple seems to be awfully expensive, are they just awesome!?
To keep things simple, in terms of budget I'm not quite sure yet, but I'd like a machine that will be capable of a quality gaming experience, though I know it will be a heavy, battery eating monster.