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Is this a decent laptop?

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javeryh:

OK, I think I was getting confused.  I should keep the processor but maybe lower the RAM to 3GB?

Sir Headless VII:

Upgrade the OS to 64 bit and you won't have any problems recognizing less than 16.8 million terabytes (that is the apparently the theoretical  limit). If you upgrade the OS you will have no reason to use less RAM. And MrMojoZ  is right and I was wrong what is listed as the video card is part of the motherboard and not the CPU as I said.  I'm sorry if that caused confusion.

javeryh:

Thanks - so I should go for the 64 bit OS?  I just want it to work.  I don't want there to be problems all the time with it.  I do not play advanced computer games on it - I mainly will be using it for movies and music and the internet.

massive88:


--- Quote from: javeryh on March 13, 2009, 03:25:37 pm ---Thanks - so I should go for the 64 bit OS?  I just want it to work.  I don't want there to be problems all the time with it.  I do not play advanced computer games on it - I mainly will be using it for movies and music and the internet.

--- End quote ---

That laptop is epic overkill for movies internet and music.

I would still go for the 64bit OS, especially if its at no cost to you.  As previously stated, as a pre-installed laptop, you wont have any driver problems, which would be the only reason not to us a 64bit OS.

u_rebelscum:

Yeah, since it's Dell installing the 64 bit OS, and you're looking at 4 GB mem, I'd go 64 bit OS too.

But, are you going to play mame on it?  If not, and no games, and no compiling, and no photoshopping, the CPU is a little overkill.  Still, the better the CPU, the longer it will run future apps.  So I'd keep it.



FWIW, microsoft's consumer 32 bit memory limit is as follows:

total main memory + total video memory + total "shared video" memory (if any) tops out at 4 GB.

It doesn't matter if the video is on a separate card on onboard chip.  So if you have two 1 GB SLI cards & 4 GB memory & and a 32 bit vista/XP, you can only use 2 gigs of the memory; that extra 2 GB is just sitting there totally unused.  OTOH, if you replaced the two video cards with an onboard chip that shares 16 MB of main memory, the video memory is listed twice, once in the actual 16 MBs of main mem it's stealing, plus the virtual 16 MBs at the top end.  So the OS gives you 4 GB minus 32 MB (or 4096 - 32 = 4064 MB).

With the (256 MB?) onboard video chip, you won't be losing too much memory, but it will be some.

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