Laptop choice

king_of_inismac

Hey guys,

There getting me a new machine at work. I've a choice between a Thinkpad or a dell.

I've about 2000 to spend. I need something for heavy number crunching.

I was considering the Thinkpad X300, but I'd appreciate any help/advice you can give me!!!

Thanks,
M

Passenger

Does it have to be a PC?

AlmightyCushion

Heavy number crunching you say? Does the software that will do it take advantage of quad cores? If so intel are releasing a new bunch of processors next month (it was meant to be may but got delayed) one of which is a quad core for laptops if you can wait. They would push your budget to your limits, maybe even over it. If it doesn't take advatage of quads then you should still wait for the montevina chips if you can. They'll have faster dual cores coming out alongside the quad.

king_of_inismac

I'm leaning towards a laptop.

My choices are either Dell or IBM

The thinkpad is very light and robust, but the XPS seems to pack more punch computationally.

The number crunching is Matlab code I'll be running....

conzy

Does it support Quad Core? If so you should hold off for a month or so , If not get a fast Dual Core.

I have an XPS M1530 and its awesome 2.4ghz T8300, 4gigs of ram and it flies through everything, very good battery life too, almost 5 hours web browsing with power saving on.

They have a good deal on the T9500 atm (2.6ghz) so you can get an XPS with 4gigs of ram and a 2.6ghz Penryn CPU and a 9 cell battery for around €1495 which is great value

http://configure.euro.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?b=&c=ie&cs=iedhs1&kc=NRS15303&l=en&oc=N07X5308&rbc=N07X5308&s=dhs

conzy

Another option is to buy a cheap desktop, stick a quad core in it and do all your number crunching on that, shouldnt cost more than 400 euro and will be much faster than any laptop...

Then you have €1600 left over to buy the above notebook

pwd

I've an xps 1530 too and I'm very happy with it. Plays most games on the top settings to if that's something you like.
The 1730 has flashing lights and stuff on it. The design makes it inappropriate for work really - in case you were looking at it.

conzy

pwd wrote: »

I've an xps 1530 too and I'm very happy with it. Plays most games on the top settings to if that's something you like.
The 1730 has flashing lights and stuff on it. The design makes it inappropriate for work really - in case you were looking at it.

Its also about 3 times the weight of an M1530

king_of_inismac

ok, I can't buy a laptop AND a desktop

Fixed on a laptop now.

So I've 2000 to spend and want to get the best performance, but also a lappie that doesn't weight a ton.

Thanks for the help so far!!