Looking for a Cheap PC?

dceire

I'm looking for a cheap PC I'll be using it mainly for college and playn the sim's 2 & watching dvd's if it's a laptop.

I came across these two on Dell.ie but I'm not too sure if these PC's would be any good or not so any advice.

Desktop
Laptop

snappieT

For the laptop anyway, I'd be really inclined to pay the extra 60 and get the 510m, with Centrino as opposed to Celeron M. Really worth the extra...

masterK

Why not have a look at the Dell Outlet store, if you keep an eye on the stock for a week or two you should be able to get a nice bargain.

skywalker

snappieT wrote:

For the laptop anyway, I'd be really inclined to pay the extra 60 and get the 510m, with Centrino as opposed to Celeron M. Really worth the extra...

When I clicked through the link it doesnt give an option to upgrade the cpu. Are you just talking about another machine thats €60 dearer or am I missing something?

snappieT

The 510m comes with a Centrino as standard. The other one has Celeron M as standard..

formatman

f|^^%$^$6 intel marketing

Centrino is not a chip , its the combination of the processor ( pentium M or celeron M ) , the wireless card and the power managment features of the chip set

Check what processor it has ...

Sparky

doesnt it have to be a Pentium M not celeron M to be certified Centrino.

http://www.intel.com/products/centrino/index.htm

odie

If you want to play the Sims 2 then you will require a laptop with at leaset a 128mb 9700 graphics chip....although the cheapest dell ones will have the newer x600 which will be adequate to play Sims 2

So find the cheapest dell laptop with the ATI x600 chipset and you are on da ball

DemonOfTheFall

formatman is wrong.

Centrino is in fact a combination, but Celeron M is not one of the chips included in that combination.

It has to be a *Pentium M*, with the chipset and wireless.

Don't even consider using a Celeron M, they're worse than useless. If its only 60 yoyo to upgrade to a Pentium M itll be the best value youll every get for that 60 quid.

unkel

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

If its only 60 yoyo to upgrade to a Pentium M itll be the best value youll every get for that 60 quid.

Agree

DemonOfTheFall

Theres a good enough looking lappy on the dell site for 859 inc vat and Delivery at the moment. Pentium M, 512 megs of ram and a few other bits.

skywalker

Thanks for that snappieT. misread your orig post.

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

formatman is wrong.

Centrino is in fact a combination, but Celeron M is not one of the chips included in that combination.

It has to be a *Pentium M*, with the chipset and wireless.

Don't even consider using a Celeron M, they're worse than useless. If its only 60 yoyo to upgrade to a Pentium M itll be the best value youll every get for that 60 quid.

In what way? battery life? I understand the Pentium M is a better chip, but will you actually see a tangible benefit from your laptop.

rsynnott

You could, however, certainly go for a non-centrino Pentium M; there's no compelling reason to go centrino.

Celeron is based on Intel's dreadful old NetBurst architecture (as is P4). Pentium M is based on a new one. It's much faster per hz, and should use less power as well.

skywalker

Will you end up getting 10 minutes more battery life though, or will it actually make a substantial difference.

DemonOfTheFall

A 1.5 P-M compared to a 1.5 C-M makes a fair bit of difference IMO. Ive used a laptop with both of them in them at work doign some hefty PDF files, (~200 pages) and the Celeron is incredibly painful to use. Then again the Pentium M is still quite painful...

Mutant_Fruit

Celeron-M and Pentium-M are both MOBILE chips, they both have low power usage. However the celeron is a crock of steaming droppings. If its only €60 in the difference, spend the extra and get a proper Pentium. check benchmaks to see the difference.

I wouldn't get a standard Pentium-4 in a laptop. They CHEW power, friend of mine has a dell with a pentium-4 and she gets at most 80 mins battery life, and the fan is as loud as hell.

The intel i855GM chipset is a crock of crap, but it can play the Sims 2, HL2 and Doom3 (albeit, the last two are at about 15fps ).

skywalker

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Celeron-M and Pentium-M are both MOBILE chips, they both have low power usage. However the celeron is a crock of steaming droppings. If its only €60 in the difference, spend the extra and get a proper Pentium. check benchmaks to see the difference.

Im not especially worried about performance. From what I can find it seems the difference is an extra hour of battery life. I dont know whether Ill be using it off the battery enough for that to justify an extra €100 (thats the diff in the system im looking at).

DemonOfTheFall

Battery isnt the big issue here though. The fact is that the Celeron M is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

skywalker

Im not going to be using it for anything intensive.

Battery life is definitely a bigger issue for me than performance.

skywalker

DemonOfTheFall wrote:

Battery isnt the big issue here though. The fact is that the Celeron M is sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow

Benchmarks would seem to disagree, this suggests marginal difference.
Toms Hardware Link

rsynnott

Please bear in mind that that is, as far as I can see, a first generation Pentium M.

Mutant_Fruit

skywalker wrote:

Benchmarks would seem to disagree, this suggests marginal difference.
Toms Hardware Link

Yeah, i went looking for a benchmark to prove my point, and couldn't actually find one Did't realise mobile-Celerons were so good as compared to mobile pentiums.

SennaFan

Are you looking for new or second hand ???