[OT] New laptop - AMD or Intel

["Keith Doxey" <ukha@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Hi All,

Looking to finally buy a new laptop but am sooooo confused by all the
diferent processor options.

Most seem to be offering Intel Processors but I cant figure out which are
which. I am guessing that generally the higher the number the better the
processor but some machine I saw today had higher processor numbers but
lower clock speeds. Would the higher porocessor still be faster ?

Where does AMD fit into the jigsaw. They must be able to run Vista
otherwise
the laptop manufacturers wouldn't be using them but are there any downsides
to chosing AMD ?

Until I started using Dell machines, all my PCs were either Cyrix or AMD
based.

Also wondering about RAM. Is 2Gb sufficient to run Vista proplery or should
I bite the bullet and go for 4Gb from the outset. Looking at the current
Dell offerings they have 2 memory slots and the options available are 1+1,
2+1 or 2+2 so upgrading memory later would be much more expensive due to
having to lose the existing memory. It also says that best performance is
with matched memory modules but would 2+1 still give a significant increase
in performance over 1+1 or should I only consider 1+1 and 2+2Gb ?

Hopefully someone cant steer me in the right direction as the the machine
will need to serve me faithfully for the next 2 or 3 years. Have been quite
mpressed by my existing Dell laptop which will be 3 years old next month
and
is now just too slow for the stuff I am doing.

Thanks in advance

Keith



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