Do I need 3Gb RAM, or would 2Gb be okay?

[HouseOfBamboo]

Am looking for a new laptop - budget is tight so I don't want to spend more than I need.

I need it for:

• Word, Excel, email
• Drawing package (eg DrawPlus)
• Personal photos/short vids (jpg and avi) retouching and storage
• Websurfing

I don't do gaming, and don't need to watch DVDs on it.

I don't download loads of music or films.

Any advice appreciated

personally i would go for 3gb as the vista package takes up nearly 1gb

Get as much data storage as possible otherwise your PC will be very slow and you will have to keep bumping stuff off it to make space for more stuff.

I would expect 2 GB to be fine, but without knowing your budget cannot comment further.

Someone recently was looking at laptops and I felt sure there were some with 3 GB at similar prices to those at 2 GB. It comes down to whether you are paying a premium cost for a well-known name and get little/nothing extra for that money except that brand name.

Of course in some cases, you pay extra for the CPU speed - a bit difficult to justify if budget is not unlimited...

For example, there's a Toshiba laptop with Pentium Dual Core CPU, 3 GB RAM, 320 GB HD, at 450 from Tesco Direct, while Aldi has a Medion laptop with AMD CPU, etc, at 350 quid (with 3 year warranty).

Maybe you don't know Medion but they're a German PC firm and have been selling via Aldi for over 12 years to my knowledge (a client wanted a new PC and I spoke on their 0800 tech support line to an engineer in Germany, back in the days when Aldi needed the 750 quid in cash!).

Perhaps mention your budget and some ideas might come out here on MN...

Thanks for the advice so far folks.

At the moment I'm veering towards a reconditioned Dell Vostro (not second hand, one of those ones that were 'overordered' or something, and been passed on to a third party seller).

Only because I REALLY don't want a glassy reflective screen as I work at home near a big window. Dell seem to be the only ones doing non-glare screens at the moment (only on their 'business' models though, for some reason ). But if anyone knows of any other manufacturer that does non-glare screens, that would be great. Those horrible glassy ones seem to be pretty standard at the moment.

Anyway - budget. I could get a recon Dell Vostro 2gb RAM, 250gb hard disk for around the £450 mark which is what I wanted to spend. To go up to 3gb RAM would add about £100 it seems. Which would be stretching my budget, but I could go £550 at a push .

Mme Lindt - yes definitely take your point about large hard disk. I'd ideally like a 320gb hard disk as I have LOTS of photos and vids, but may have to compromise on 250mb.

Thanks for the recommendations NetworkGuy, I have to dash off to cook now, but will investigate later.

Many thanks

Oh and I definitely want Windows 7 - am using Vista at the moment and not that impressed.

My first laptop was a Medion, and it sadly packed in after about 3 years. I don't think this is normal, as they are sold a lot in Germany (where I bought it). I wick warn you that their customer service in Germany was awful and presumably not better in UK.

Network Guy - I hadn't heard of Medion but have had a look. (I also didn't know about the bargainous Aldi website, so that was interesting too, ta!)

The Medion looks like v good value, but sadly seems to have a glossy screen. As do all the mainstream ones I've seen in PC World etc, grr.

Do you think the processor speed isn't as important as RAM? I'm not really sure about the difference tbh, so any advice would be great. Is an i5 processor (?) a really good thing or not?

While raw power (CPU end) is good, it really depends what applications you are running as to whether extra power /speed is needed, and you can 'pay dearly' for that, which is where AMD came into the picture, making cheaper (and a bit slower) CPUs than Intel (which spends millions on TV ads to push their latest and greatest, the i3, i5, i7 series CPUs).

A machine short on RAM will suffer if you try to multitask, and don't close some application when distracted into (say) an online search that goes off on a number of tangents.

If you put your cash into RAM rather than CPU, the fact it won't 'run low' should be seen as an improvement in overall performance.

If you have a faster CPU but get short of RAM, then a good part of the time will be spent shuffling parts of what is in RAM away onto your hard drive (and later, pulling it back into RAM), and it doesn't matter how fast that CPU can run, the whole PC will be slowed down because it will be spending time swapping things in and out of memory (and that will then depend on how fast your disk drive can transfer data, ie that becomes a bottleneck).

Sorry about the glossy screen - not something I was considering when looking earlier on (and guessing about budget limits).

I probably don't know what I am talking about but I just wanted to say I paid £40 extra to add 2Gb of ram to my laptop when I bought it (was 2Gb and now 4Gb) but it isn't actually very fast and drive me slightly mental at times. What I didn't know then but do now is that the processor is more important. I have an AMD processor and it wasn't until a couple of weeks after I bought it, when I was complaining about its slowness relative to my old one that DH piped up that I should have got an Intel. Now he tells me!

On the other hand it was relatively cheap (an HP for £299) but I don't actually think it was worth getting the extra 2 Gb.

Was very careful not to make the same mistake with my desktop when I got it a few weeks ago and it is very lovely and very whizzy but sadly I can't sit on the sofa with it on my lap.

Niecie - It depends on what you are doing, so when you found it sluggish, what application(s) did you use (and would you say that the quantity of data [if you were using a spreadsheet, say] was small, medium or large) ?

If it was web browsing, it might not have been anything to do with the HP laptop, but your internet connection...

Also, since you mention both laptop and new desktop, what version(s) of Windows are you running ? If the laptop is running Windows Vista (which many businesses chose not to touch), then that too, could have been part of the problem.

Out of interest, what desktop PC did you get, and for how much, if I might be nosy? Just that a client has been considering switching from his 5 year-old Dell running Windows XP, and it might give him an idea of what he could consider.

NetworkGuy - the laptop runs on Vista and the desktop on Windows 7. I had heard that Vista takes up a lot of processing power so that maybe my problem. Hopefully HouseofBamboo wouldn't have to worry about htat so much on her laptop as she will be getting Windows 7.

I have also been thinking that the local broadband speed is poor. We have got the new faster broadband around here but we haven't signed up for it. Bit loathed to leave ISP after so long when they have caused us no problems at all and I hear such bad stories about BT who are offering us the chance to upgrade. I am sure it will one day but just not yet. Having said that I don't have a problem with the speed on the desktop.

I mostly use Word (nothing fancy just a few basic, if large, documents) and the internet. Sometimes Excel and an accounting package. The DSs and I have give up trying to play games on the laptop as it either doesn't load them or they don't play properly. I manage to play some FB games but mainly those that you don't require quick response times like the farming ones. I have trouble looking at YouTube or iPlayer too.

The new desktop is an Acer Aspire with 4GB ram, Intel Core 2 processor, 750 Gb HDD and the ability to load and play my DS's new game (result - tragic having a game for your birthday you can't actually play!).

It came with the wireless keyboard and a mouse and I got it for £500. However, it was ex-display, last one in the shop, and normally it would have been £650. Having skimped on the laptop, I wasn't making the same mistake again. But, looking at the other machines in the shop it was actually quite reasonably priced even at full price for the spec. I've had it month and so far so good.

Thanks for the info about CPUs and RAM NetworkGuy, that's very useful.

I do tend to have loads of apps and windows open at once, so maybe I should look at beefing up the RAM. I'm running 2GB RAM and 1.6GB processor at the moment (I think) - it's usually fine but I do hit the odd blip where things get sticky.

Someone in a computer shop mentioned that it would also be good to have a dedicated graphics card as I use a drawing package. I don't do a lot of graphic work on this machine (I mostly do that on an ancient mac) but I guess it wouldn't hurt to be prepared in case the mac dies.

Niecie - without wanting you to give too mcuh away, you can search on www.SamKnows.com under UK broadband and search for your exchange.

The screen should show a bit about your exchange like how many lines are served and so forth. On the lower right it will list various "LLU" ISPs (O2/Be, Orange, Sky, TalkTalk) and whether they serve that exchange (LLU firms offer some higher speeds and generally lower prices, though it is not a comprehensive list of alternative ISPs which can offer lower cost and so on).

Have you run any speed test (such as one at www.speedtest.net) as it would show your speed for download/ upload (rather than the speed of the link from your home to the exchange).

I know your ISP has given no problems but if the speed is poor, there may be some changes they could do, or an alternative ISP may well offer you better value and higher speeds...

Sorry to read of your son's new game, and the problems with iPlayer and YouTube (I can sympathise - I had very poor speeds for 6 months until Openreach finally replaced the dropwire from the gutter level and my speed went up tenfold - though still not getting 2 Mbps, it is much better than it was).

HouseOfBamboo - regarding a dedicated graphics card - those are common enough as additions for desktops (one of my PCs has 2 cards, which can be linked for faster handling but I'm using them to drive two monitors). Games players often go for extreme amounts of speed, and sometimes pay 200-300 pounds just for the graphics card (though other cards may start in the upper 20s).

However, it is far less common for any laptop to have an option to add cards as space is at a premium, though there can be differences in how graphics are handled (different chip sets on the laptop motherboard) and a laptop specialist shop would be worth asking if you wish to compare graphics features and find something for your needs. Otherwise, go for 3 to 4 GB of RAM and ensure you only run your graphics software when you have shut down other applications, to get best speed.

Many machines 'share' some of the memory between processing (running applications) and the video display, and the more memory needed for graphics (size of screen[s], user defined settings of pixels for width + depth) the lower the free memory for running applications and therefore the slower it may work (and a minority of software may not run at all, though that's mostly gone away with Windows XP and later, compared with Windows 98 and earlier).

As for the Mac, you can probably pick up a s/h model on Ebay which could be a better option to use as a standby, as some features might be poorer on the PC version of the same software, or awkward to use with different control keys - it has been all too often my experience that some old software won't run well on new hardware (or can be incompatible with a newer operating system, and perhaps have no support if the software firm has been bought/ closed down). In the case of Windows 7, for example, many of the newer PCs use 64 bits for the processor (rather than the older 32 bit processors) and software firms will be aiming at the 'new' market with more interest than for supporting old hardware/ customers.

It was the same for users of Mac OS 9 not long after OSX was available... while some drivers for OSX were unavailable a friend had to run some software in OS 9, and other software under OSX. What a pain! Nowadays I suspect few firms would be interested in supporting a user of OS 9 (or old versions of OSX prior to say 10.2.4 or 10.3.x)

Thanks NetworkGuy, very useful. Sorry for delay in getting back, I've been researching the various options and dithering!

I've found a recon Dell laptop seller on Ebay who is selling various models of the Vostro with and without a graphics card. In the models I'm looking at the graphics card only seems to add about £30-50 so it might just be worth going for it anyway. I'm swaying towards the 4MB RAM, 320GB hard disk too just to make sure it's really worth upgrading.

Re the Mac, yes know what you mean about having to run two different OS versions, I've got 9 and 10 on the one I've got (can't even remember why now, it's an old one from work so the IT dept put that setup together). I'll research the options on that too. Thanks again.