Laptop questions

[K Barrett]

I'm in the market for a new laptop. I want to run the various orchid software on it. I'm looking at a windows 7 machine. Question is: Does AQ+ work equally as well on both the 64- and 32- versions of windows 7? Does it prefer Home or Pro? Same question for OrchidWiz. Anyone running these programs with Windows 7?

And for the geeks out there, which chip series is faster? The Intel Core Duo or the i3 series? I can configure a new laptop with either chip series. I think the i3,5,7 are geared for laptops to keep the heat down but they are not necessarily fast, and since the AQ+ is a lot of pictures to load I think I want fast. [note of explanation I have a macbook and I'm always the last to load images at the judging table and the last to be able to switch between images. I'm sick of 'Got it yet?' from my team mates. They are always waiting for me. I have to boot up two operating systems as well as the bridging software (parallels) That doesn't leave much memory left to actually *operate* the program. Or so it seems to me.]

But I don't want to just exchange one dog for another.

Looking around the web it seems the Toshibas are more reliable than either the Sonys, HPs or Dells. I'm looking at either the M-500 series or the U-500 series.

Any opinions?

K Barrett

[Paul Simon]

Hi Kathy,

It's probably not what you want, but I have a Fujitsu Lifebook. It's industrial strength with good tech support. Lot's of good options to "build your own."

Paul

[pakrat]

Sorry, I don't do windows.

If TDP wasn't a pulled from the middle back pocket, I'd say go with the lowest priced one with the lowest max TDP (Lower TDP means less power draw on the battery).

As for your macbook. If you're just boot it directly to Windows instead of bothering to boot OSX, start parallels, and then boot that to Windows. (IE use bootcamp), Windows should run quite speedily. Power management will suck, but it probably did with parallels anyways. The other option is see if you can get AQ+ to run under WINE. No, I don't know how well WINE works on OSX.

help you make a decision. Remember, if it breaks, you get to keep both parts. Also, have you maxed out the memory on your macbook? Some macbook pros can be expanded to 8GB RAM.

And as for me. If I didn't have kids, I'd probably be looking at a Lenovo T510 with discrete graphics and HD+ display.

Especially when there are some things you can do to pep up your old dog.

I'm addicted to the trackpoint with 3 buttons, so it would be a Lenovo Thinkpad for me. The last time I looked at Sonys, they looked really pretty but fell apart if they were looked at crosseyed. I found consumer grade Dell laptops to also fall apart easily, corporate laptops have been hit or miss. And HP's configurators never gave me enough information as to what is in the machine for me to be able to fairly compare them with their competitors. I've seen the fujitsu notebooks take an awful lot of abuse at tech conferences, but the bulk of the ones I've seen were purchased by people that regularly travel to Japan and bought them in Japan.