[ale] best 32bit cpu

[Dow Hurst]

I have to chime in on this.  Laptops are a specific type of machine that 
people want to have light weight, a decent sized screen , and a decent 
battery life.  Performance is nice but is limited by the design.  So, 
from your description of what you plan to do, you should probably go to 
your friends and to the stores and try out laptops.  We have a Dell 
I8500 P4 2GHz that screams and has two batteries, the fastest graphics 
via Nvidia GF 4 Go, and so on.  But, it weighs a ton!!  The lady who 
uses it loves the performance and screen size but hates the weight.  
And, the weight is only overcome by your own determination to haul the 
thing around.  It stays at her house 99% of the time and even there 
doesn't get moved around much at all.

The LinuxFormat magazine got a dual AMD 64 Opteron server to test and 
found in its configuration it blew away all the previous benchmarks they 
normally use for testing new servers.  Plus, the specs I saw at Fermi 
Labs on clusters showed the Opteron consistently doing better than any 
other processor.  But the required power creates a real cooling problem 
and I can't imagine what kind of battery life you'd get if there was a 
dual Opteron laptop. ;-)

Personally, I think the lightest sturdiest laptop you can find with 
decent options builtin and Linux friendly would be the way to go.  And, 
I do like the Mac Ti alot for a sturdy lightweight design. :-\

My point is that some performance your willing to carry everywhere is 
better than great performance you never carry anywhere. :-)

Take a look at www.dynamism.com for some ideas.  You can purchase from 
them with confidence.  We have a 98 vintage Panasonic that is still 
running strong, weighs 3lbs, and has 3-4 hours battery life from 
dynamism.  Never had any problems with it at all.
Dow



Stephen Turner wrote:

>well its gonna be a linux laptop (rules out dual cpu) and its going to be
>used for network stuff, building web sites possibly analyzing network
>traffic and performance possibly even creating and breaking encryptions
>dunno exactly. it will be used for photos definately and possibly videos
>depending on how soon i get a digital camcorder. i thought 64bit cpus in a
>laptop would be nice but with the little performance gains except in a
>couple areas and the dramatic increase in wattage consumption makes them
>not to appealing. im hopeing this would be an all around work and
>sometimes fun pc :-p rumor has it i might actually be doing something in
>networking and computers soon but i have yet to see any proof :-p not to
>mention everyone loves laptops ;) what ever i got would have to last me
>for a while, im thinking since i dont need it for a while on waiting to
>see the next laptop that comes around :-p mac seems to be a pretty good
>performer but from some comparisons ive been seeing lately sounds like mac
>isnt the top gun i once thought it was.
>
>=====
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Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
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Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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