If I was carting a laptop around all day I would go macbook.

Personally I'd go for a thin and light laptop – just as light, just as powerful – and spend the change on beer.

For 32bits Windows 7 the maximum RAM is 3GB
Eh? 2^32 = 4Gb. (Further proof, I'm looking at it right now.)

Yes and no. If you've got 4GB ram you'll not be able to use much more than 3GB of it due to memory mapping of the display and other stuff (so it's not quite true that 3GB is the max, but that's closer than 4GB, and given the cost of RAM at the moment, getting the extra GB most of which you can't use is bad value). Of course 3GB is fine for most people doing most things (as is a less powerful computer), so you don't need a 64 bit OS. Bearing in mind that if at some point you do feel the need for more RAM, a Windows 7 licence key works with both 32 and 64 bit versions, so all you've got to do is get the installation media.

BTW I'm currently typing on an Athlon XP 2200+ with 1GB of RAM whilst my C2D laptop is out of action. Actually works just fine for almost everything, though I do have to be a bit careful how many tabs I open in Chrome with that little memory.

My home desktop is a 4 year old celeron chip with 2gb of ram. 4 years ago when i first built it – it flew.
Has slowed down over time. I figured it was all the videos on every web page (including this one) so I stuck in a £25 video card. It hums along again.

But then I do rebuild it every so often, defrag it/ clean it with winaso.

When ever I install a prog that i know Im not going to use all them time I install it into a virtual machine. Even the VM hums along.

Has slowed down over time. I figured it was all the videos on every web page (including this one)

I solve that one by not running the videos – not allowed to say more on here (though I'll point out that it's only videos I don't see – it's only FLash and the impact that has on my PC performance I have an issue with).

My 10 yr old Dell Inspiron with max RAM 512MB is still doing well but a bit slow by comparison to my new first self build temperamental box 😡 . Paying for the lesson of self build for now and hope to rely less on others in future.

Just get a MacBook Pro…with AppleCare. 13" for portability. 15" for luxury. 17" is just too big. Lenovo – I'm sure they make some tasty machines. My experience says steer clear unless someone else is buying and you don't have to moan at yourself for spending money on it. I'd go for i5 or i7 just out of sheer cussedness. Core2Duo works fine for most everything today but who can say 'no' to more speed? If i were buying a new machine today I'd go for a 15" Mac Book Pro i5 with 4GB (although 8GB is tempting). Not as shockingly expensive as i7 but a bit swifter than C2D and i3. I'd avoid PC world too. They sometimes have some nice deals but…

I agree with the posts that say 'wait until the student discount kicks in'. Absolutely. The savings/'free' iPod Touch etc make it worth it. Let alone the 'buy office for £99' or whatever today's student price is for £400 of MS software.

@Earl

But then I do rebuild it every so often, defrag it/ clean it with winaso

Exactly the reason I stick with a mac. I got so tired of cleaning/reinstalling on my windows box that I thought I'd give Mac a go. I'm not going back. 3 simple OS upgrades (Tiger, Leopard then Snow Leopard) on the same machine and it still runs fine.

Trusted Reviews guide to Student Laptops

Sorted

If you've got 4GB ram you'll not be able to use much more than 3GB of it due to memory mapping of the display and other stuff

Yep, true. I can talk about this at some length if you like, but I'll bore the spokes off you. (-:

The useable RAM varies between systems, but 3.5Gb is typical. The reason I queried it is that going from 3Gb to 4Gb is probably going to cost about ten quid and will be 2x2Gb sticks running dual-channel. 3Gb will be 1x2Gb and 1x1Gb, meaning it won't run dual-channel, or 2x1Gb and 2x512Mb, which will probably be more expensive (and unlikely in a laptop).

In short, whilst you lose some of the available RAM at 4Gb, if you're going up from 2Gb it's usually more sensible to go straight to 4Gb rather than faffing about at 3, which is more trouble than it's worth. Saying the maximum is 3Gb is misleading.

I believe windows 32-bit can only access 3Gb?

FWIW of the laptops I've had:

Toshiba – good, some software to disable
HP – good, free software didn't need disabling but isn't that good
Sony – tons of free software to disable, but not bad otherwise
Dell – coudn't disable free software and was badly made to the point where its design flaws caused its demise 🙁 Also my Dad's had cheapo battery that didn't last long at all

When I say free software, I mean the crap they install for you – extra access buttons, stupid utilities to 'help' you access config, sort music and photos, use your webcam etc etc etc etc – it can (and should) all be removed. Windows does all that stuff itself and is much less sh*t.

I've got an Thinkpad X201i with the i3

I have an X201 Thinkpad with an i5, no complaints here at all, it's super-fast and will last me a while.

I believe windows 32-bit can only access 3Gb?

Nope. It's theoretically 4Gb, however as aracer says, you lose some of it due to archicture limitations. The exact amount varies, but it's beween 3Gb and 4Gb. Mine here shows 3.5Gb useable.

Completely agree with you on the shovelware though – laptops are particularly afflicted by this. You can usually remove most of it, though some is necessary sometimes for supporting non-standard features like 'media' keys.

So this is what happened,

PC world took up much of my Sunday thanks to the volume of people in there (recession what recession?)

Result –

1x Toshiba Core I5, 15.6 widescreen, 4GB Ram, 320gb hard disk, HDMI connection,without software package (this was a serious error they told me) £499.00

plus

1x Microsoft Office Professional Plus (Software4students) £38.95

equals

1x V Happy Son

Incidentally they only gave me £20 trade in on the old laptop as predicted earlier in the thread.

Thanks for the help.

Nick.

due to archicture limitations

I know the address space of a 32 bit CPU is 4Gb, but I thought there was a Windows limitation aside from graphics card shared ram…

NJA – sounds like an ideal purchase.

Now bear in mind the laptop itself won't "wear out", "get tired" or "get slow". It'll work just as fast in three years as it does now. When you see it starting to run slower, it's cos it's clogged up with dreck.. which can and should be cleaned out.

I thought there was a Windows limitation

It's a long and boring explanation, and one that's got more misunderstanding and nonsense on the Internet than just about anything else. It's called Memory-Mapped I/O. In a nutshell, some hardware ties up memory addresses. Graphics cards are the big one but PCI devices do it as well.

A 32-bit OS can deal with 2^32 = 4Gb of addresses. In addition to main memory, graphics cards (and other devices) also have memory, which for the PC to be able to 'see' it has to reside within this 4Gb address space.

Historically, graphics memory has been mapped to addresses at the end of the 4Gb memory space. With say 2Gb of RAM and 512Mb of video memory, this is fine. However with modern PCs having 4Gb installed, you've got an overlap. Bottom line, the video memory takes precedence and 'covers up' main memory.

Moving to 64-bit can alleviate this problem, assuming the PC's chipset supports the ability to remap the hardware beyond 4Gb. However, moving to 64-bit doubles the width of memory addresses used (for anything natively 64-bit), and if you make something twice as wide without adding anything, it becomes half as deep. This is why the "use Windows 64-bit to recover your lost RAM" argument is bogus; sure, the numbers look better, but you use up more memory in the process so you're not really gaining anything.

Clear as mud? (-:

When you see it starting to run slower, it's cos it's clogged up with dreck porn

Fixed that for you.

Oh, forgot to add –

With the limitations above, Vista artificially cripples the available RAM at 3.15Gb, for reasons best known to itself. XP and Windows 7 don't have this issue, to my knowledge (I'd have to check to be sure though).

Porn doesn't make your system run slow..!

It's a long and boring explanation

I just googled it.. I know about MMIO from way way back when I used to understand computer hardware (circa 1985) 🙂 I didn't know it was that simple 🙂

1x Toshiba Core I5, 15.6 widescreen, 4GB Ram, 320gb hard disk, HDMI connection,without software package (this was a serious error they told me) £499.00

Sounds like a good buy…

Regarding the software that PC World try to sell you, you did VERY wisely… There are better FREE alternatives to download from the internet…

May I recommend Comodo for an all in one internet security package (though there is always AVG Free, though I prefer Comodo), and use Malwarebytes for an anti Malware Package…

There are all sorts of other free useful bits of software out there too, such as CCleaner, Defraggler, Recuva, and gods knows how many other bits… ALL AVAILABLE FOR FREE!

Check http://www.filehippo.com/ for more of the same…

With the limitations above, Vista artificially cripples the available RAM at 3.15Gb, for reasons best known to itself. XP and Windows 7 don't have this issue, to my knowledge (I'd have to check to be sure though).

My installation of 32 bit XP Pro on my desktop only shows 3.25GB of RAM despite having 4GB installed. Bit of a shame, but I'll live with it, though I would like a 64 bit OS. Trouble is, for some software I use, XP is the only option, and XP64 is very poorly supported by a lot of drivers.

have you got any AV or Firewall software?

it costs but KAspersky Internet Security is the business

have you got any AV or Firewall software?

it costs but KAspersky Internet Security is the business

See my post above…

There are better FREE alternatives to Kaspersky and Norton… The internet, and in particular Filehippo is your friend…

I'd just like to disagree with everything Mboy just said. (-:

1x Toshiba Core I5, 15.6 widescreen, 4GB Ram, 320gb hard disk, HDMI connection,without software package (this was a serious error they told me) £499.00

agree that sounds pretty decent and should see him through the Uni.

user-removed – Member
My mate ran a prog called decrapifymycomputer on my new PC World machine and it killed off all the nasty bloatware which came pre-installed. You can download it free from c-net.

Worth doing for the genius name alone….

Posted 1 day ago #

mboy – Member

Or just go into "add/remove Programmes" and uninstall them all for yourself! Simple really…

Posted 1 day ago #

Well, that's kind of the point smartypants! This software ^^^ gets rid of all the daft floating toolbars, unhelpful 'help' functions, horrible wee preloaded photo and video stuff and screeds of other stuff, much of which is buried in the program files and which doesn't appear in control panel's 'Add or remove software' option. And it does it all in one big lump rather than have to wade about and find it individually – obviously you're given the choice of which cr@p to remove before giving it the go ahead…

mboy – why is AVG free or Avast better than Kaspersky?

It's less intrusive (IMveryHO). Slows everything down much less and doesn't poke its big electronic nose into everything you do before saying, "Hmmm, OK, I suppooose it's alright for you to do that.."

Yes and no. If you've got 4GB ram you'll not be able to use much more than 3GB of it due to memory mapping of the display and other stuff (so it's not quite true that 3GB is the max, but that's closer than 4GB

Well given that reasoning, wouldn't 3gb just mean you have even less after the "memory mapping"? It's the per process address mapping that's the limit:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366778%28VS.85%29.aspx

Bit of a waste of cash getting over 3gb on Win 32 though I do agree! Given a lot of Core 2 systems are DDR memory though 3gb is a bit of a bizarre number.

On the antivirus front, everyone at work seems to swear by ESET NOD32, http://www.eset.co.uk/ – Things like AVG used to be good but don't seem to actually catch a lot of new things. I'd definitely avoid the likes of Norton and McAfee though, both sell on name alone.

1) Firewall – Windows 7 own firewall (free).
2) Anti-virus – Microsoft Security Essential (free).
3) Anti-malware – Malwarebytes (one time payment – highly recommended).
4) Spywareblaster (by Javacool)- it's preventing malwares to install but does not remove – (free)
5) Sandboxie – (free or pay depending on what you like)

Then whatever you feel you need to add on … too many …

🙂

Well given that reasoning, wouldn't 3gb just mean you have even less after the "memory mapping"?

No – the memory mapping things mean that certain addresses are mapped directly to some other device, regardless of whether or not there's a real byte behind that address. If there is, then it'll never get used since the address is mapped to the device instead.

Clever mobo tricks notwithstanding of course.

I read around, Kaspersky is meant to have a low impact on system performance is it not? It's also free from my online bank.

Kaspersky is the best of the paid-for AV solutions, yes. System impact is (relatively) minimal.

I've never heard of Sandboxie but other than that, what Chewkw said. I don't see much point in paying for Malwarebytes either, it's the best starting point for a malware cleanup but for prevention, meh. TBH, best prevention is safe browsing practices. (-:

(in my opinion, yadda yadda)

Cougar – Member

I've never heard of Sandboxie ….

Well, it's free if you want to use it with certain features off or pay for the full version and I think it's one time payment as well.

I don't see much point in paying for Malwarebytes either, it's the best starting point for a malware cleanup but for prevention, meh. TBH, best prevention is safe browsing practices. (-:

Malwarebytes is one time payment of £20 plus only and it comes with more features in the paid version. I think life time license use for £20 is very reasonable.

🙂

Sandboxie – yes, but I've still never heard of it. I'll look it up tomorrow.

MBAM – I've used it so often now that I should probably buy a licence just out of fairness. I could justify that a lot easier than paying for it to get the extra features.