Which laptop is better?

Trillionaire

I would like a laptop for surfing the web, playing Facebook games, a little wordprocessing, checking my emails and I MIGHT let my son play Minecraft on it. Which laptop would be better?

1. Samsung NP355V5C 15.6 inch Laptop (Silver) (AMD A10 4600M 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD SuperMulti DL, LAN, WLAN, Webcam, Dual Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premioum 64-Bit)

or

2. Samsung 350V5C 15.6-inch Laptop (Silver) - (Intel Core i3 3110M 2.4GHz Processor, 6GB RAM, 500GB HDD, DVDSM DL, LAN, WLAN, BT, Webcam, Integrated Graphics, Windows 8)?

Also I MIGHT want to add a firewire and upload my camcorder movies (very old camcorder using mini dv cassettes).

MadTechie

Number 1 is better, you can upgrade from Win7 to Win8 for about £25,

1. Samsung NP355V5C 15.6 inch Laptop (Silver) (AMD A10 4600M 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, DVD SuperMulti DL, LAN, WLAN, Webcam, Dual Graphics, Windows 7 Home Premioum 64-Bit)

CPU is a little slower, all depends on the price differents

John_Gray

Both appear to be significantly over-specified for what you want to do!

But if you want to do gaming, the one without the integrated graphics is probably better.

Cisco001

What is your budget?
There could be other better spec machine other than those two

sam959

I agree both are far sufficient enough for doing that even slightly over specked but if you can afford it go for the first!

Trillionaire

Cisco001 wrote: »

What is your budget?
There could be other better spec machine other than those two

I really only want to spend £400 BUT I admit that spending that much is a little bit of a struggle.

Lum

This one is a lot tricker than your other thread so beware the giant wall of text I'm about to write

The AMD based laptop has a faster graphics card that included dedicated graphics memory. This benefits gaming and graphics work. Since it sounds like this is not a huge consideration for you (Minecraft doesn't need huge amounts of graphics power) this may not be what you want.

The Intel based laptop has a faster CPU which mainly benefits productivity software such as MS Office. It may also help a little with certain websites and flash based games such as Farmville.

The AMD laptop as 4 cores, the Intel laptop has only two. This means that a piece of software can do 4 things simultaneously on the AMD system. For software that is written to take advantage of this this is a significant speed boost. For software that doesn't know how to take advantage of this (which is a lot of software) the extra cores end up unused.

If you run multiple programs at once then Windows will spread them across all the cores so they don't slow each other down.

I suppose the best way to try and make all that make sense would be to imagine you own 4 cars with a top speed of 50mph vs owning 2 cars with a top speed of 70mph. If you need to get 4 different objects to 4 different places then the first option will be faster but if you only need to get 2 or 3 objects moved then the second option is probably faster.

Next we come to RAM. The AMD laptop has 8GB RAM which will improve performance in large apps (e.g. giant Excel spreadsheets or huge images in Photoshop) with will also be used to improve disk access and how long it takes apps to start. The Intel laptop only has 6GB, of which some will be used up by the integrated graphics (typically 0.25 - 0.5 GB will be used).

Both laptops have more than enough RAM for a normal person.

So what do you want to do?

If you want to play mainstream commercial games (I mean the likes of Call of Duty, not Minecraft or Farmville) then go for the AMD system.

If you want to run many apps simultaneously, go for the AMD system.

If you want to run one app at a time, but including heavyweight apps such as MS Excel or Photoshop, go for the Intel system.

If you just want to post on MSE and Facebook and read the BBC news, go with the cheapest system.

Trillionaire

Thanks Lum (it's as clear as mud:rotfl::Dbut all the same - THANKS:T).

I think, really, it's all going to boil down to price. What's the best I can get at the cheapest price so - the Samsung 350V5C Windows 8 looks like it. I must admit I'm not sold on the idea of Windows 8. I haven't got a laptop only a desktop pc at the mo which uses Windows XP. I'm planning to buy a wireless mouse to use with the laptop and that alone is technically advanced for me. Still, may as well keep up with the times.

Robisere

Ignore Windows 8. If you have used XP for some time, you will soon get used to Win7. It is the best Operating System that Microsoft has ever made: stable, easy to learn and use and any problems can be dealt with from "Help & Support" built in.

Whichever laptop you intend to buy, take a tip. Go to PC World/Staples/any big supplier with plenty laid out on the shelves to try your hand on. Choose one that you feel comfortable with, take a note of the details (Make, Model etc) and leave the store, to buy it cheaper online.

dmliverpool

In short number one. Windows 8 is still in its early stages and hasn't even got a service pack. in the next 2 years both laptops will need replacing if used heavily. I would always go with a large hdd and ram any day.

Trillionaire

I don't want to have to replace 'my' laptop in 2 years time!!!:eek: I really expect whatever laptop I buy to last a MINIMUM of 3 years.