I'm getting a new laptop, and I need suggestions ASAP. Know-it-alls with strong opinions really appreciated.
I don't really know much about laptop hardware... but it generally seems worse than the desktop hardware I bought 2 years ago.
I am noticing T series and P series intel chips.... not sure which to go with. Maybe T means centrino? From what I remember, from a long time ago, centrino seemed like somewhat of a scam.... low powered chips with a supposedly great battery life.... that in actuality wasn't much longer than other much more efficient chips.
I basically want something that runs general purpose stuff quite quickly, with a good ability to multitask. I would like a quadcore, but they aren't common in laptops, and I don't want to over-pay (so I will likely get 2 cores). I also want decent memory on my graphics card... but I'm not sure whether to go with an internal or external graphics card. Sometimes they don't even seem to make a distinction in the descriptions anymore... I've just seen some comps with like 1.5 gig graphics cards, and other more expensive comps with 512 MB graphics cards (but with other components the same). I can only assume that the 512 MB ones are in fact much better, but I'm not sure why? (external, etc).
I probably won't take the computer around too much, but a 17" monitor is probably too big for my liking, and 14" is too small. So somewhere in the 14-17 range would be ideal.
(Also, I'm not going to get a Mac. Not because I have something against them, I just don't want to make that jump right now).
