Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors.
Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker.
Page 1 of 6 123 ... LastLast
Results 1 to 10 of 59

Thread: New laptop time.

  1. #1
    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    East Yorkshire
    Age
    68
    Posts
    26,829

    Default New laptop time.

    Possibly. Lease can be upgraded on my six year old laptop. I know that 8gig of ram and 1Tb of storage is a good staring point, but what processor? I reckon I can get i3 models, but how does that compare to Celeron et al? Dual core, quad core? Help!!

    All thoughts appreciated.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

    www.excaliburmobiledisco.co.uk

  2. #2
    DJColsie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jun 2013
    Location
    Portsmouth
    Posts
    452

    Default

    The best upgrade I made to mine was to have SDD (Solid Disk Drive I think) instaed of a Hard Disk Drive. Much much faster and no mechanicals like a HDD so can't crash loosing all your data.

    I would have thought i3 would have been fine. I guess the faster the better.

    4GB of RAM would be OK, 8GB faster and better.

    I am sure techy people with far more knowledge and valued opinions will be along soon.

  3. #3
    Resident Antagonist Benny Smyth's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Worcestershire
    Age
    38
    Posts
    1,962

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Excalibur View Post
    Possibly. Lease can be upgraded on my six year old laptop. I know that 8gig of ram and 1Tb of storage is a good staring point, but what processor? I reckon I can get i3 models, but how does that compare to Celeron et al? Dual core, quad core? Help!!

    All thoughts appreciated.
    That's bloody good going for a laptop.

    The laptop I use to run Traktor is almost exactly the same but using an i5 processor.

  4. #4
    DazzyD's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2008
    Location
    Between Sunderland & Durham
    Age
    48
    Posts
    5,064

    Default

    I use a new Asus X-Series with i3 processor, 8gb RAM, 1.5Tb HDD and Win10. It plays VDJ fine. Under £500 from Argos.
    Dazzy D
    Lightning Disco & Entertainment

    Born to make you party!

  5. #5
    Web Guru Marc J's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Edinburgh
    Posts
    3,340

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by DJColsie View Post
    ...SDD (Solid Disk Drive I think) instaed of a Hard Disk Drive. Much much faster and no mechanicals like a HDD so can't crash loosing all your data.
    To say SSD drives can't crash is just wrong. And when they do crash (just as often as HDDs), data recovery from them (if you need it) is much harder and more expensive.

    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/data-recovered-failed-ssd/

  6. #6
    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    East Yorkshire
    Age
    68
    Posts
    26,829

    Default

    Thanks for the info so far lads.
    Two points I forgot to stipulate, budget is £350-400, and it's coming from Currys/ PCWORLD.

    Probably.

    As is so often the case, if I jump ship with them, there's a fairly big short term financial penalty, although I'd possibly save long term. It might also mean postponing the swap as well, cos this is an early upgrade offer. I have a lot of sums to do, but I don't expect going elsewhere will save me a lot.

    The leftfield option is to rebuild the older one. Acer 5520, 2gig ram, 120 gig hd, and a 1.8ghz fual core Athlon processor. Again, I haven't done the sums, but I can see upgrading that work out dearer.

    Keep the thoughts coming lads, and if anyone can explain the relative ranking of a few processors, that would be great. Thanks.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

    www.excaliburmobiledisco.co.uk

  7. #7

    Join Date
    Nov 2014
    Location
    Durham, Co Durham
    Posts
    3,156

    Default

    Not sure about AMD processors these days Peter (I avoid them like the plague), but with Intel the pecking order goes as follows:

    Celeron,
    then i3,
    then i5,
    then i7

    Celeron having the least grunt & i7 having the most in terms of processing power.

    Within each class there are 'clock speeds' which basically tell you how fast the processor runs. e.g. a Celeron at 2Ghz will be faster than a Celeron at 1.5Ghz. Ah, but what about differences between classes, like a Celeron at 2Ghz ... will it be faster than say an i3 running at 1.8Ghz ? A good rule of thumb is that clock speed for speed, a latter class processor will do better. Whether or not you'll notice any benefit with Djing software ... probably not. My current laptop was a refurb deal from PC World, an HP G6 with Core i3, 8GB RAM.. and was a shade over £300 - and when I'm not DJing (on Linux) with it, I edit video under Windows with it. It's no slouch but not as fast as I'd like (nothing ever is!).

  8. #8
    Dinosaur Excalibur's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    East Yorkshire
    Age
    68
    Posts
    26,829

    Default

    Justin, that's immensely helpful. Ta. As i started to read more about these, I'd sort of worked out a lot of what you said. Seems like my choice is akin to Hobsons, given my budget, although I did find a Toshiba from Ebuyer that was very good spec for sensible money.
    Excalibur. Older than the average DJ.

    www.excaliburmobiledisco.co.uk

  9. #9

    Join Date
    Nov 2014
    Location
    Durham, Co Durham
    Posts
    3,156

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Excalibur View Post
    Justin, that's immensely helpful. Ta. As i started to read more about these, I'd sort of worked out a lot of what you said. Seems like my choice is akin to Hobsons, given my budget, although I did find a Toshiba from Ebuyer that was very good spec for sensible money.
    No problemo. I find it hard to keep pace with all the numbers but at least Intel decided to classify their processors in a way mere mortals can understand. My next machine will be coming soon & will be an i5. I'd settle for another i3 with a backlit keyboard though - but for less than £500? NAH!

  10. #10

    Join Date
    Aug 2014
    Location
    Chichester, West Sussex
    Posts
    51

    Default

    Tips!

    If you can wait until January, it's always the best month for genuine computer bargains as stores want to get rid of access Christmas stock before the next round of new technology is launched it February.

    Hybrid hard drives are getting to be standard. They have a sort of SSD drive that contains the operating system (windows) and the rest a normal HDD.

    Look in PC world by all means, but sometimes direct from ASUS or HP might save you a few extra ££'s or let you get a better spec PC, easier to deal with than the students

    By an external Hard drive that contains at least enough music to get you by PLUS a full copy of your DJ software, so if you laptop goes down, you just need to borrow one and install your software on it and you are back in business!

    Hope this helps

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •