I'm a high shcool senior right now and I'm planning to buy a new laptop for college sometime soon. The Intel Core Duo came out and I was thinking that it would be a good idea to buy a new laptop with the Core Duo. However, with some research, I found that there would be a newer Intel chip (Merom) coming out in September, the same time Vista comes out. Also, I heard that the current Core Duo (Yonah) is not compatible with Vista.

I'm planning to keep the new laptop I buy for 4 years so would it be better to buy a new laptop now or wait until September to buy one?

I'm currently running a 1.60 GHz P4 512 MB Toshiba laptop that I've had already for 4 years (since my freshman year in high school) and I'm getting sick of it.

Do you really need Vista?

There is always something better around the corner. If you wait for those better things, you'll be waiting forever.

I also concur with >>2.

1 here again.

Well, since a new operating system is coming out, I thought it would be a significant improvement from XP (even though XP is fine as is)
What is good about Vista? Also, in 4 years, do you think XP will still be supported?

Windows 2000 is still supported, right?

Some of us think XP was a step down from 2K, and believe Vista will continue that trend...

2k? When was that released?

>>1
I think there is no issue about whenever a OS is available. Vista's release date isn't very concrete as well.

However I would wait till September because they throw a lot a deals during the "back to school" period.

Buy a Mac, and you'll get the cool features of Vista now, only implemented properly.

What >>9 said. Apple's Core Duo-based laptops have just recently started to ship. Do yourself a favor and leave Windows behind.

>>9 >>10

Could a mod please ban these trolls?

>>9 is banned for flamebait
>>10 is banned for being Albright
>>11 is banned for backseat modding

>>1 here again. Barely any of the good stuff is supported by Macs like games and programs...Just wondering, how accurate is Microsoft's release dates on stuff?

get a dual core turion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turion#AMD_Taylor
64-bit + dual core + freebsd 6 amd64 = absolute fuckwin

>>1 here again. What companies sell laptops with dual core turion?

>>11: Trolls? The OP asked for a Core Duo laptop, and we're recommending one.

>>13: If you want to play games, get a PlayStation. And besides games, there's really not many PC programs out there for which there is either no Mac version or no passable Mac alternative, especially if you count Unix-based programs (viruses being a notable exception). Trust us, millions of Mac users are not suffering for lack of software. Please don't automatically dismiss a computer just because it has an Apple logo on it; you don't know what you're missing.

>>1 here again. No offense, Albright but I prefer PCs over Macs. It's totally not your fault that I forgot to mention that I wanted to buy a PC (Windows) computer. Again, I apologize for the confusion.
So...what companies normally sell AMD chips? I've also heard about the AMD Yamato...Is that going to be better than Merom?

>>13
Do you think your games will run on Vista?

>>15
I'm intrigued about this too.

>>1 here again.. Vista should be backwards compatible right? Just like how I can play win98 games on xp..well...some of them..

>>15
none, yet. it isn't available yet, but will be soon (Q1 2006).

>>21
Well, I'll stay on the lookout for any laptop manufacturers selling dual core Turions in the future, then.

>>20
No.

Unless Microsoft changed their plans and I didn't get the news (which is possible), Vista is going to be mostly incompatible with previous versions of Windows.

>>1 here again. What companies have sold AMD chips in their laptops? I never heard of AMD until recently. I've never seen AMD chips in Toshiba or Sony laptops.

>>24
My last two laptops both had AMD CPUs (a K6-2 and an Athlon XP). The first was Compaq, the second was HP/Compaq.

>>24
http://www.amdboard.com/turion_64_notebook.html
my current laptop is an averatec av4155-eh1

>>23

Hahahah right. Microsoft giving up their single biggest advantage, the huge library of software available, that's likely.

Hint: They're adding new stuff on top of the old, just like always. They might drop some Win 3.11-era APIs, maybe.

>>27
Well, they reconsidered then, because the original plan was to have a whole new filesystem and all sorts of weird new incompatible stuff.

>>27
Ask Raymond Chen how he feels about that huge library of software to be compatible with

>>28

You should know better than to believe ANYTHING Microsoft claims about its software in the early cycles of development. The Microsoft model is approximately:

1. Think up the wildest and most revolutionary ideas you can.
2. Claim you will implement them.
3. Slowly cut back feature after feature due to lack of time or whatever excuse is convenient.
4. Release another iteration of the same old software.

This has been the process since... Windows 95, at least.

So no one has a website or list of companes that usually have AMD chips?

>>31
http://www.amdboard.com/turion_64_notebook.html

Thank you so much, >>32! Though it's kinda weird how I've never heard of 90% of those laptop companies..

Whatever u get it won't be the best for very long. There's always something round the corner I find... and who knows if MS manages to release on time... and I'll wait beyond that if I get interested in Vista for all the major bugs that'll invariably come no doubt.
Get a laptop where the RAM is upgradable at least and avoid Acer like the plague (if it works ur fine... anything goes wrong u might as well throw it out with their tech support... heard FAR too many bad things, and I know of a school who would like to sue them)

I was thinking about the Acer Ferrari since it has turion 64 but is Acer's tech support that bad?