Topic: what computer are you using?

[FengK]

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 1720, Core2Duo T8300@2.40gHz, 4gb RAM, 240gb 2.5" 5400rpm HDD, nVidia GeForce 8600GT M 256mb video ram, Vista Ultimate 32-bit

Desktop: Intel Core2Quad Q9550@2.83gHz, 4gb RAM, Maxtor 500gb hdd @ 7200rpm, nVidia Quadro FX1500 256mb video ram, Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Thanks Jeff. How much is your laptop and desktop? Btw, your link for Q9550@2.83gHz seems to be broken. It is recognized as an email address when I click on it. After I googled it, I went to this page http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041 and learned a little about it. Do you know if I can use it on a Gateway computer?

[sinc]

My new one, which runs C3D quite well:

sinc, Thanks for the spec. I suppose those part come with warranty? For $2200, it seems to be quite a good investment. And it comes with 22" LCD monitor too. How long you've been using it? Is it possible to add the RAM to 8GB, like 4x2GB?

Various parts come with different manufacturer's warranties.  For the most part, they're about a year.

As far as adding more RAM, that's actually something that had me a bit confused.  The MOBO documentation says that the MOBO can handle up to 12GB of RAM, but it can only support up to 6GB of the fast 1600MHz RAM.  So if I had gotten the next-slower speed of RAM, I could have gotten twice as much.  But with the "fast" RAM, the MOBO docs say it can only support 6GB.  And the MOBO docs further say that this is because of an "Intel spec", so it might not be a limitation on this particular MOBO, but a limitation on all Core i7 MOBOs.  I haven't figured out the details of that one yet.

And it's now Tri-Channel RAM, as opposed to the old Dual-Channel RAM.  This means we now get RAM in matched sets of 3 DIMMs (or whatever they're called now), instead of matched sets of 2 like with the older systems.  That's why I got 3x2GB.  (Just as before, you don't have to get matched sets, but it's a good idea.)  Then the system hits all three at the same time, speeding up memory access, kind of like what a RAID0 array does to hard drives.

[Jeff_M]

Thanks Jeff. How much is your laptop and desktop? Btw, your link for Q9550@2.83gHz seems to be broken. It is recognized as an email address when I click on it. After I googled it, I went to this page http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115041 and learned a little about it. Do you know if I can use it on a Gateway computer?

That "link" was auto-added by the forum software...it saw the @ and figured I was providing an email address.

The laptop was ~$1800 a year ago. I bought the desktop as a package deal from another user here, mr. doggarncity , so I really don't know how much the pc cost.

As far as adding the components to a Gateway...I do not know the answer to that. If you can determine the Maunfacturer & Model of the current mobo, a search should be able to give you that info. I think Gateway uses the same parts we can buy, unlike Dell which uses a lot of parts made just for them.

[FengK]

Thanks again Jeff.

[FengK]

As far as adding more RAM, that's actually something that had me a bit confused.  The MOBO documentation says that the MOBO can handle up to 12GB of RAM, but it can only support up to 6GB of the fast 1600MHz RAM.  So if I had gotten the next-slower speed of RAM, I could have gotten twice as much.  But with the "fast" RAM, the MOBO docs say it can only support 6GB.  And the MOBO docs further say that this is because of an "Intel spec", so it might not be a limitation on this particular MOBO, but a limitation on all Core i7 MOBOs.  I haven't figured out the details of that one yet.

And it's now Tri-Channel RAM, as opposed to the old Dual-Channel RAM.  This means we now get RAM in matched sets of 3 DIMMs (or whatever they're called now), instead of matched sets of 2 like with the older systems.  That's why I got 3x2GB.  (Just as before, you don't have to get matched sets, but it's a good idea.)  Then the system hits all three at the same time, speeding up memory access, kind of like what a RAID0 array does to hard drives.

sinc, thanks for the detailed info on RAM. i'm very much intrigued. The only thing I don't really like is it seems to have these extra RAM, i'll have to be on Vista, correct? Btw, i don't like Office 2007 either.

[sinc]

I prefer Vista x64 to the other versions of Windows.  There were a couple of quirks to get used to, but overall, it's a distinct improvement over XP.  There are still driver issues with some printers, but as long as you don't have that problem, go with Vista x64 as your OS.

If you don't like Office 2007, there's always OpenOffice, which is almost identical to the older Office.  There are a couple of quirks with it - it throws more quote-marks into CSV files than Excel does, which may create an issue if you aren't expecting it.  And I like the way Excel pops up the little gliph that lets you change items after you paste, to "Values Only" or "Formatting Only", etc.  With Open Office's Calc program, you have to do "Paste Special..." and then check/uncheck the things you want to paste, which is not as nice.

Other than that, I generally don't notice much difference between OpenOffice and Office.