Help Put This in Perspective For Me

[Ralph23]

Alright, so with the technical side of computers, I consider myself somewhat of a newbie. (Eg- not sure about the real difference between AMD vs Intel even though I know Intel is better in quality.) Anyway, I recently bought a new Sony Vaio FW Custom-To-Order and it should be here in about a week. I built is focussing on performace and speed.

I'd like to know how "good" this machine is going to be, so I figured I'd give you the specs of my desktop computer (that I'm using now) and the specs of my new laptop, and maybe you could tell me how much better (worse?) the laptop will perform than the desktop.

New Laptop - Sony Vaio FW CTO
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T9400 (2.53GHz)
OS - Windows Vista Home Premium
Graphics - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3650 (512MB vRAM)
Memory - 3GB (going to upgrade to 4GB)
HDD - 250 GB SATA Hard Disk Drive (7200 rpm)
Unrelated Screen - LCD 16.4" (XBRITE-FullHD)


Old Desktop - eMachines T5230
CPU - AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core processor 4400+ 64-bit processor with AMD64 Technology (2.3GHz | 2 x 512MB L2 Cache | 2000MHz System Bus)
OS - Windows Vista Home Premium
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE (Up to 128MB shared video memory)
Memory - 1.5GB
HDD - 250GB SATA II (7200rpm, 2MB cache)

So... what do I got here? I'm an above average computer user, a freelance web designer at that. I use big IDE programs as well as Photoshop and Flash alot, with the odd game of Warrock (or something similar, nothing like Gears of War or any of that Current-Gen stuff). So along with performance and speed, I wanted the laptop to look good (hence the FUll-HD screen )

Anyway. Did I go overboard for my needs? Did I not do good at all? Will my experience with this laptop be way superior than my experience with my current desktop?


Thanks alot for any input guys, I appreciate it.
(Also, if you read, my laptop has 3GB ram and I'm planning to upgrade to 4GB. Is that overkill?)

 

[philbar71]

that laptop will blow the desk top out of the water. you will notice a big difference.
4gb of ram is good. especially if you do photoshop or similar.

 

[Ralph23]

lol, perfect... that's what I was hoping

 

[veg1992]

Intel isn't better "quality" but just performance winner currently..

Anyways the Laptop is loads better, but may I ask how much you are paying? I want to make sure you aren't paying too much

 

[meat_helmet]

Check that they are putting vista 64bit on it if you are getting 4GBs of RAM. 32bit operating systems will not utilize more than ~3.2 and so it would be a waste of cash getting an extra 1GB.

 

[Ralph23]

Yeah, it's 64 bit. The desktop though is 32 bit.

Anyway, the end price after tax/shipping was around $1500.

 

[veg1992]

Overpriced.. you could have gotten somethingbetter

 

[patonb]

Unless you specified, i think it'll be x86 Vista. I just got a new acer, and looking at setups, alot, especially with 3Gigs ram, were only 32bit vista.

 

[C0RR0SIVE]

Most manufactures will only ship 32bit vista, but the 32bit cdkey will work fine if he obtains a copy of x64 vista home premium, activation and everything will go thru just fine... But the down side is, some of the parts on his lappy may not have 64bit drivers just yet... BTW Intel isn't better in quality, they just have the upper hand against AMD, where as AMD had the upper hand a few years ago against Intel.

 

[Ralph23]

Yeah, its 64 bit, like I already said. Glad it is too, because of the ram upgrade I want.
Anyway, yeah, I also heard that Sony likes to overprice their laptops. Eh, what are ya gonna do. I wanted that screen.