New Laptop Spec

[Hinchlt]

I'm going to be acquiring a new laptop next month.

I tend to split my time between my flat, girlfriends and parents so buying a desktop is not an option.

Looking at building a 17 inch Vaio E (education discount and 0% on a 12 month finance deal ftw)

Needs to be able to run a pretty large pt4 db, spotify, and around 8-10 tables

Wondering what impact the difference between i5 and i7 will have, and the difference between 500gb and 1tb hdd will have on performance?

[bobAlike]

If you can afford i7 get i7. Definite performance advantage although the i5 is not bad. 500Gb or 1Tb will not make a dif to performance. For performance improvements get an SSD.

[Hinchlt]

ssd's cost a bomb!

In that case the 60 quid difference between the 500gb and Tb aint worth it then?

[skolsuper]

You can get hybrid drives now with performance close to a full SSD but the capacity and cost nearly as good as a regular hard drive.

[wazz]

The cost of SSDs is justified and has gone down a lot. You should prefer to spring for an SSD over an i7, for sure.

[theprawnidentity]

As someone who bought an extremely high spec laptop (Alienware), I really wish I had paid a bit more money for the SSD.  The standard hard drive really lets the rest of the system down, ESPECIALLY when it comes to running a large PT4 database.

[titaniumbean]

honestly you can't consider not getting an ssd.

that would be so -ev it hurts.

[kinboshi]

+lots for the SDD as well.

Makes such a difference.