Laptop or L's?

[vvizard]

Went to the ATM before work today, to find out if the salaray had arrived. And yes indeed it had. Not only that, but last years holiday-money too! =D I wasn't even able to read the amount, cause in my eyes, all there stood on the ATM-display was:

"Would you like to withdraw a Laptop, or a couple of L's?" :shock: :shock:

So what would you have chosen? I'm going to military services this autumn, and obviously I can't bring my stationary dual-screen computer with me :( I have access to other computers there of course, but no one I can call _mine_, and do what I please with. And beeing stuck on Microsoft Windows for any amount of time longer than 15min freaks me out.. Really :roll:

So would you buy the laptop to have a decent system while in military, or would you buy some L's to have some decent photography while there? :-P If I take the laptop, it leaves me ~ $800-$1000 from the sale of my old computer (without screens, which I'm keeping), so I might still get an L before the service (which starts in August). And I also get my tax-refund (which equals another (cheap) L (like the 17-40) in October).

Decissions.... Help me out! I know you love to help a fellow forum-member to spend his money :twisted:

[vvizard]

So laptop there will be.. Put my stationary system up for sale now (P4 2.55GHz (northwood), 1GB RAM, a sh*tload of networking cards, (wireless, several gigabit-cards, several "regular" 10/100mbps's and bluetooth), cd-writer, dvd-player, 160GB disk, 6xUSB-2.0, etc, etc, and so on.. Hope to get ~ $800-900 for it. It will be replaced by a...

Dell laptop.
Centrino 1.7GHz with 2MB(!!!) L2-cache and 400MHz frontsidebus.
15.4" 1980x1200 16:10 widescreen
Buying it with 256MB RAM only, as checking extra ram directly from dell costs a fortune. I will upgrade it to 1024MB, but will buy the memory from webshops and install it myself.

Anybody got experience with this 2MB l2-version of the Pentium-M, and can tell me what to expect in performance compared to my current 2.55GHz p4?

[pradeep1]

L is an investment. Laptop is just a thing that will become obsolete and replaced within two years. Of course, it all depends on what your immediate needs are and what L glass you already own. If I were in your situation, I'd probably do the same thing and opt for spending the extra cash on a "cheaper" L.

I'd say you will take a serious performance hit with your Pentium-M with only 256 MB RAM. At least get an upgrade to 512MB for the memory and a video card upgrade if it is possible. That will give you the most "speed" upgrade for the money. You won't notice too much of a difference between the processors, unless you are doing heavy editing on your laptop. Maybe a 15-20% hit in processing power from what I have seen with Pentium-M laptops.

[RichardtheSane]

So, national service... you get paid for it right?
And you don't get so much time to spend the cash as in a regular job... yes?

Get the L glass now so you can start using it, and buy the laptop in a month or two :)

[Andy_T]

Richard,

Nations that have involuntary military service normally don't show up among the highest salary-payers ... when I did my service in 88 (Austria), the going rate for a day of my work was a pint of beer and a pack of cigarettes (US$ 5.-).

Hope that's better in Norway, though....

Another word of advice ... I didn't get to use my computer a lot there... they have all sorts of interesting activities to help you spend your time :lol:

Best regards,
Andy

[vvizard]

You're paid, but not nearly enough to save for laptop's or L's ;) You get ~ $15/day, which really is not much at all. And if you smoke (like me), and live in Norway (where 20 cigs cost $9.5) you basically don't have more money left than a couple of beers at the pub every second weekend ;)

Anyway. I sold my workstation to a buddy of mine. A software-engineer which is buying it. His girlfriend really wanted it but couldn't afford it. So he's buying it, ripping out the gigabit network-cards for use in a server, and give the "remainings" to his girlfriend. He even paid me $1050, inclusive my 19" Hyundai monitor. Quite a good deal for me I think, as the computer is two years old in august :lol: (still powerfull though).

So I ordered my laptop today. 1.7GHz Pentium-M with 2MB L2-cache, and 400MHz FSB :) According to Intel, it shall rival my former P4 CPU @ 2.9GHz. And my old one was 2.26 (running at 2.55). So hopefully I will either don't see any difference, or get an improvement in processing power. I ordered it with a 1920x1200 16:10 15.4" monitor with higher resolution than my old 19", and that's why I sell the 19" along with the pc. No need to have a 19" CRT 170 (metric) miles away from the laptop is it? :-P I also ordered a single-chipped 512MB DDR-chip, and will either supplement it with another 512MB on the next salary, or (if I can bare with the performance of 512MB for a while) wait til I can afford a single-chipped 1GB, to boost it up to 1.5GB. At least I'm not going to live long with less than 1GB, as that's what I'm used to having in my computers.

Small disk, and no dvd-writer. So I need either a dvd-writer soon, or an external harddrive. Think I'll go for a harddrive.. I chose a 64MB Nvidia Geforce FX go, over a faster 128MB Radeon 9600 PRO. Why? Because Nvidia got great Linux-drivers, while ATI's _SUCK_ ;)

And on the Laptop vs L's.. I chose laptop, as I don't have much need for L-lenses on a digital camera unless I have a computer to process those images do I? :-P Will spend the next days trying to figure how the hell to compress 160GB down to 30, and another couple of days after the arrival of my baby, to compile a linux-from-scratch setup. So see you guys in a week or so ;)

[Sendide]

as said,
L lens is to keep much much longer than a laptop. besides, you said you can have access, even partially to some army computers. this "temporary" time will finish at the same time a newer faster and maybe sheaper laptop will show up. none of that can be the case of L lenses.
Go L GO :wink:

[vvizard]

Hehe, true, but still my interest for computers is bigger than my interest for photography *hiding*. Besides, the cost of a computer I will anyway have earned back many times before I have to replace the computer. I can't exactly say I earn money from my camera-gear :lol:

[leony]

L glass will always be there. Lenses are useless if you don't have a computer to store/process images.

[psk4363]

Oh My God (to sub-quote 'Friends',

Without doubt go for the 'L' lens - the are trouble free, superb, hold their value, and seexxxxxy!

A laptop? 10 a penny! Get one at any time - re-sale value is nowehere near as close! Clearly not as orgasmismic as a sex-on-one-leg 'L'lens.

'Nuff said!

Barry

[karusel]

vvizard, gee whizz, do you really expect a horde of L junkies voting for laptop? Hell, I don't even own an L and have voted for it! :mrgreen:

Hey who voted for the laptop? The P&S guys or the computer geeks? :twisted: :lol:

Seriously though, it all depends on what you need most, which is not necessarily what you want most. I'm sure you made the right decision.