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From Single to Dual Core?

 
Desperado
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Did anyone here recently go from a single core laptop to a dual core one?

I ask because I am tempted to buy a new dual core (Pentium T7500; complete Intel list at http://www.intel.com/intel/finance/pricelist/processor_price_list.pdf?iid=InvRel+pricelist_pdf).

In particular, a Toshiba Tecra A9-S9015X : http://www.toshibadirect.com/td/b2c/pdet.to?seg=HHO&poid=393109

I have a 15.4" Toshiba now but it's a single-core Pentium M 760 (it's not even in the new list above), 2.0 GHz, 2MB of cache and 533Mhz FSB (front side bus). One gig of RAM and 120GB hard drive.

But it's not even a dual core, not even one of the original dual cores. It's *one* CPU. I should not have bought it 1.5 years ago but I digress...

Has anyone here made the transition from a single to dual core laptop and if so, what was the perceived difference in speed? Barely noticeable, moderate, awesome? In between?

I find my present laptop lacking in speed and I am willing to spend almost $1.5K for a (2 GB) Tecra with a Core 2 Duo 7500 and an FSB of 800Mhz (that's a relatively new and higher speed for a commercially available Intel laptop FSB).

If you noticed, that Tecra has Windows XP installed as opposed to Vista. I'd rather have my new hardware NOT be eaten up by a bloated OS.

If you've been following the news, this is the first time enterprises are saying to hardware manufacturers and Microsoft: "yes, we'd like new workstations but hold the Vista!" :-)

Thanks.
 
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I just did that. And its tons faster. But, and this is a big but, I went from an old, slow, small computer to a modern, fast and large one. Specifically, P3-933 with 768MB to dual processor Duo Core @2gHz with 2GB ram.

I got a Lenovo T60P from linuxcertified. Just got it Friday, but so far, I love the speed.
 
Tony Alicea
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Thanks Pat, for the comment. And yes; that's quite a BIG change you made
 
Pat Farrell
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I had to. I am writing serious apps using Java with Tomcat, and I was flat out of power. Apache + Tomcat + netbeans + mysql (along with FireFox, Thunderbird and assorted other stuff) takes a lot of power. Tomcat was obviously taking a lot of power.

I don't know how well the current JVMs handle multi-processor setups. I'm running JDK 1.6.0_02-b05. I've got enough processes that something will use the second processor.
 
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Tony - Bottom line is it depends on what apps you run, and whether they are programmed to take advantage of the architecture.

Apps will get more capable as time goes by.

I'd go with the duo-core assuming money was not a consideration.

Guy
 
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Unless you are a power gamer (for which you should not be using a laptop anyway), you should first make sure you get atleast 2GB RAM before thinking of a dual core processor.

NetBeans/Eclipse + Glassfish + Browser + Outlook + Apache/Tomcat + MySql/OracleXE is a typical developers need. And these will really suck on a system with 1GB RAM. Their processing needs are not all that much though.
 
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