5:49 PM - Computer shopping
I just purchased a laptop last evening. It's been harder to do this time than any point since I got my first computer. There are so many new technologies out that it's a lot to shuffle through. Consider that in the old days, you could look at a few specs and know one computer was better than another. Sure there were quality differences and software packages, but the hardware was easy to figure out.
Between the Intel 486 and the Pentium 4, one could look at the frequency (Mhz or Ghz) number for a rough idea that one processor was faster than another. Then around 2006, they started shipping multicore CPUs. That makes things a lot more complicated. Most people didn't know what a core was. Computer geeks even thought about SMP (symmentric multi-processing) or multiple processors in a computer, not cores. Without getting too crazy, a core is like a brain in the processor. A multicore CPU means it's got more than one brain. The computer can think about multiple problems at the same time. It can do two different tasks at once like play a game and record a movie.
To make matters more confusing, a multicore CPU doesn't mean that it's twice as fast as a single core cpu (old ones). Two nearly identical CPUs, one with 2 cores and another with 1 will not mean the 2 core is twice as fast. There's a math formula to figure out the actual best case performance, but I'll spare you that. Worse yet, if you don't run two programs at once or you don't use a multithreaded program (one program that can do more than one thing at once), you don't get a lot of use out of a multicore CPU. Windows, Mac OS and Linux can use them for their own work.
Some consumers figured out sort of what a multicore CPU was. Intel ran all those fun ads about multiplicity and what not. Then they made major improvements in chip performance, yet with lower frequency (mhz again). So the core 2 duo cpu (a confusing name because the 2 is not the number of cores, but the generation) seemed slower by numbers, but it was faster than the pentium D it replaced (multicore stuff).
So consumers couldn't trust numbers anymore. How to tell what is faster? Intel had this great idea to give them numbers. Any number within the same range would mean a chip is faster than the next. That led to other problems. A 350 might be faster than a 610. That's not intuitive. To make matters worse, Intel would sell chips to computer companies with some features missing.
As a consumer, I have to search intel's website to find out if all the features are then when looking for a computer. Many of them have weird names like hyperthreading or VT or execute disable bit. Do most people even need these things? Maybe. Hyperthreading is a hack intel came up with to trick a processor into thinking it's got 2 brains (cores) when it has 1. This means two programs can run at the same time, but slower than one program if you didn't have that feature. VT is for virtualization. If you buy a highend version of windows and want to use the XP compatibility mode, you need this. Otherwise, it's only good for IT people. Finally, execute disable bit is always a yes. It's a security feature that stops some viruses and other bad programs from working.
So now the computer industry has found a way to make things even more complicated. There is new technology where they combine a graphics card (what makes the picture on the screen) and a processor together. This is a great thing for people who don't play games. It means your laptop will have better battery life. The graphics power in these things is very low compared to discrete graphics (separate video cards) and so they're terrible for WoW, starcraft2 or portal 2. They can run these games, but not fast. The other problem with these integrated chips is that they are usually slower than chips without this feature (especially on the AMD side). AMD has decided that graphics power is more important than CPU power because many people just watch movies or whatever and don't need CPU power. Intel did the opposite and made the graphics just barely enough to watch the latest high def video, but fast CPUs. Intel calls their CPUs with this feature Sandybridge (the codename of the chip/core) and AMD calls theirs fusion with 3 series.. A, E, C (fast to slow)
So when buying a new computer, realize that every small laptop under 14 inches probably has one of these new chips in there. It's going to be not much faster than a 2 year old computer for CPU power. If you buy a 15-17 inch laptop and it's intel, you will probably get a core i3 or core i5 CPU with this feature now. If it's an AMD, you may get it (A series) or a phenom II CPU without it. The chips with it might be as slow as 1Ghz. The type of chip matters too.. i3 is <= i5 <= i7 for intel and c < e < a (no overlap)
The other big thing to look out for are solid state drives (SSD). This is a replacement for hard drives which is what your data is stored on (windows, your files, games, etc). Hard drives use magnets and spinning disks to store information. There are moving parts. You have to wait for the litle read head to get back to where it needs to be (sort of like a cassette tape, but faster) before it reads data. SSD is faster for reading information (usually) because it can go directly to the place something is rather than having the moving parts. It's also said to be more reliable because there are no moving parts. However, I've seen several go bad so ignore those claims. Solder can go and they can only be written to a fixed number of times in one spot. They do wear out. They are expensive and smaller than hard drives. If you don't need speed and you have a lot of movies, music, games, etc stick with hard drives. Eventually SSD will be better, but it's still fairly new technology.