Comments on Because I said so: Might be looking for a new laptop

Thanks for the comment Shaun! Are they even makin...

2009-10-20T10:18:50.845-05:00

Thanks for the comment Shaun! Are they even making a 32 bit version of Windows 7? I guess I just thought 64 bit would be the default, but I definitely do want that. My wife's newer HP Laptop is a 64 bit and it runs great!

If you're going to get 4 or more GB of RAM, rememb...

2009-10-20T07:37:19.216-05:00

If you're going to get 4 or more GB of RAM, remember to get a 64-bit version of Windows, so the operating system is able to utilize the additional RAM. Good call on going with Windows 7 rather than Vista. Also, there are some nice additional features in Windows 7 Professional that could make it a better choice than home premium. You can see a feature comparison here: LINK.

I'm rendering at minimum 20 minutes of video each ...

2009-10-20T01:29:47.678-05:00

I'm rendering at minimum 20 minutes of video each week, and most weeks more than that. I do my sermon videos, and I try to do videos of our 11 week old son so I can post them online for the grandparents to watch since they don't live here in town. The kid videos are usually short, but from time to time we combine them for archival purposes as much as anything. Video is intensive on the system, that is for sure. As for the Corel software, it is pretty straight forward and simple. I haven't read a manual and have managed to do everything I want to do. At some point I'll read the manual, as I suspect there is functionality I am missing, but for the time being I'm getting by. The manual is pretty extensive, which adds to my hesitancy to read it!

Yeah, if you don't have the HD, it's probably not ...

2009-10-20T01:25:00.071-05:00

Yeah, if you don't have the HD, it's probably not worth the quad core for another year or two at least. I have to think better ones will come out for laptops by then. The Core 2 Duo is powerful enough on its own, especially if you're up close to 3 gHz. But if you're only rendering a few videos a year, you can probably afford to stay closer to 2.4. You'll have to post what you wind up getting.

Thanks for the comment Joey. I'd like a Quad Core...

2009-10-20T01:10:47.720-05:00

Thanks for the comment Joey. I'd like a Quad Core without a doubt, but as you discovered, they are few and far between at this point. I have been editing our video on my wife's HP with a Core 2 Duo and it has done OK with it. Slow to render after I work on it though, about 45 minutes of processing for a 25 minute video. So I can only imagine how slow the HD might go.

Wow, nice leg work. I just bought a laptop a mont...

2009-10-20T00:23:13.386-05:00

Wow, nice leg work. I just bought a laptop a month and a half ago so I'm pretty fresh off of the research train and almost to a T I was on the same page as you with specs. The biggest differences with my machine is I wanted to do HD video editing, which I guess is a whole different animal than SD video editing. (I'm using PowerDirector but have heard good things about Corel too.) Pretty much everyone says you need a quad processor to do that and they're practically non-existent on laptops. I was finally able to track one down that wasn't over $2,000 (still $1,300 through Best Buy, but a heck of a deal compared with most quads out there). It's an HP Pavilion, dv7-2185dx.

So it's over 17 inches because anything with a quad is big, but if it weren't for the HD factor I'd have gone your route. It's much cheaper and you don't need that much screen. I completely agree on a minimum of 4 GB of RAM. RAM seems to double every 2 years or so already so starting small will just mean you'll have to upgrade. Plus for video editing, it can be priceless.