[ltp] X60 or X60s?

[Matt Graham]

On Tuesday 13 February 2007 13:42, after a long battle with technology, 
michael@michaelshiloh.com wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Simon Williams wrote:
>> Tom Neumann wrote:
>>> I can't decide whether to buy an X60 or X60s. The X60 has a more 
>>> powerful processor, the X60s probably a better battery life.
>> Processor speed is totally irrelevant unless you are going to be 
>> doing some intensive task- such as compiling or gaming.
>> What is it with the world and constantly upgrading for office work
>> and web browsing?

Documents or HTML pages with embedded videos can eat CPU, for obvious 
reasons.  Since YouTube and various other Flash things are so popular, 
I'd say that web browsing demands ... some CPU speed.  Office?  Depends 
on the amount of data crunching you do.  Mostly-text documents, not so 
much.  Spreadsheets with 10,000 rows, 200 columns, and charts/pivot 
tables everywhere, you want more horses under the keyboard.

>> Personally I think an old 560 (400Mhz) would be perfectly adequate
>> in terms of speed, especially if you are going to run Linux.

Heh.  Use a 2000 MHz machine for a week, then switch back to a 900 MHz 
machine, with very similar software loads on both machines.  You'll 
probably say "WTF?  It's... *slow*!  Do not want!"  BTDT.

> I guess the question for Tom is: What are your main application? Do
> you surf the web and email, do you run multiple virtual computers
> (Vmware, etc.), do you compile a lot, do you do lots of graphic
> manipulation e.g. with Gimp? I've found gimp to really slow things 
> down on old machines. 

VMWare?  Get the fastest thing you can.  Compiling?  Faster is better, 
obviously, but more RAM can help almost as much.  Yeah, Tom should 
answer this question, it'll help people give good advice.

-- 
   If you go hit yourself with a plank, it would make a freely available
   Unix-like operating system to everyone.
   --MegaHAL, trained on RMS and the BOFH
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see