At the beginning of September, my mother got really cross with me about something and called me a 'Little Shit'. I had a really hard time getting over it. She doesn't normally talk like that and she's never called me anything like that before. I think my 'clinical depression' had stretched her thin and I was certain she hated me. I hoped she was mad enough to gather up the courage to kill me, because I'm too scared of pain to do it myself.
AT the time, I decided to wholeheartedly bury myself into the task of looking for laptop to get my mind of things, everything, if possible. My research has led me to conclude that:
- I REFUSE to buy anything Samsung (our netbook is Samsung and although the loyal thing has served me well, I loathe it. The speed of the processor is as slow as death)
- I will ONLY buy HP or Toshiba (wishing on a star for a pink Toshiba to fall into my lap)
- My sister (we shall call her Azure) advised on an Intel Pentium processor (had NO idea what that was until recently and that alone makes me feel all smart and technical) which has narrowed my search down to mainly HP laptops
- Between £200 and £500-ish pounds, the model that looked best was a HP G6, hey hey hey.
Over the last few days, I have learnt more about laptops than ever in my life. So here is the next issue - any laptop I get MUST be able to play The Sims 2 and ALL expansions, or I'm not interested.
- graphics card for most HP G6 laptops with Intel Pentium processor are Intel HD graphics card
- was told on the HP helpline that this should play Sims, but internet research had told me otherwise
- apparently Intel are not know for their graphics because most of their products use an Integrated Graphics card
So. Integrated Graphics is when the graphics card is not seperate by itself, but instead built directly into the motherboard. And what the fuck does that mean? Well, it means that it has a small amount of RAM available and so takes some of the main system's RAM, which means the main system has less. Which is a bad thing, because it means the system's performance (possiby the video or graphics card as well) will be lower, and that's bad if you have a burning desire to play The Sims 2.
Additionally, The Sims 2 was intended to be played on a PC, not a laptop.
My next question was, WHAT IS RAM? The best answer I got was; RAM is like a blackboard. When your system wants to open a program or application, it opens it up on the blackboard of your computer and wipes it clean after. So if your RAM is really big, it's like a really big blackboard that you can open loads of files on, and you can do more things at once. Which is great.
So I had a browse on Very dot co dot uk, and found a laptop...
- HP (G6 model)
- Intel Pentium
- Between £200 and £500 (it cost about £300-and-something, it was on sale.)
- Purple
- 4GB RAM
- 750 memory
It all looked very promising, but something small was niggling at me... this laptop did not have a number pad. It's not really a very huge deal, but after using the Samsung netbook without a number pad, I can tell you that I DO NOT LIKE IT. Also because I use asterisks as my signature sometimes (being Star, durh) and it gets tiresome to keep pressing 'shift' before '8'.
But the other alternative didn't look much better; it had a number pad, but was a darker shade of purple, and the mouse pad was slightly on the left-hand side. That irked me just as much.
Then, I had a revelation. WHy was I limiting myself to Intel Pentium? I knew why I wanted HP (it's a good make), a certain price (I have a budget), and a certain colour (I am peculiar), but I had only narrowed down the search to that specific result because the advice to get Intel Pentium had been given to me by...
AZURE! That little rat. I phoned her up and she explained that Intel Pentium had loyally served our family for generations (two). But whilst doing my research, Intel Core was voted to be the most favourited processor. Then I went on the Intel site and they gave me a very handy guide. I think it went something like this
- Intel Core i7 *****
- Intel Core i5 ****
- Intel Core i3 ***
- Intel Pentium **
- Intel Celeron *
As for the processor in my netbook, Intel Atom, it didn't even make the list. I wonder why! What a joke.
I decided that i3 was the one I wanted - why not? I didn't need anything hardcore, I wasn't video editing or using Photoshop, I just wanted to check my emails, type my stories and play The Sims 2. Despite reading online that it might not be the one to choose if I was going to play games, The Sims 2 isn't THAT demanding, and Intel graphics are are said to have vastly improved in the last few years. An i3 laptop (I've decided to go for a nice red) costs a whopping £499 pounds, only £1 within my budget (damn).
- HP (G6 model)
- Red
- £499
- 1TB memory
- 6GB RAM
- 15.6 inch
Upgrading to i5 is £50 more, which is tempting, but seeing as I have already spent £70 on books for university, and I haven't even bought all the books yet, I have decided it is a luxury I can REALLY do without. And I also think I'll wait until my laptop is on sale.
That's my findings so far. I feel quite proud that I found that all out by myself, when previously I had no idea what I wanted and began my search by putting 'good laptop' into Google (bad idea).
This is just one thing I found to distract myself, I will need to find a few more... saying that, I reread a favourite manga of mine, Immortal Rain, but I think that topic is for another post. Wait until I tell you how much I just spent on a set of manga books... =s
Star.
Star.
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