Re: laptop recommendation to run mathematica fast?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg101101] Re: laptop recommendation to run mathematica fast?
- From: WetBlanket <Wyvern864 at gmail.com>
- Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2009 06:31:34 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <h1qcu0$7u9$1@smc.vnet.net>
On Jun 23, 6:05 am, John Fultz <jfu... at wolfram.com> wrote: > Most people wouldn't consider the Eee PC a laptop. Wikipedia lists it as a > "subnotebook/netbook". If you were looking for speed first and portability > second, you're at the wrong end of the hardware scale. The design of netbooks > factors portability and battery life as strong primary and secondary goals, withperformance as a distant tertiary goal. I have an Eee PC, too, which serves me > very well. I have Mathematica and a couple of other CPU-sucking applications > on it. But I understand that, if I expect to use them, I'm going to be > engaged in some thumb-twiddling. That's the price I pay for a six hour > battery life in a two pound package. > > On the other hand, there's a lot more variety in laptops. Some laptops favor > portability strongly, some favor performance strongly, and some attempt to > balance the two (this is a gross simplification...there are other factors, too, > but you get the idea). I don't follow laptops on a regular basis, so I > couldn't give you any helpful suggestions for what's on the market now. > But I replace my own laptop about every three years, and I never have > trouble finding something in the $2500-$3300 range with a nice large screen, > decent sized hard drive, and reasonably fast CPU. Such laptops are > available from all of the major vendors (e.g., Dell, Lenovo, Apple). > And in the modern day and age, dual core is standard even in many of > the cheaper laptops. > > Good luck in your shopping. > > Sincerely, > > John Fultz > jfu... at wolfram.com > User Interface Group > Wolfram Research, Inc. > > On Sun, 21 Jun 2009 07:04:58 -0400 (EDT), underante wrote: > > hello, > > > perhaps someone can recommend me a laptop to run Mathematica fast? > > > i bought a asus eee pc 901 recently, which tho very cute pink and quiet, > > (when the fan is off anyway!) it does return a rather disappointing > > internal benchmark of around 0.32 for both Mathematica v7 and v5.2 with > > windows XP. > > > what with Moore's law and all that i had vaguely reckoned that in 2009 a > > new machine should be running a lot faster than that since i have a circa > > 2001, 8 years old 1 GHz pentium dell inspiron laptop with 128Mbyte of RAM > > that benchmarks Mathematica 5.2 at 0.27 under windows ME, so that the > > small increase in speed that i do see could be wholly put down to the > > intel atom N270 in the asus running that little bit faster at 1.6 GHz. > > > anyway, i am looking to buy a somewhat bigger screened laptop in the next > > few weeks, so if you have, or know, of something that will run the > > internal Mathematica v7.0 benchmark at, well, lets say, 3.0 or more?, > > i.e. about ten times faster than what i have now, i would be very > > interested to know what make and model it is, as i have had little luck > > so far trawling the web for such info, and tho the wolfram benchmark > > report mentions various intel xeons running at speeds of 3.75 or more i > > cant say ive ever seen a laptop with one of these chipsets inside it, and > > no mention whatever is made of these ubiquitous intel core 2 duo things , > > quadcore or not, or what i could expect from them. > > > thankyou > > > f.c > > > (oh, i would just add that since i will be using the machine for other > > things besides mathematica it would be best for me to continue with > > windows a while longer, but if you get a nice turn of speed under > > linux or mac OS please feel free to say so!) Try Dell's XPS series for a large screen large format fast laptop.