Im planning to buy a new laptop before the end of this year(going to install windows 7 straight on it) but i have some problems... 1. I am given an option to have one of 2 Centrino WLAN cards or neither: "Intel Wi-Fi Link 5100 AGN module" "Intel Wi-Fi Link 5300 AGN module" If i dont take either, will that mean i cant use wireless network? Or what are these used for? 2. What CPU should i choose? I was going for P9500 but i dont really know anything about processors so i dont know if it's the best choise. I'd rather not pay much more if it doesnt improve the performance much. T5800 (2,0 GHz, 2MB L2 Cache) (+€9.00) P8400 (2,26 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 25W) (+€69.00) P8600 (2,4 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 25W) (+€121.00) P8700 (2,53 GHz, 3MB L2 Cache, 25W) (+€188.00) P9500 (2,53 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 25W) (+€169.00) P9600 (2,66 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 25W) (+€279.00) T9400 (2,53 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 35W) (+€210.00) T9550 (2,66 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 35W) (+€249.00) T9600 (2,8 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 23W) (+€319.00) T9800 (2,93 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 35W) (+€439.00) Quadcore Q9000 ( 4x 2,00 GHz, 6MB Cache) (+€159.00) Just incase it matters, here's the other stuff: 15,4" WSXGA HD 1680x1050 (+secondary display) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M 1GB 4GB DDRIII Memory 250GB 2.5" Sata 7200rpm HDD Will use for gaming and drawing. Im also not very interested of battery life as i will mostly use it as portable desktop computer.
The 5300 is just a slightly updates 5100...if it is within a few $ of the same price, go with the 5300. If you do not get either, then you will have to buy a wifi adapter. These can be external (usb or PCMCIA) or internal (much like the 5100 and 5300). Processor: The P9500 is a good choice, yet the Q9000 will be faster in some newer apps and games, but the P9500 will be better with older apps (and new apps writen by lazy programers). Newer games can benifit from the quad-core if they are writen correctly. It is hard to say if the Q9000 or the P9500 will be faster overall, but I would imagine that as the system gets older, the Q9000 will pull away from the P9500 thanks to more applications that work with it. With this in mind (plus the improved multi-core handling of Win7) I would have to recomend the Q9000.
There's 10€ difference between the two wifi things, not much. I suppose 5300 will be better choise in long term. I quess i'll go with Q9000 unless i somehow get some extra spare money for T9600 Thanks alot for the answers
