2011 Dell Laptop and Video Options

[memphisdave]

Howdy,

Fixing to buy a new laptop. Thinking Dell. One of their low to mid range Inspirons or similar with an Intel I3 or I5 chip, no Celeron or AMD. Most of these utilize the Intel on-board graphics chipset/package claiming up to 1.6g shared, etc. An upgrade video card, if even avlble on these models, is extra. NVidia seems to be their primary provider, etc., for the laptops. Found a few 512mb dual Radeons. Have seen various forum comments time to time about driver problems w/some NVidia product in the past years. Wonder if that seems to have been corrected by now. And, on this question, does anyone have anything against the current Dell crop of laptops for Hoster. Had real good luck/service out of the two Dell cpu's I have been using for last 6 yrs. An l/t and a desktop.

Only real problem I ever had:
Been using an older Dell l/t aprox 6+ years old. Bought a couple upgrades over several years and jumped from v3.316 to the 4.... versions. Could never correct the random, momentary hang of lyrics and music, and then a 'jump' fwd to catch up I acquired in several of the 4.0 versions, so stayed with the old 3.316. The problem occurred especially while importing from a singers disc during a song performance. (Note: never a problem with 3.316 importing while a singer was singing... started after 4.0.. upgrades) Did all the tweaks and changes perquisites. Actually chkd'em several times to make sure I'd not missed any. So.... short story, finally decided my old single processor 1.73ghz along with my on-board Intel 128mb shared graphics/video just didn't have the juice to handle the newer Hoster versions adequately. When using the Windows Task Mgr to monitor processes, performance and etc., it shows my cpu is being utilized at 100% when playing and importing a singer's disc song.

Anyway... old cpu's and time to upgrade, and use the old ones for the kids or email, etc.

Now, on the new 5.0+ version of Hoster: Have been running the demo 5 or 6 times and the hangs in lyrics/music problems haven't surfaced. Same old l/t and d/t cpu's. However, the time to import while also playing a song/singing is twice what it was on the 3.316 version.... but, no glitches have shown up so far, yeah! The Task Mgr. still indicates 100% cpu usage. As said, I'm gonna buy a new laptop as it is way past time, etc.

Any thoughts on RAM and video or anything pertinent to better performance in a new laptop buy is very appreciated. Figure to be using Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OS on the new l/t.

Thanks to all y'all for your posts, assistance, knowledge, and the time you take to share with all of us and each other. Def, a very good forum we have here... for all the products!

Dave

Dell XPS M140 1.73ghz single processor. 2GB RAM. Intel on-board shared graphics.
Win XP SP3
Hoster
MicroStudio
KHPro
VoGone