I'm planning on getting the Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook with 1 gb ram and the 256 Geforce 6800 video card. I get 4 choices for CPU speeds - (GHz)2.0, 1.86, 1.73 and 1.60. Of course the prices go up according to amount of processor speed considerably. I would like to know what is the best choice to run Poser 6 and Bryce 5.5 for the least amount of money to spend. I would appreciate any input on this, thanks!

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Whats the difference in price from the 2ghz to the 1.6 and are they the M chips......i'm running a packard bell with a 1.8 centrino, 1gb ram and an ATI card, so far its been great with poser but i haven't had it long, if it would help i can give more info in about a week or so when i've had more chance to test it.......Steve

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Being a computer giru, I would suggest you buying the 2 gig machine. Poser 6 is a memory and speed hog. The Geforce video card is one of the best you can get. Nvidia is better than ATI in my opinion. The 1 gig of ram is plenty but most people run 2 gigs which is what I have. I hope this helps. Adrian

Is there an echo in here ?? ;-)

in here here ere ere ere e e... :D

Being a forum guru, I would recommend deleting all but one of those posts.

BTW -- I've sent IM's to people in the past, clicked on "send" just one (1) time, and had the intended addressee receive 6 or so copies of my IM.

Your probably right on the ATI, i don't know enough to argue, though i must say that my main poser machine has an Nvidia card, my laptop and MCE machine have ATI cards and the only one i've had poser problems with was the NVidia LOL.......Steve

It's a Pentium M Processor and the price difference is $340 between the 1.60 and 2.0. Ive read discussions here on processor power, ram and video memory but I don't remember which one was more important to have.

All three matter of course. A lot. But I'd say that RAM matters most -- at least for 3D programs.

BTW - keep in mind that video cards which are optimized to enhance PC gaming don't necessarily work well with 3D apps like Poser. In fact, a great gaming card might even work negatively with 3D applications.

A thought that only occures to me now after the fact. LCDs have a bulb life of so many hrs. Stand alones for PCs fequently state the life on the specs. I've never thought of it for laptops but then I never had the LCD on one die before...until now. My lap tops screen just died.

If the info can be found I'd say check screen lifes between brands to find the longest lived one. It REALY SUCKs when a useful laptops screen goes out.

Attached Link: http://www.xtremenotebooks.com/

Buy your RAM from www.newegg.com. I got a gig stick PC2700 DDR for my laptop in a high quality brand name for 103. Dell wanted 230 for the same amount of RAM.

Thanks for the tip CorwinRathe, Dell does charge alot for the ram but like you said, if I get it at Newegg, I could probably get 2 gigs for the prices Dell charges. XENOPHONZ - what do you think of the 256MB NVIDA GeForce Go 6800? Will it be good for Poser and Bryce...D|S for that matter also since I need it to import Poser stuff too? Thanks for the other tips mylemonblue and MachineClaw.

Attached Link: http://www.cnet.com

Laptops have to make compromises, because of energy, heat, and space considerations. I've found laptops tend to be less robust and more expensive than an equivalently priced desktop PC. Another consideration is a laptop is more prone to being damaged or stolen. If space is a consideration, you might want to consider a "cube" PC or a small-form factor PC. http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20050105/microatx-cases-02.html For you nerds out there, Tom's Hardware had an interesting article about the Pentium M CPU, used primarily in laptops: "Dothan Over Netburst: Is The Pentium 4 A Dead End?" http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20050525/index.html

Wow, Tom's Hardware Guide is still around? I used to visit that site in it's early days and I found lots of informative stuff there. I'll have to go check it out again. As far as desktop verses laptop, I do have a desktop system, but I want a notebook so I can take Poser with me, lol. Come on, admit it, you all are that addicted ;)

Can anyone confirm that Poser won't use more than 1 GB of RAM?

Given the fact that laptops can't be upgraded, I'd suggest getting the maximum amount of everything you can now. Chances are you will be needing it in the short term. It may cost you a bit more now, but it will save you oodles of money when you won't have to buy another laptop when your machine becomes obsolete and too slow. I have a Dell 8200 Inspiron and I have a 1.8 gig processor, and 512 MB DDR Ram. Pentium IV Processor with a NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go Graphic Card amd a 40 gig hard drive. The only thing that can be upgraded on it is that I can add another 20 gigs of hard drive space. I wish I had maxed out everything I possibly could at the time I bought it, because to buy another laptop now is way more expensive than it would have been to get the max of everything 3 years ago. I can render single figure scenes no problem. But I tried to render a scene with 3 figures and a background and while I didn't get a low memory, I was stuck at adding objects for something like 15 or 16 hours. I finally cancelled the render and went a different route. If you are serious about rendering complete scenes with backgrounds and effects and such, spend the extra money. If you are only into Poser as a hobby and plan to do mostly single figure images without backgrounds, then get something similar to what I have... with more memory, because aside from my inability to render complex scenes, my laptop is a very nice machine.

Well, I strongly recommend an AMD notebook, preferably an Athlon 64 one. Yes I know poser does not support 64 bit yet, but A64 has improved architechture (on chip memory controller vs.) and runs like a dream. You have no luck with Intels if you are using cpu-intensive apps like Poser. They suck big time. When it comes to rendering, my 165$ A64 overclocked to 2.8Ghz (3000+ venice) is %75 faster than P4 Extreme which costs between $900-$1000... Hope that helps...

I notice that someone said that Dell charges more for their components than someplace else. I want to add that you get superior 24/7 customer support with Dell. I live in Canada and a few months back I had to call customer service about something, but I was dialing the American number because that's the only number I could find. I swear, I was transferred all over the place and let me tell you I was downright ticked off!!!!!! I think it was someone in India that gave me the correct number to dial for my area and I got my problem worked out. (I was walked through reformatting my computer which is what I was wanting). The next day during regular business hours I got a call from that fellow in India asking me if I managed to get my problem solved. I also got a call from 2 other people, one in the US and one in Canada making sure that my problem had been resolved, and I was given the proper contact information for future reference. Aside from HP, I don't know another company that goes to those lengths to make sure one single customer is happy and satisfied. Well, Proctor and Gamble does a decent job of that too, but they aren't in the computer industry. I'm willing to pay a bit more for components for that type of service. Dell has built itself a good name not only bassed on quality, but also on their customer service, which I believe is second to none.

Bah!!! AMD is garbage. I was taken for the worse ride of my life when I bought my first computer. It had an AMD K6 processor with onboard sound and video. And let me tell you that it was total trash. I spent 2K on that dumb computer (5 years ago) and all it had was an 8 gig hard drive. I had nothing but blue fatal exception screens. My computer crashed and froze up dozens of times a day, sometimes dozens of times a MINUTE (no joke). The company I bought it from is local and 3 weeks after I had the dumb thing home it starts crashing and losing registry settings and drivers and giving blue screens. They claim it was software related and charged me $300 to reformat it. I had been told it was a superior machine and wouldn't ever need to be upgraded. What a bunch of lies. The sales guy saw me coming a mile away. Give me the cheapest and junkiest components and charge me the maximum amount for them. Afer 6 months I took it back and told them to fix it or I was going to sue them. They replaced the crappy components with the SAME type of components and the problems continued. My computer was reformatted on average of every 3 weeks due to problems. Finally after 6 months more of that I couldn't take it any longer. I took it elsewhere and paid them $1,700 to gut it and give me a Pentium III, 1 gig process with seprate sound and video. That computer has never had a blue fatal exception screen since, not even one. I should have sued the first company, but I was so fed up that I just couldn't stomach fighting about it anymore. I was just happy to have a working computer, even if it did cost me $3,700 before it finally worked. I'll never ever ever get another computer with AMD in it again. Pentium all the way for me.

Well, back then AMD was really problematic, I have to admit that. Still, it is not easy to use. You have to pick up your components carefully and set up everything right - both hardware and software. But it is well worth the trouble IMHO... It's a a simple trade between comfort and performance.I chose performance...

That was five years ago. AMD is a whole differant thing now. I just upgraded to their AMD 64 x2 and it's sweet...Uses close to the same power as my FX-53 and doesn't give anymore heat off then my FX-53. Intels can't even come close to that. And it runs great.

XENOPHONZ - what do you think of the 256MB NVIDA GeForce Go 6800? Will it be good for Poser and Bryce...D|S for that matter also since I need it to import Poser stuff too?

I haven't re-visited this thread until now......

Well, with a specific card like that I can't really say.....I've never had personal experience with running Poser on it. And I've never used D|S at all. I am only aware of some general rules on the subject.

It might work just fine -- at least that would be my guess. Sorry that I can't be anymore specific than that.

Perhaps some others have used the card in question, and can give you a better response.

Well, I don't know how much help this would be but I have done some research recently as I am planning to go dual 6600GT's (I'll buy one first, save up some money and buy the second one) I am an fanatic ATI user. But as far as I have seen, nVidia cards of the same caliber perform better at higher resolutions. So, especially if you are planning to use your notebook with a hi-res capable monitor, 6800 seems to be a real good choice.