I have two laptops for two different purposes; please help me decide which one t

[concealed identity]

Hey all,

Last year I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad SL500...basic specs are an Intel Core 2 Duo P7370 @2.00ghz with 3GB RAM. I bought it mainly for music production, and so far it's been great to me.

I had an older PC that I used for performing music live. It wasn't fast (Pentium 4 2.3GHZ, 1256 GB RAM), but it did the job well enough. A few days ago, the HDD on that computer died, and I needed a new one ASAP for a gig, so I bought a Lenovo G560 06792HJ (Intel i3 M330 2.13GHZ[512] with 2GB RAM) since I found a pretty good deal on it.


So basically what I want to do is use the "better" computer for music production and use the "slower" one for live gigs. Battery life isn't an issue since they'll both be plugged in the whole time. I did a search and read a bunch of threads on here, and it seems like the i3 is the faster chip, but without the extra RAM I'm not sure if it's really a better choice at this point.

Anyway, I would love to hear some thoughts on this. Thank you in advance.

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
Please fill the FAQ first
http/www.tomshardware.com/forum/50797-35-read-buying-laptop

 

[concealed identity]

Hi, thanks for the response. I saw that thread before I posted, but I already OWN these laptops...so nearly all of those questions don't apply to me. I'm curious which laptop would be better suited for which task and how important the RAM vs CPU issue is in this case.

 

[Maziar]

oops sorry.
Well you have heard right,i3 M330 is faster than your old C2D 2.1,however 2GB RAM is low especially if you use a 64 bit OS,so you may want to go with 4GB

 

[jamesyboy]

Use the lenovo for both IMO. I would want the i3 for faster rendering, and i'd want to make sure that nothing goes wrong during a gig. If i had to choose between one of the two, i would make the lenovo my gig machine. I just cant justify putting the rig or myself into a situation where i would have to rely on an old piece of equipment like that.

 

[jamesyboy]

Also, at the minimum, i would add more ram. If you have to use the old machine, a ssd might do you some good. You may not get amazing throughput, but the access times will make using the older machine for production more tolerable, and might even make it feel twice as fast.

The steps you should take:
1. Add ram to both. 4GB would be my minimum.
2. BACKUP your data. i cant say how important this is.
3. Seriously consider an SSD. You wouldnt need a big one. 50-64 GB should be fine for your OS. Save your crucial data onto an external drive, and then BACK THE EXTERNAL DATA UP.

 

[concealed identity]

Cool, thanks for the advice. Both of the computers I have now are Lenovos, but I'm assuming you meant the i3 =)

Definitely thinking about more RAM, unfortunately; my last computer (with 1256mb) seemed to do fine, but Windows 7 64 bit is eating this RAM like it's nothing.

 

[concealed identity]

Best answer selected by concealed identity.