^ I have dealt with BatteryUpgrade.com and they are good with nice batteries. Though it never was able to compete with Original but it was almost 95% of original.

Thanks for the response!
I went to SP road- and picked up a decent looking battery here -"compatible with Dell 1420" - 1400 bucks- 6 months warranty ( seller's).

Looks neat, may survive another year or less maybe- which is nice for me- since I am very much probable to pick up something this year

till then,

Ace.

I have been using an HP Dv6516TX for the last 4.5 years without any issues. Now I am looking to upgrade. For a change from Dell/HP/Sony/Toshiba/Acer/Asus, I visited the HCL ME exclusive store, and I found the quality of the display laptops quite good.

Any Idea on the HCL ME laptops? How is HCL?
For 35/37K, they are offering this config >>
i3/i5, 4gb RAM, 750GB HDD, Win 7 HB.

Basic usage will be surfing/music. Rarely movies. Still rarely games. But yes, I intend to install MySQL or Oracle DB on the machine. So will 4GB RAM will be an overdose? Will 2GB/3GB RAM and 320GB/500GB HDD be sufficient for these day to day tasks?

Will Oracle/MySQL DB work on Windows 7 Home Basic or Premium? Would I need to get Windows 7 professional for it to work?

Also, my office VPN software will be installed on the machine.

Pray may we know what was the missing 5%. Was it the peace of mind in having the OEM, or was it something more?

Sir, the original Sony battery priced at 8000 gave service for 3.5 years before it went kaput. The battery upgrade guys sent a battery at 4000 and it went off in 1.5 years. Thus I was comparing battery service life.

Note: today's Li ion batteries work differently than older generation thus you may want to enhance the cycle life of battery by keeping it plugged in to power source.

I had installed Oracle 9i and 10G on a Compaq machine 6 years ago. So the newer versions will definitely work with newer machines.

Keep in mind that with Oracle DB, you need more RAM to accommodate more processes (user?) running simultaneously, in a single user environment, even 2GB is sufficient. That said, you will get better performance in a 64 bit environment with 4k+ RAM.

Hello friends,

Need help in purchasing laptop for my friend.

Shortlisted the following

Toshiba L750 X5317
i5 2430 m processor
4gb ddr3 ram
640 gb hard disc @ 5400 rpm
dvd writer
15" HD screen
nvidia np12-lp 1 gb chipset ddr 3
at Rs 44500. with 2 gb nvidia Rs 48500 with backpack

HP pavilion dv6 6115 tx
i5 2410 m processor
4gb ddr3 ram
500 gb hard disc @ 5400 rpm
dvd writer
15" screen
AMD radeon 1 gb chipset ddr5 graphics card
Rs 44000 with 6 gb ram 46500

Please help me which is better?
what do they mean by nvidia np12-lp 1 gb chipset? i couldnt find anything in nvidia website
Target budget Rs 45000 to 48000

Which laptop is reliable? robust?
What abbout service of Toshiba especially in chennai?

Barath

My colleague who is using HCL laptop for the past one year complains the followinig
1. hardware quality - unknown noise like a factory lunch horn especially during closing
2. Webcam quality is very poor
3. Microphone sound is very meagre. u have to shout while chatting th your friends
4. Microphone pin point is not working properly
5. If you are amidst a video chat and buffering a youtube video simultaneously, frequent hanging was experienced. It will resume after some five to ten seconds but very disturbing

The Sony Vaio shopowner told me that Oracle will work only with Windows 7 professional/ultimate. It will not work with Windows 7 HB/HP. Is this true?

Thanks for the info. Now I am thinking of switching over to Dell. Maybe Inspiron 15R or 14R.

• Toshiba shop was not really interested in selling their laptops. In fact I had a look at the laptops myself, no one was even interested in showing the laptops.
• HP is good, in fact very reliable. I have an HP laptop myself for the last 4.5 years and it never let me down. So much so, that my laptop still has the original Windows Vista still installed on it. It was not even formatted once. But now I want to try some other brand.
• Sony Vaio: not really impressed. In my budget I get only 2GB RAM/320 GB HDD, whereas for the same price, I get 3GB/4GB RAM and 500GB/640GB/750GB HDD from others. The shopowner offered me to upgrade the RAM to 4GB and install a pirated copy of Windows 7 ultimate. I said no straight away (no piracy & no tampering with an original piece even before it is out of showroom )
• Acer: Again not very well known. Also it seems there are many issues with the laptops. My office once had Acer laptops, but now they have switched over to Dell, since many laptops frequently crashed and had to have their HDD replaced.

That is a very sensible option (regardless of brand). If RAM is installed by Dealer, it is covered under warranty.

For your use case, this is best bet. Get a Dell laptop with 3 year warranty and add 4 GB RAM (total 8 GB).

After that, install VirtualBox or VMWare, then you can run a full fledged server to replicate your actual environment. You can easily run 2 VMs (without impacting day to day usage). You can install Oracle / Apache etc on these VMs.

Sorry to confuse you more, but have a look at this: ASUS X53SC-SX223D Laptop Notebook Intel Core i7,4GB,750GB, 1 GB Graphics Gaming | eBay

Something doesn't seem right!
i7 - 4GB - 750 GB - 1GB Nvidia ( 520M)? all at 39K?
^^ thats unbelievable

Can anyone cofirm this?



Ace.

I'm not sure, but when I googled for more info about a few days back, I found that official dealers were selling it for 43,xxx or something around that. The guy mentions in the listing that these are new models and haven't been updated on the ASUS site. There could be a chance that this is a grey market import. Also, the seller on eBay gives 4GB RAM extra for 1,500. You could check it out with ASUS customer-care.

EDIT: Also, I've read that the X53 series listed on eBay is the same as K53 series which is being sold by the official ASUS dealer for 43,xxx.

Oh, ok! I didn't know this. But I am wary of opening a brand new piece even before it lands in my hands. What put me off was the 'piracy' part. Instead of getting pirated Windows, I would better purchase a licensed copy.

Still even more better, I would rather install Linux and use it happily for years to come. But the problem is my office VPN software does not work on Linux & the office server does not recognize Linux clients. I tried a lot to get it working, but everyone in my Office is clueless about Linux installations and configuration ! So conclusion: I need to get Windows 7. Maybe after 6 months partition the disk and use Linux.

Actually 4GB itself would be an overdose for me. 8GB is like putting a 5000HP loco for pulling 3-4 coaches!

That again is the way to go. Get Windows 7 64 bit since most VPN clients are going to work with this for sure. And quite a few VPN solutions work best with RDP client built into IE (actually ActiveX control that can be used from IE).

So, use Windows 7 but get Linux running in a VM.

Ram usage on ANY new laptop would be 1.5 - 1.8 GB just after bootup. Specially if you are using Windows 7 copy that was provided by Dell/HP/Sony et el. If you have MSDN license, you can do a fresh install and bring it down to 500 MB. Or you can "decrappify" OS installed by manufacturer.

And 4 -8 GB makes life easier if you need to run and software development environment (like Oracle that you mentioned).