Does a 2.4 processor have a significant benefit over the 2.2 processor?

I'm a college student, and I was wondering whether I should get the 2.4 processor or the 2.2. I am not very tech savy, so I do not know if the higher processor will decrease battery life and generate more heat. Also I wonder if getting 3 gigs of ram is overkill for vista. Is it really necessary? Final question is if lenovo gives 32 bit or 64 bit versions of vista

 

All those questions have already been answered. 2.2ghz is fine for most stuff. it really depends on what kind of programs you plan on running on your machine to justify the 2.4ghz.
vista can never have enough ram, so the more the merrier.
i believe you get the 32 bit but if you would have used the search button you would find that you can order the 64bit version upgrade from a number of retailers for an astonishing price of 5 dollars!!! WOW

 

Stick with 2.2GHz. There is no difference between them at the moment. You will also save money. With the extra money buy more RAM. Vista does use a significant amount so if you have the cash get 3GB of RAM.

 

Depends on what you're doing.

Any type of heavy video and/or audio encoding work will require a stronger processor. When most people say 2.4 isn't necessary - they mean that for the price it costs, it's not worth the often minimal benefits. However, there IS a benefit depending on what you're doing - it's just often not worth the price.

I don't see 3 gigs of RAM as overkill for Vista. You'll startup Vista with 1GB used up pretty much, and having more will help superfetch. Basically, you can't go wrong with more RAM - it's the cheapest hardware upgrade as well, albeit with some diminishing returns, but again that depends on your usage.

Lenovo as I recall gives you a choice of operating systems 32 vs 64

 

The extra hundred dollars to get .2 GHz faster is not worth it. In most tasks you will not notice the .2 GHz unless you benchmark or do heavy heavy multitasking with resource heavy apps. Stick with 2.2 GHz, it is more than enough power to run almost any task.

As LBThorn stated, getting more RAM is more beneficial than adding .2 GHz of processor speed.

 

Final question, is there any point in getting ultimate or is home premium just fine as it is

 

Home Premium is fine. Just stay away from Basic.

 

What is so bad with Vista Basic? I got premium, but my friend ordered Basic with his laptop from Dell. Isn't Basic just missing the Aero, mainly?

I got 2.0 instead of 2.2. I think 2.0 is enough since it has the 4MB cache.

 

You should post what you actually intend to use the laptop for instead of asking for very broad and general suggestions.

Generally, if all you're going to use the laptop for is taking notes and office apps, just go with the bare basics and save money. If you need to use intensive applications, then of course you'd want more. If you want Aero, you'd need more than Vista Basic. If you want business features and more security, you'd want Business or Ultimate. If you want to use Windows media applications and not use 3rd party software, you'd want Premium or Ultimate...etc. etc. etc.

Without knowing the entire range of what you plan to use the laptop for, there's no way we can give you any real advice beyond generalities.

 

Well, I am a human resource management major and thinking about doubling in labor law. I will not be doing any video or encoding work. Going to be using office apps, probably be making presentations, sparingly watching dvds and sparingly playing halo 2 if possible

 

Having a faster CPU is very beneficial to people that play a lot of video games, do a lot of video editing and/or graphic design, encode audio and video, watch HD movies with Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, run intensive database programs like SQL, compile a lot of computer code, calculate complicated mathematical computations, do CAD work (like engineers), or run distributed computing clients like folding@home. Stuff like the preceding is where a very fast CPU would be very useful.

You use office applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint so having the greatest processor is not going to make that much of a difference for you. As others have said before, buying the top-of-the-line processor is not the best value for the money.

In regard to Halo 2, if you are gamer, you may want to get a faster graphics card and CPU. It is going to cost you a lot more money for that, so you are going to have to determine if the extra cost is worth it for you to game with faster frame rates and/or image quality.

 

gotenks, you could easily make do with a 1.8 or lower and not notice a difference with your usage. save the money.