Which PC? 4GB BluRay or 8GB?

Question

I am thinking about buying a laptop. I have it narrowed down to 2 choices. They are both $700. The main difference is that...
Laptop A has 4GB RAM, BluRay, and room for a 2nd Hard Drive.
Laptop B has 8GB RAM and No BluRay.

What do you think is more important?
I figure that I can upgrade the RAM on Laptop A, but there's no way to add BluRay to Laptop B.
But I don't even own any BluRay movies, and RAM is useful all the time.

So which should I get? Thanks guys!

Answer 1

Well make sure that laptop A has a Full HD screen at 1920x1080 resolution. If it doesn't then you can only see anything on your screen in 720p and you wont be able to take advantege of a BluRay player. And unless you are going to be hooking the computer up to your TV at home, if you have a High Def TV at home that is, then don't get it if the laptop's screen doesn't support it.



Also, a BluRay drive is obviously going to cost you more money in the long term because you will have to buy BluRay movies. So unless you're willing to put in more money, then don't get it. A BluRay drive wont help you with DVD's and CD's.



Now will you need 8GB? Probably not. It does make your computer a bit more future proof, but the average person wont use nearly that much RAM. But is the 4GB one DDR2 or DDR3? If they are both DDR2 then you don't have to consider speed, but if you plan on upgrading A later on, you will find it VERY expensive. At least right now, a 4GB DDR2 laptop RAM module is $180, two of them puts you at $360 (to get to 8GB you will need to take out the two 2GB ones and replace them with two 4GB) or you just buy one module, and take out one 2GB and make it 6GB, but you're still down $180.



The room for a 2nd hard drive is nice, but only is certain situations. For a gamer, they would put their applications/games on one drive, and Operating System and files on another. That way system performance is optimal. But most people would only use 2 hard drive bays on a laptop for RAID 0 for super fast read/write times if RAID was supported. Some people even go for RAID 1 which keeps a constant mirror of their first drive on the second drive that way they have a complete backup just in case one drive fails (in RAID 0, if a drive fails, then all information is lost) so if you want that kind of performance, make sure it can support RAID if you want that kind of feature, otherwise 2 hard drives might not make a difference to you.



And are you sure that everything else is equal in the two? CPU the same? Same graphic's solutions? Screens? Hard drive speed? Because all of those will affect your system performance and one of those two might be better all around than the other!

Answer 2

Could you post other specs? I mean 4gb of ram is big enough for almost any purpose. I have 4gb of ram and have ran video games, we browser, photoshop, illustrator, and itunes with no problem and other programs running in the background and had no problems what-so-ever. I would go for laptop A if I was you, if the other specs are the same, because 8gb of ram is kind of overkill.

I would also like to see the laptops you are talking about, because there is no way a computer with 8gb of ram costs $700.

Answer 3

Go with laptop A because there is no way u will need 8gb of ram unless u are an intensive gamer but even if u are u probably still wont take up as much ram...



if its a nice brand like dell, toshiba, hp, or gateway then ur good.

Answer 4

4GB of RAM is quite sufficient for any program, unless you're editing audio on Goldwave and use the RAM for temporary memory, it would be difficult for the average computer user to go above 4GB. A Blu-Ray drive can come in handy for the near future as Blu-Ray movies are getting closer to DVD prices. A 2nd HDD will probably be necessary for the near future also.

Answer 5

Well, do you ever plan on playing bluray movies?

If you don't go with the second one.

Also, you can by a external blueray drive.