Dell Vostro 3700.. .

u dun need a very powerful setup for works like Photoshop...

the main thing abt PS is RAM... my friend has a work rig with Pentium E2180 with 8GB RAM, and it's all smooth sailing in PS...

pardon me but the price of SSD is absurd (to me at least) with short life span... moreover with works like PS, files are counted in hundreds of MB or even GB... HDD is still the choice in this case...

and, desktop CPU would throttle as well... EIST and Cool n' Quiet have been implemented in desktop CPU for sooooooooooo long...

of so many things u talk abt, u only got the i7 part sensible... but i would still prefer i7 dual due to it's high clock speed...

and i repeat again

1) files in such programs count in hundreds of MB and even GB... SSD is not going to provide the continuous transfer speed... HDD is still the preferred choice...

2) u dun need a quad... the main thing abt it is still RAM... 4GB is recommended but the more the merrier... however, if u really want 8GB (ie 2x 4GB), that's going to cost u a fortune...

in conclusion, Core i5 + 4GB RAM + 7200rpm HDD is the practical choice... which Vostro 3700 fulfills in anyway...

u still dun get the main pt, do u???

budget aside (which already is the biggest reason why SSD is not feasible), SSD dun ve the speed needed to deal with LARGE files... by large i mean hundreds of MB or even GB... they excel in burst reading, but not continuous reading...

it's very simple to see... try copying dramas/anime from ur so-called fast thumbdrive/SD card and external 3.5" HDD... the difference is obvious...

u seem to be in ur own performance lala land, thinking watever works for u will work for others as well... but sorry, most of us here are after performance : price ratio, which is wat TS needs since he has a budget to begin with...

u still fail to grab the pt of desktop replacement did u???

who says that a desktop replacement must come with i7 in the first place???

the main pt of a desktop replacement needs only to provide the experience of using a desktop while facing only a laptop...

and by that, the emphasis is on the monitor size...

if only i7 QM + SSD + HD5870 is a desktop replacement (desktop equivalent would be i7 800 series + SSD + HD5770), then tell me, wat's a desktop with Pentium G6950 + WD Caviar Green 320GB + Intel GMA HD? is that not a desktop?

did u juz said u ve been dealing with computers for 20ys???

u sir, have failed miserably...

This post has been edited by astria: May 14 2010, 06:35 PM

of course desktop consumes more power... juz the CPU (Intel, dual core) already 65W TDP... probably already more than wat a laptop requires...

however, i ve to admit that desktop brings much more performance than a laptop (for the same price), easier to upgrade (thus won't become obsolete easily), and easier to maintain (spoil parts, juz swop)...

perhaps u can consider some of the low powered desktop hardware??? for eg AMD Athlon II x4 610e is merely 45W TDP, coupled with HD5730 (18W TDP idle)...