Is BLUTOOTH a must when buying a new laptop? and which is a better processor?

Question

AMD Turion 64 X2 or Intel Core 2 Duo processor?

Answer 1

AMD Turion 64 x2 that's what I'm using now and I have to tell you it's awesome! And no BlueTooth isn't a must, but most laptops have it already equipted to it like mine did.

Answer 2

The Core 2 Duo is much faster at a given clock speed (and will also consume less power at the same time).

The Turion would need a pretty significant clock speed advantage over a Core 2 Duo to match it in performance (and it'll do it at higher power consumption and therefore shorter battery life) but the Turion is a budget chip (comparable in per clock performance to the Pentium Dual Core Intel are marketing as a low end chip).

Bluetooth probably isn't needed though if your laptop comes with it you shouldn't complain. If you don't have any bluetooth devices that you'll be wanting to connect to your laptop then you could probably get away with not having it but if you do have a bluetooth mobile phone or whatever then getting bluetooth would be a good idea.

Some laptops come with the antenna needed for bluetooth and a slot to put a card in which would allow you to buy the laptop without bluetooth and then buy the card later, if they still make one for your model or haven't locked it to only be able to use a card made by the maker of your laptop. If you think you might need it then get it, bluetooth is pretty cheap.

Answer 3

Hello,

If you can get Bluetooth built in to your new laptop, I would recommend it. Probably will be Bluetooth 2.0, and note that Bluetooth 3.0 will be out soon (today is November 4, 2007), within months from now is what I hear. So decide if you need the latest greatest BT or not.

A decent BT USB dongle is about $25 or $30 but it is such a pain to have dongles sticking out all over. You could use BT for a wireless BT mouse, and a wireless BT headset. By the way, I like and use the Plantronics Voyager model 510 headset.

I would not recommend the MSI BT USB adapter dongle, I bought one a year ago and it one of the only pieces of hardware I have ever given up on, it worked fine with XP SP1, but will not work with XP SP2. The MSI isn't even big enough for a door stop, so it is a total waste of money. If you go the BT USB adapter route, then get a decent BT, spend another $10 on it, you will save hours and hours of installation time.

WRT your other question, I have been hearing good things about price/performance of AMD for the last couple years.

Ed.