Ok but how is

Ok but how is the new r2 vs r1 in terms of general computer use on a a day to day, is it notable more snappy? iTunes on the r1 would take >15sec to load a library of 32gb songs. Firefox took 5 secs to load, and thats with fresh boot, 10 processes runnin' etc...

 

activities you mentioned are subject to USB and HDD. from my understanding, and my professional point of view, with my many many years of experience in the field, plus my spider sense. i have concluded. that the all powerful ALIENWARE M11x. both R1 and R2. if earth's magnetic is effeciently blocking the deathly plasma ray generated by the sun traveling at the speed of light. under no dramatic change in nature of the dark matters, R1 and R2 are same slow.

 

The short answer is no, if I put an R1 and R2 side by side you couldn't tell the difference.

 

how bout cpu intensive task like encoding, photoshop, extracting or repairing archives, video editing and things along those lines. I think you will notice a difference in how long it would take to complete the tasks. Also if you notice in games like GTAIV the CPU is maxed out on R1 and has headroom on R2 i7. i think websurfing, word, chatting, and listening to music you will notice no difference but once you start taxing the CPU it will show a difference.

 

will it ? or will it not? anyone care to elaborate?

 

You will see the difference at least wPrime for 670 is 29 seconds while su7600 is somewhere around ~50sec

 

I've read a lot of your posts Yoda, and I definitely trust them. This post has me totally puzzled though.

Is there really no difference? What's the point of even doing the refresh then? Why did they even make ultraportable i core processors? Why are they rolling out with them on the M11X now? What is going onnnnnnnnnn?

You've crushed my world lol

 

I think what he is saying is ultimately you won't notice a difference because common processes like what is described in the OP are well below most processors. You'd really have to run something that taxed the CPU to notice any difference.

 

just relax. OP meant to humor us.

5 sec to load firefox, that's "unbelievablely" beyound slow.
load 32GB of mp3 in 15 sec, not even SSD.

 

Actually not, reboot your r1, and try opening firefox after all processes are up and running , my experience had been 3-5 sec load time, ..now if you close it and retry it will load faster, not quite sure why. And yes, being slow is a main reason why i returned it,..

 

Its because its already been put in memory. Closing it doesn't remove it from memory until that memory is needed and the program is still closed.

 

The topic creator asked about casual computing tasks, like Firefox or Itunes. The i7 is not going to be faster in those tasks, in fact, it may be slower, since if the program doesn't stress it enough to enable turbo boost the i7 is sitting at 1.2 ghz (or 1.5ghz max overclock) versus 1.6 ghz C2D. The i7 may also underclock with SpeedStep, which the C2D won't do with the overclock enabled. Long story short, in everyday tasks you won't really be able to tell the difference, we are talking half a second differences either way. In some cases those could be differences with the C2D performing faster.

Now if we talking encoding or benchmarks like wPrime then sure, the i7 will get a noticeable boost, but that isn't what the guy asked, and for most people those aren't the primary uses for the laptop.

That is perhaps the silliest reason ever to return a laptop. The first opening of Firefox on my 3.8 Ghz Quad desktop with a Raid 0 probably takes 1-3 seconds. 5 seconds on a laptop with a mobile hard drive is perfectly fine. You could make it better by disabling page file and super caching Firefox on start up. Seriously, getting mad over a few seconds the first time you open Firefox is just sad.

In your case I would not recommend the i7, it is still gonna take 5 seconds to open Firefox the first time, heck it might take 6.

 

Yea, good to get some solid info...the other reason I returned it was to get a macbook required by my college..I guess if I thought about it being slow to make the return less traumatizing..lol

 

Out of curiosity, which college you going to? I have never heard of one REQUIRING a mac....

I would take some serious issue with that, heh.

 

Apple University.

 

lol. good one.

 

The only time I'd comply with that is if the school in question fully subsidized the Mac (i.e. you get it for free). What kind of school makes it mandatory to buy a certain brand?

 

Full Sail uses macs. All macs.(correct me if im wrong) When i tried to apply there, they were giving away free macbook pros to new enrollees.

 

In games and windows usage there isnt much difference, in photoshop, I notice a HUGE difference, some processes are twice as fast.

 

I wonder if this could be the Optimus automatically using the 335M for Photoshop. I know Photoshop makes use of the 335M, and when I use CS5 tools on my M11X I always switch to discrete, and I would say it does indeed double the speed from just using integrated.

Anyway, there is no doubt the i7 will be faster in some applications, and Photoshop would probably be one of them.

I could perhaps see this for some of the film or print media programs, since Macs are pretty much the standard in those areas (even though modern macs really don't offer anything over a PC, except the apple tax). However, I can't imagine being forced to use a Mac to study game design, programming, etc. Most major studios use Windows now, and some of the best learning tools like XNA Studio are from Microsoft for Windows.

 

I always used the 335m in photoshop with the r1 also, it is a definite difference with the r2. That is the ONLY speed difference between the two I've noticed though (which is fine, that is why I switched)