2mb Ram no upgrade...deal breaker?

I am considering purchasing a laptop...It's an HP Pavilion dv9260us. My only concern is that the 2meg of ram is not upgradable to 4megs. Should this be a dealbreaker? Does the 4megs of L2 cache make up for the ram or is that completely unrelated?
Also wondering if there is a big difference in the 667fsb as compared to an 800fsb?
I will be using it for AutoCAD and Revit programs mostly, which I understand do not take advantage of the graphics card, but run off the processor. Lot's of 3D and rendering is planed. So if someone knows of a better laptop for these purposes for under $1500, I am open to suggestion.
I also spend 3 nights a week in a hotel so will appreciate the HD DVD player and HD screen for my "watch now" netflix movies.
It seems like a great deal as they are phasing this model out and cutting the cost tremendously. From $2300 to $1300.

it sells at circuit city, for this price

Any technical advice is really appreciated.
Thanks

 

The CPU Cache has nothing to do with RAM, and they are not upgradable by the user. For the machine you mentioned, it should be able to support 4GB of RAM.

Make sure you get the 800FSB, because otherwise the laptop might use some chipset that does not support using all 4GB of RAM.

For a better suggestion, you should fill up the FAQ. But if you ask me from your description of the stuff that you plan on doing on the machine, I think you should consider workstation class laptops insted, for example HP 8710p/w or if you don't mind 15.4" HP8510p/w.

If you don't mind Dell, I would suggest Precision Workstation M6300.

 

Here is a link to the specs on that from the Circuit City site. It clearly says expandable to 2GB's. Does that mean that is it? Don't know. It sometimes says that because it really means no open slots.

I don't know if you heard but HD just lost the War and is immediately being fazed out so getting content to watch could be hard. For example I believe Warner Bros does produce HD DVD content only Blue Ray, that trend will only increase in the future. So the plus of HD at that price just lost appeal.

I don't know of any Blue Ray equipped 17 in your budget, sorry.

 

thanks for the heads up... but does that mean I won't be able to watch some movies (blue-ray) at all... or just not watch them in all thier intended glory.
And what about the 667 FSB vs 800FSB, is that an issue

 

Basically it means you wont be able to watch blueray at all. You are essentially wasting your money buying it. They will not make any more movies ever on hd dvd.

 

Can you watch a regular DVD yes.
FSB not a big issue memory speed on both is 667Mhz. 800Mhz FSB will have slightly higher memory bandwidth, not so much I would care.

It does have a lot for $1300, TV tuner.

 

Thanks for all your input..
OK...So I won't let the HD-DVD player weigh into my decision, It's kind of mute at this point anyway, as the Blue-ray players of today won't be able to play blue-ray discs of the future, (see consumerist.com/344116/buyers-beware-current-blu+ray-players-wont-correctly-play-future-discs). So today's HD-DVD or Blue-Ray is going to be obsolete anyway.
I guess what I am really concerned about is, will this system be flawed for it's intended purpose of running my 3D program?
These are the complete specs for the dv9260us, which I should have listed from the get go;
2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200
2GB DDR2 RAM (max)
667MHz FSB
4MB L2 cache
dual 120GB HD (240GB TOTAL) 5400RPM (what's the benifit of 2 Hard Drives?)
17" high-definition widescreen 1440 x 900 pixel (WXGA+)
802.11abg wireless LAN (No "N", Big deal or not?)
HD-DVD ROM
Integrated 1.3 megapixel webcam and omni-directional microphone
NVIDIA GeForce™ Go 7600 graphics (256MB dedicated)
HP ExpressCard TV Tuner (Digital and Analog)
5-in-1 card reader
Windows Vista Home Ultimate
ExpressCard/54 slot (Don't know much about this, can I boost the memory with this?)
Cost: $1312.96

This is the REVIT program minimum requirements;
System Requirements:
Intel® Pentium® 4, 1.4 GHz, or equivalent AMD Athlon® processor
Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Enterprise, Business, Premium, or Ultimate; Windows® XP Professional, Home Edition, or Tablet PC Edition (SP1 or later); or Windows® 2000 (SP4)
1 GB RAM
3 GB free disk space
1280x1024 monitor and display adapter capable of 24-bit color
Internet connection for license registration
MS-Mouse compliant pointing device
Microsoft® Internet Explorer® 6.0 or later

And these are the System Recomendations;
Intel Core® 2 Duo 2.40 GHz, or equivalent AMD Athlon processor
Windows XP Professional (SP2 or later)
4 GB RAM
5 GB free disk space
Dedicated video card with hardware support for OpenGL® spec 1.3 or later
Two-button mouse with scroll wheel

Will I pay for not having the 2.4GHz and 4GB of RAM?

 

Thanks for all your help...
I have researched some other computers, Compal, Sony, Lenovo, and HP Compaq and have to decide whether it's worth going up another 4-600 dollars for the faster processor and ability to upgrade ram.
Any additional input is welcome

Thanks Again.