I was going to post this on Tom's Hardware, or one of those sites, but I figured I'd get a more reasonable response on here.
I currently have a Dell E6420 (i5-2540 dual core + HT) with 4 gigs of ram - speed-wise it's been fine. I use it a lot as a couch-workstation - working in Visual Studio, or dealing with client issues while watching TV when I absolutely need to get out of my home office. Occasionally do some very non-ambitious gaming (PCSX2, Kerbal Space Program, stuff like that). The e6420 has an Nvidia Quadro NVS-4200M - so it's been a bit stronger in that department than on-board would be.
A lot of my clients have decided to go to conflicting VPN solutions so I've needed to start using virtual machines to deal with connecting to their systems, and I definitely need more ram. My first thought was to just spend $75, drop 16GB of ram in the machine, and call it a day.
Complicating things - when it comes to electronics, my wife is basically a gremlin. Her laptop is held together with duct tape, the tabs are broken off the battery, keys are missing, etc - so I'm gonna need to replace that, and I'm not spending any real money getting her a new laptop. Won't do it again. (hers is a core 2 duo based system, so it's past time)
Was thinking of buying myself a bit newer machine and handing down my current machine to her - money is tight right now though (had a long layoff), so I have to be frugal - and I'm having a hard time making sense of all the nonsense that is Intel's product nomenclature.
I keep running into situations where I'm asking questions like "Would I be better off with a 2nd generation i7, or an 3rd generation i5?" and so on - are there any chips/configurations that are clear winners at a reasonable pricepoint? Part of me thinks that an older i7 quad core might be a better option because of the need for multiple VMs, but I may be overthinking things.
Any advice?
I currently have a Dell E6420 (i5-2540 dual core + HT) with 4 gigs of ram - speed-wise it's been fine. I use it a lot as a couch-workstation - working in Visual Studio, or dealing with client issues while watching TV when I absolutely need to get out of my home office. Occasionally do some very non-ambitious gaming (PCSX2, Kerbal Space Program, stuff like that). The e6420 has an Nvidia Quadro NVS-4200M - so it's been a bit stronger in that department than on-board would be.
A lot of my clients have decided to go to conflicting VPN solutions so I've needed to start using virtual machines to deal with connecting to their systems, and I definitely need more ram. My first thought was to just spend $75, drop 16GB of ram in the machine, and call it a day.
Complicating things - when it comes to electronics, my wife is basically a gremlin. Her laptop is held together with duct tape, the tabs are broken off the battery, keys are missing, etc - so I'm gonna need to replace that, and I'm not spending any real money getting her a new laptop. Won't do it again. (hers is a core 2 duo based system, so it's past time)
Was thinking of buying myself a bit newer machine and handing down my current machine to her - money is tight right now though (had a long layoff), so I have to be frugal - and I'm having a hard time making sense of all the nonsense that is Intel's product nomenclature.
I keep running into situations where I'm asking questions like "Would I be better off with a 2nd generation i7, or an 3rd generation i5?" and so on - are there any chips/configurations that are clear winners at a reasonable pricepoint? Part of me thinks that an older i7 quad core might be a better option because of the need for multiple VMs, but I may be overthinking things.
Any advice?