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Digi-quest

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Why you can trust SCMP
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A friend, who is looking for a Sony Vaio laptop with a fast, 5,400rpm hard-disk drive, was told that a model from the same brand with a 48-gigabyte Flash Memory drive runs faster. Is there a faster hard-disk drive-based Sony notebook available?

Daryl, Causeway Bay

DQ: I believe your friend is too concerned with the specifications of the disk drive. Notebook computers essentially come in two flavours: ultra-portable and desktop replacement.

The latter machines have faster processors, large screens and are a bit heavier than the typical laptop. They do just about everything a desktop computer can do. The ultra-portable notebook computers are small, weigh as little as possible and everything in them tends to be smaller and slower.

The processors perform slower - so they don't use as much power - and the same is true of the hard disks. The speed gain your friend thinks he will get with a 5,400rpm hard-disk drive could well be minimal. The Flash Memory drive should be much faster, but if the processor is slow that speed advantage may not matter much. I think he should decide what is more important: size and weight, or performance. If he really wants the performance, he may have to look at a bigger machine.

I have downloaded the ParetoLogic RegCure software, which is supposed to optimise the performance of my personal computer. Will installing this affect the operation of Symantec's Norton Internet Security software?

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