Choice of Notebook

[Andyt]

Hi! All,

I have noticed in many of the threads that are posted by members that reference is made to a laptop / notebook. As such I thought who better to ask for advice!. I am able to purchase a notebook by salary sacrafice, making it financialy attractive. Officially this purchase would be for all the reasons that one would buy one. However, as this select group knows, there are other uses to be had, mobile storage & viewing of pics would be the main use for me. With the amount of pics that I am generating it is becoming a chore to print when wanting to share with others, especially when visiting. A notebook would go a long way in resolving this by being set up / slide show etc for everyone to see.

Those are my thoughts, my question(s) are:- Those who use notebooks do you have any advice relating to a current purchase? Brand, features, pitfalls, good points?. Its a given that long battery life (x2) and screen quality are high priorities.

Your advice and comments will be most welcome as I have not before looked at mobile computing.

Regards, Andyt

[Killakoala]

I've tried a few laptops over the years and i am very happy with Toshiba as a brand. I've been using the one i am typing this on for two years and i am still very happy with it. (Although 512Mb RAM is not enough )

If i had bought a Dell, IBM or a Compaq i reckon it would be falling into bits about now, but the Toshiba, even though it costs a bit more, is superior in build so will/should last longer.

If you are going to buy a laptop then you might consider one of the important factors to be durability. It will need to stand up to the rigours of being packed, unpacked and carried places where computers don't normally go. (Such as car boots, aircraft overhead storages, lockers etc.) Mine gets used a lot on a warship and it's still going strong. (Of course, being careful with it helps)

If you go down the Toshiba path, then the 'Toshiba Satellite Pro' range would probably serve you better than the Satellite or Tecra range.

Performance-wise, there isn't much difference between brands. When you go shopping around for one, as you probably will (don't rush into a purchase), pick them up and feel the weight and construction engineering. You will know which ones feel more durable. Have a play with the mouse or touchpad and see which ones feel the flimsyist.

Other things to look for.
At least 64meg video RAM. (Screen resolution up to 1600-1200ish)
512Mb Main RAM with an upgrade path to 1024mb or more.

Remember: 'You get what you pay for.'

Of course, that's my opinion from having used one or two.

[Mj]

I more or less agree with Steve... having bought two IBM laptops at the cheaper end of the market a couple of years ago, one started to fall apart after 18 months and cost me stupid dollars for a very poor repair service.
Performance wise these were probably as good as any other with the same spec but they haven't coped with even fairly careful treatment.
The key things to look at are how the chaise is tied into the casing and how the screen is linked to the mainboard. In both these areas the IBM laptop (R32) have proven to be poor.

Having said that, not sure whether the others would really fair better as I find myself looking to turn 'em over about every 2-3 years anyway so usually they are old spec before they start breaking apart.

As well as the specs Steve has suggested, have a look at the HDD size and be aware that many use a fair chunk for storing a backup config so a 30G drive may lose as much as 10G for that purpose.

[atencati]

I just bought a new laptop through work which limited my options. I preferred the Dell of my choices, however.

I opted for the celeron processor, 1.6 ghx, 1 gb ram, 80gb harddrive, dvd-RW drive, WUXGA 15.4" widescreen, intell super-g wireless. It is basically optimized for photo and internet apps. It also has a 56mb video card. I wish I had opted for the blutooth. I paid US$2000 with 3 year in home service.

It's fast enough I dont use my desktop anymore.

Andy

[ru32day]

I bought a Dell in the higher end of the range (9100) almost 12 mths ago. I'm very happy with it. It wouldn't suit your needs, though, as mine is basically a desktop replacement, so it is heavier than many in the range and will run for less time on battery power (the only time I use battery power is if I kick the cord out of the back!). I wanted a laptop so I could have a quiet unit that was also comfortable to use in bed.

My friend bought a more portable (Centrino) 8600 model around the same time as I did and is very happy with performance, battery life etc.

There was a similar query to yours on our work Bulletin Board last week and there were three posts from different people about how Dell had, upon notification of an issue, sent a technician out immediately, who had not only fixed the problem, but made sure it was fixed to a high standard. Don't be put off by the number of these issues - there are around 2000 staff who post to this Bulletin Board, so three problems isn't an indication of poor build quality. Because of the high quality of service, it is worthwhile extending your warranty to three years.

Regardless of what brand or model you buy, I offer the following suggestions:

Regarding HDD space, HDDs for notebooks are obscenely expensive. If you can live with lack of portability for a large storage device, and stick to using the "on-board" drive for when you really need portability, I can recommend Maxtor's one-touch external drives. I chose one that could be connected both by USB2 and firewire. This gives you more storage bang for the buck and if you have a desktop as well, you can access your photos from either machine.

Make sure you have enough RAM if you are going to use this for photo work. I would recommend 1GB.

Get one with a DVD burner.

Don't be seduced by laptop screens that display wide resolutions with lots of pixels (eg the UXGAs in the Dell range). These may be good for viewing DVD's, but they're not comfortable for web browsing. A laptop's screen cannot be easily resized from its native resolution without reduction in quality of viewing. Web browsing in particular does not cope will with odd resolutions. Despite applying all of the recommended fixes for this issue, I find myself either viewing images that are very pixellated (if I apply the fix so the text is readable size) or reading text that is too small (if I don't).

[Nnnnsic]

The only laptops I recommend people to buy are Toshiba, Dell, and IBM... and usually in that order... unless of course you're buying a Mac, in which case you have such a WIDE selection of brands to choose from.

That said, there are some hideously cheap lappies you can now buy.

http://www.hardlynormals.com.au/index.p ... =83_88_155

[Onyx]

I'm not familiar with salary sacrificing arrangements when it comes to notebooks or your specific case, but if it means it gets written off/depreciated by your work at the end of its supposedly useful life, then is durability such a factor for consideration? (assuming you'll get a replacement in 2-3 years time). If that's the case, I pose the question why pay the penalty in terms of extra weight for a magnesium bodied versus plastic bodied system? All else being equal, a metal one could withstand more abuse and be more durable than plastic - but it comes at the cost of weight. In some cases significant weight.

Long battery life criteria - currently Intel's Centrino aka Pentium-M or Celeron-M chips are market leaders in this catergory, however there are a few ultra-lite weight notebooks appearing powered with Transmeta Crusoe chips. These typically run at 600-1000Mhz and translate normal CPU code into Reduced Instruction Set Computing (ala Macs). If absolute battery life is important, systems based on the Crusoe reigns supreme - they will typically last 5-6 hours on std batteries. They aren't particularly powerful however, as their performance is comparable to P3's.

Current Pentium-M based systems offer the best compromise (IMO) between available computing power and battery life.

DVD-burners for laptop might be only available to the top end models currently, and if your budget doesn't stretch that far it would be useful to at least have the ability to read DVDs (aka. a combo CDRW/DVD-ROM drive).

Screen size - 14-17" typically, wide-screen arrangements aren't ideal for photo presentation or manipulation purposes IMO. If you're inclined to play games, get one with ATI or nVidia video solution. These have dedicated hardware chip for 3D rendering. Not important if you only use for office apps, web browsing and photochopping - for that, the std video that shares memory with main system RAM will do.

Laptop memory is one of the cheapest 3rd party upgrades available. If you're not afraid of installing your own, just go with whatever pitiful amount your vendor offers and upgrade the RAM yourself.

Hard disks however are quite the opposite - the increase in capacities result in pricetags that increase exponentially. 60-80Gb these day are typically affordable, but external USB/firewire HD is the way to go for extra storage (check to see if your system has firewire connection too!)

Serial/parallel ports, floppy drives etc - some vendors have started to omit them from certain models, if you require these to hook up with pre-existing ancient peripherals, ensure your intended purchase has what you need.

I'm not gunna offer brand suggestion, as IMO that's largely a personal preference and anyone extolling the virtues of one brand over another are simply basing that on personal experience.... which to me are akin to grains of salt. Just stay away from HP/Compaq - their customer service is pathetic.

[gstark]

I've had no issues with IBM or Toshiba.

I'd run like hell from Sony, and be wary of Dell, who will tell you you're getting a great deal when all you're buying is last year's cast off.

A couple of im portatnt points - definitely include a DVD burner.

XP Pro, not home.

There is no such thing as too much RAM, nor too much HDD.

Get a good graphocs card too.

[Nnnnsic]

The graphics cards are where most people get screwed over in laptops, actually.

Avoid any of the follow:
Intel graphic chipsets (like the Extreme one)
ATI Rage
ATI Radeon 9200 and below
Geforce 5250 and below
Any other strange sounding chipset like Savage or any other name that sounds odd unless you're a 3d developer and know what the FireGL or Quadro or Oxygen or Wildcat's are...

Go for things like the Radeon 9600... which is like a bastardised 9700, the Radeon 9700.. which is more like a 9600, and the Radeon 9800... which is somewhere between a 9700 and a 9800.

They make it altogether confusing, it appears.

[MattC]

I have, over the past few years, owned Toshiba, HP and Dell Laptops. The Toshibas are beautifully built and the HP's that I have owned were pretty good also although HP seems to have gone a little backwards with laptops in recent times. The larger Dell laptops creak a little, but other than that are durable. I generally use my 8500 as a desktop that I can move around. It is the 500m that goes everywhere with me.

The thing that keeps me enthusiastic about the high end Dell's is the displays. The screens fitted to the 8500, 8600 and 9100 are "Ultrasharp" displays, which exhibit very small colour shifts (inversion) with changes in viewing angle and contrast is excellent. At high resolutions these displays are gorgeous to look at. I use the 15.4" 1920x1200 WUXGA. My 500m has the top spec 1400x1050 display with the basic spec 1.3GHz PentiumM and Xtreme Graphics and a gig of RAM. A little slow for serious editing, although performance is much better than what the clock speed would indicate (for various reasons it boots faster than the 8500). I think that the display is as important as anything else in the system - more so when dealing with images (assuming that system performance is up to the task). This is something to keep in mind when purchasing.

The modular 2nd drive bay on the Dell's is useful also. A couple of months ago I bought 2 HDD caddies for the modular bay. Combined with a couple of 100GB drives there is no shortage of disk space. Swap in the DVD+R/RW or the floppie as needed.

Last year I had to have the display replaced in my 8500. If I had been in a metro area it would have been next day. Because I live remote, I had it back within 4 days. The parts were shipped to the service center overnight, as was my laptop, repaired and turned around. I was blown away by the speed of the service. Dell seems to done a lot to tune their service.

This may sound like a testimonial in favour of Dell. It is not intended to be. All I can say is that I am more than happy with my 2 Dell laptops and the support. The only area where I have had real issues is with drivers for the Truemobile 1300 G wireless card. It is the only thing that has ever caused a BSOD (and lots of them) on both systems. Dell had no advice for me other than to reinstall the driver. Yeah right, I have just done a clean install and tried that already.... Frustration. It was not until new drivers were released that the problem was finally sorted.

My tip: Look at Toshiba, Dell or IBM. Have a good look at the displays to see whether or not they will work for you.

Cheers

Matt

[bago100]

Excellent advice all round here

Just one point. A friend said that he was having a lot of trouble with wireless internet to his notebook because the notebook case is metal and would not receive the wireless signal well. Normally, I wouldn't take the reason for his trouble as given as there could be a lot of other reasons for such troubles, but when it comes from a qualified electrical engineer with many years of network and computer experience, I'd say there is a very strong liklihood that what he says is corect.

If wireless Internet is one of your considerations, I would investigate this aspect further before purchase.

Also, one of the most important considerations IMO is the screen display.

Choose very carefully.

Cheers and good luck with your choice

Graham

[MATT]

Andyt,

I ahve salary sacraficed a laptop last year, I bought the cheapest i could find at the time. Its a Sony Vaio, bat life sucks but other than that is ok.

The salary sacrafice runs in the fringe benifits year april-march , that allows one each year. SO you should be able to purchase another in april.

I dont see the need for the biggest and best just turn them over each year, the money you get for the old unit will cover the costs of the new.

MATT

[Andyt]

Thank you all for your replies and comments / advice.

There are points there that I had not considered, I am very glad that I asked the question, I feel a lot more informed as I wanted to buy a notebook and not be sold one.

Many thanks for taking the time to reply,

Andyt

ps ...Mat, your advice about turning them over each year is something I had not thought of..............Mmmmmm

[atencati]

AndyT,

I forgot the model...I bought the Dell 8600. The celeron processor will giv you 2x the battery life of a pentium 4, and it will be about half the weight, thickness, etc. The 9100 is the pentium. I get about 3.5 hrs out of the stock battery, I wish I had bought the larger battery, should get about 5 hrs out of it. I have been happy with thes Dell so far.

Out of curiosity, what is you last name????

AndyT (Tencati)

[shutterbug]

Have a look at the apple range of powerbooks...

[PlatinumWeaver]

XP Pro, not home.

I was just wondering why you recommend this? It's a question I am asked all the time and my response is normally.. if you don't know why you want XP Pro then you don't need it.

Just curious...

[bouyant_clown]

I too went through this proceess of salary sacrificing a laptop about 10 months ago now. at the time i bought the top of the line dell 9100 (maxed out most of the features that i could select). For me that was the most cost effective option at the time (and dell was one of the very few that were offering the ati mobility radion 9700 which was the best laptop grafics card available at that time (other than workstation cards).
One other thing to condsider is resaleability if you are going to upgrade every year. I would probably now choose a centrino or pentium-m over the pent 4 3.2ghz for that reason.

[Onyx]

I notice it's your first post, so welcome to the forums bouyant_clown.

On the topic of resaleability, is there a 2nd hand market for lappies? (ie. how and where do you sell?) I'm thinking of disposing of my lappie, which is less than a year old and I'm willing to take a hit of losing half its retail price when new, but I can't foresee a buyer for it. With outdated tech and no warranty, who buys 2nd hand notebooks (that aren't stolen!)?

[Nnnnsic]

There actually isn't much of a market for second-hand lappies, unless you sell to people who really have no clue about what they're getting into.

I'd say the overall problem becomes battery life... and Onyx, it could be another Folding machine for you.

[atencati]

There actually isn't much of a market for second-hand lappies, unless you sell to people who really have no clue about what they're getting into.

I'd say the overall problem becomes battery life... and Onyx, it could be another Folding machine for you.

Believeit or not, people will buy anything on E-Bay!!! I just sold a laptop with a non working screen, amd k6 450, 256 ram, 4gb hd, 56.6 modem (read POS) here.....for $250. I ought it new 3 years earlier for $600. And yes...GET THE BIGGEST BATTERY YOU CAB FIT IN THAT THING!!!!

Andy

[MattC]

Onyx,
I bought an ex-demo HP online for my better half about 6 months ago. I see many SH laptops going online at over inflated prices. Even some of the prices that I see on eBay seem a bit high. I do not think that there are any worries in getting a decent price for a one year old laptop. A 50% hit does not sound unreasonable. You could well do better than 50%. There is always the option to set a reserve and anything over that is a bonus. If it does not go, then re-list it. Eventually someone will take it.

I am one who does not have a problem buying SH notebooks. The biggest market for SH notebooks is probably uni students.

Cheers

Matt

[Nicole]

Just in case you're interested Onyx, http://www.laptop.com.au will do a trade in (they sell both new and used). Not sure if they will buy only. I'd be guessing that you might get a bit more if you found the right person to buy privately. It does look like the market is primarily students.

[gstark]

XP Pro, not home.

I was just wondering why you recommend this? It's a question I am asked all the time and my response is normally.. if you don't know why you want XP Pro then you don't need it.

Just curious...

Dean,

It's the 300D of operating systems.

There's a number of functions that are turned off or won't run. From my personal perspective - as a software developer - I can't run MS development environments under home - but it runs deeper than that. Backup and restore functionality is 300Ded, and many other. For the cost difference, go with Pro.

[kfandst]

You may want to consider the newly launched Mac Min selling at $799 without keyboard/mouse/monitor.

http://www.apple.com.au/macmini/

You could carry it out at friend's place and project to their home TV.

[Nnnnsic]

Or you could consider buying the parts for a pc in a small form factor case that'd be even less expensive and put Linux on it.

[MattC]

Dean,

Pro over Home? I had a copy of Home on the other halfs lappy. Aaaargh, screaming obscenities!!!! Networking and file sharing is the one area where home users will feel it straight up. Microsoft has hobbled XP Home. Windows 95 was better in this area. I bought a copy of XP Pro just to get that thing working properly in a network enviornment. Home is fine for stand alone but really limits future growth.

The other area for headaches is that some software needs permissions edited to get them working properly under accounts with permissions other than administrative. There is no easy way to do this under XP Home. In fact it is a pain just trying to sort file permisions out after a clean install (assuming docs are on a seperate partition) especiallyy when you cannot see what they are.

These are just two things which makes Home a PITA for me. I am sure there is more.

Cheers

Matt

[louiek]

You may want to consider the newly launched Mac Min selling at $799 without keyboard/mouse/monitor.

http://www.apple.com.au/macmini/

You could carry it out at friend's place and project to their home TV.

I have ordered a mac mini, to compliment my current pc. Expected delivery is next week.

I will be using it as my internet access machine, and removing my current pc from the internet.

Image/DV editing will still be done on the more powerfull PC

louiek

[lukeo]

Laptops :

A few things you might want to consider Ruggedness and Reliability, toshiba make some bullet proof laptops in magnesium cases etc.

Battery life, you always need a second battery.

The second hand laptop market is huge, look @ ebay and quokka (WA) mass's of students are always seeking them. Albeit at a cheap price, being in the income range students are.

Specifications these days you really want over 3ghz (3000mhz), in AMD Athlon 64 or Pentium IV.

1024MB (1GB) or Ram minimum, more is better for photography work.

60GB to 80GB , 8MB or 16MB cache hard disk (yes they exist you will have to dig for them). 5400rpm.
http://www.mikhailtech.com/modules.php? ... ent&id=117

Video card, 9700 mobility or 6800 go.

15 - 17" TFT, wide viewing angle not as important as high contrast ratio, 8 bit panel not 6 bit. (they'll all say 32bit but they lie, 16.7 million colours is 8 bit, 16.2 is 6 bit).


I am assuming you want to spend some resonable money here and not anything budget like a Celeron or Sempron.

Lesser acceptable options a Geforce GO, mobility 9500 ... 9100's are cut down version of radeon's 8500 chip from about 4 years ago, steer clear, they offer similair 3D performance to radeon 7500's.

A DVD burner is also a nice feature, with the Size of NEF files they dont take long to fill.

Hyperthreading and Dual channel ram are marketing fruit don't settle for less of anything else if the salesman offer's you a model with those, but not the features you want.

The Pentium M is actually a version of the Pentium III, they are not exceptionally quick BUT the battery life out of them is the best you will get. This is a choice you have to make.

The XP pro vs XP home issue is interesting. Mircrosoft Pro will be supported longer by several years than home, if you plan on upgrading then this is not an issue. XP pro has the ability to support complex file sharing, with indivdual shares setup for different users, with different passwords, varying write access based on user/folder permissions etc .. if none of this is you and you don't need to connect to a corporate network with 20 different domains then Home is exactly the same.

[rokkstar]

I'm a bit of a mac lover and am surprised that no one has mentioned any powerbooks at all.

My computers are being shipped from the UK at the moment so I'm having to edit and PP on my Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. It's fast enough for what I want, but sometimes it groans and strains under the weight of some PS work.

I was going to swap this for a 17" powerbook. I must admit though, that the only worry would be the resolution.

[Neeper]

DO NOT BUY A COMPAQ!! They are crap and their customer service sucks. I bought a Presario 700. It should have been recalled. It has a design flaw where part of the screen frame is the hinge. What a poor design. It took about 12 months of regular use for it to break. It was so bad, that the screen couldn't stanf on it's own. I found a new one on eBay and realized that there are many people like me. So I decided to try calling Compaq, before buying a new one. I complained and told them it's a design flaw and that it's a common problem with this model. They had the nerve to tell me I abused my laptop and probably dropped it. I was P.O.'d. Ever since then, I vowed to tell as many people as I can to NOT buy a Compaq. I ended up buying a new frame for my screen from eBay (brand new for $150 CAD). On the first day I got it, I got a crack in the hinge area right away. How's that for quality??

[MATT]

The secondhand lappy again, Andyt will only pay around 55% of origonal cost as he pays in PRE tax dollars(Depending on tax bracket).

So if he buys a $2000 lappy pays net $1100 for it, in 12months time that laptop would be a bargin for a freind or family member at $1000 .

MATT

[lukeo]

In twelve months time they will be sold at auctions and second hand in various trading paper's for around the $750 dollar mark.

Salary sacrificing is a great way to get a laptop, however they fall in value faster than new cars and rightly so they are a disposable item in a disposable society.

Laptop hard disk drives and miniturised to the point of no return, working at rotational speeds that see's them rendered slow if not dead inside 3 years. DDR ram is notoriously cheap and unreliable after a few years of stress. TFT monitors don't last forever without developing flickering and dead pixels. Battery's cost a fortune and within a year have lost about 30% of there original maximum charge. Don't buy second hand expecting the performance of new, if you buy a second hand laptop with half the specs of new one it is going to be more than twice as slow with possibly many other problems. If you can deal with these than great, but don't pay top dollar for it.

[Onyx]

yraen69, I am somewhat skeptical of issues raised in your post.

Laptop HDs failing within 3 years, DDR Ram becoming "unreliable"(?) with stress, etc. It is the first I've heard of these, and would appreciate elaboration on your part.

1) I didn't think rotational speeds were the main issue with HD failure, but rather heads crashing due to physical force/impact.

2) I never thought solid state components to reacted to stress.

I would appreciate it if you took the time to educate me on these claims
which I currently perceive to be outrageous.

The previous comment: "you really want over 3ghz (3000mhz)" likewise suggests to me your comments may have resulted from misinformation. But I await your reply.

[MCWB]

DDR Ram becoming "unreliable"(?) with stress, etc.

Indeed. My 2 sticks of BH-5 HyperX should be dead in that case.

[Nnnnsic]

I thought DDR only became unreliable when it was generic memory that wasn't properly cooled and / or in an overclocker's environment.

[MattC]

yraen69,

3 GHZ + P4 in a laptop makes for one very hot, heavy, noisy and power hungry lappy. There are a few of these things around (Dell 9100), but they are less than optimum for mobile work. There is no such thing as a Mobile Pentium 4 any more, and the fastest of these was the 2.67 GHz. The current P4's in laptops are basically desktop processors with some minor changes. Intel has created some confusion with "Mobile Pentium 4" and "Pentium 4 Mobile" and now Pentium M. There are some fairly significant differences between the first two and the third is an entirely different beast.

The original Pentium M was based on the Pentium 3 core. That is where the similarities ended. There were some pretty serious changes to the P3 to produce the P-M. The original P-M 1.7 GHz had very similar performance to the P4 2.4 GHz. This on its own is enough to suggest that the Pentium M is no Pentium 3. The current Pentium M (2nd Generation) raises the bar even further. Per clock cycle, the Pentium M processes more data than the P4, so fewer clock cycles are required for the same throughput. It does really suprise me that Intel has not seen fit to apply similar mods to the P4 to make some seriously quick processors, but there are probably other issues in play here.

About the only things that kills memory of any kind is heat, heat and heat (+dust/electrostatic charges). Same for any electronic component. Keep it cool and it will last.
I live in central AU. Temperatures are a real issue. I cannot comfortably run my Dell 8500 outdoors most days. It just gets too hot. For that I have a Dell 500M (P-M 1.3 GHz, Extreme graphics...). It is a low spec machine that runs suprisingly cool (the reason I bought it).

The assertion (not by yraen69) that this graphics package is better than that one has me wondering. Intel Extreme IGP has its place (not in the bin). These are some of the considerations when I purchased the 500m with Extreme - heat, battery life, longevity (I generally find Intel to be rock solid 5 years down the track) and usage. I would not buy a top shelf laptop with Extreme IGP, but in the low to midrange lappys it has it place. In my 500m it is appropriate. High spec AGP is great for 3D games...sucking battery power (a year down the track it still runs for 4.5 hours on a single battery charge) and producing heat. I do not play games, so any thing more is a waste. I use this machine primarily for internet, office tasks, network tasks, downloading and occasional editing of photos, plus it travels everywhere with me. It is not up to video editing and other cpu intensive tasks (it can do it but is a bit slow) - These high end tasks are better suited to a desktop.
One thing that I can say about the 500m is that it will not be redundant to my needs overnight. It has a few years of life in it for me.

The two types of people who I usually see buying high end laptops are these.
1. Those who buy the fastest and best for internet and word processing.
2. Those who buy with unreasonable expectations of what the laptop is capable of. Even the best is still nowhere near capable of delivering the sort of performance of a similarly priced desktop.
Many of these high end machines rarely get away from the desk.

People need to seriously consider what they are realistically going to use there laptop for and purchase something appropriate. Statements such as "Pentium M is too slow" or "Extreme IGP is no good" when the intended use is not known, drive me crazy. I often get people asking me which laptop they should buy. My first question is, "what do you intend to use it for?" BTW, I still regard the display as one of the single most important components in a system. This is the device which the user will spend countless hours staring at. The CPU usually spends 99% of its time at idle.

It is horses for courses.

Cheers

Matt

[lukeo]

Thank Onyx it's ok to question everything and you did it very nicely, i accept that and will do my best to offer further
explanation.

Rotational speed for laptop hard disks more so than desktop has become and issue,

if you took you old 3200rpm 10gb laptop hard drive from 2 years ago, tested at new and tested now would show
some extreme degredation in speed, they start to get louder and louder and slower and slower until they die. This is all
aside from the currently faster drives higher percentage chance of crashing into the platters and destroying the disk.

This is a evident in hard drives if you have your previous machine, it is possible now to have 40GB hard drives 2 or 3 years
old. These drives are not the drives they once were and don't compete realiably with todays 40GB hard drives. They are worn
out. My point was simply that a year old laptop might have a hard drive in it that you can still get said one year later,
however they are not the same, one year of use is allot on such a small, fast spinning, mechanical device.

My next comment about ram i will defend thus, i said that "cheap" generic DDR ram is mass produced and prone to failure,
it is built to a price, lasts it's alloted 12 months or more so the manufacturer can disown it and then it begins to show signs
of its degredation. Similair to the electron migration that occurs in CPU's (look the phenomenom up on google) RAM does
degrade generic DDR chips cut corners on PCB shielding, power filtering and voltage stabilisation capacitors, don't expect to
be able to pull out an old stick of DDR ram in couple of years time like you CAN with old EDO 72pin ram today and have it run
100% stable. Cheap generic ram that is starting to wear out is in my humble opinion the single greatest casue of blue screns
of death.

Solid state devices like anything wear out, the transistors that make up a stick of DDR ram are incredibly fast switching,
the error control built into them is quite good, but eventually failure to switch successfully more than once in a row begins
to create random memmory errors, one single bit shifted incorrectly and you have a machine that does strange wonderful loopy
things often attributed to windows when in fact it is the underlying cheap generic parts the machine is forced to run on.

Power supplies, we will talk about quality power supplies in another thread if you like. Suffice to say about the comment on
BH-5 ram it is in a completely different class of hardware called quality. Many of the rules do not apply to this class
and anything in it is usually expensive for good reason. Realiability is not cheap, you get what you pay for as always in
anything in life.

My comment "you really want 3000mhz these days" further down I also state that the Pentium M (which even the 1.8ghz variety is not as
fast as the 3ghz PIV) draws less power and will give longer battery life. I also said the choice was up to the end buyer
as usual i am NOT here to force feed someone the specifications for a machine that may not suit their needs. The 3ghz PIV with
the suggested DUAL battery system will actually give respectable battery life, and the most extreme performance. If this is
what the user wants and cash is not really a problem upto say 4-5k (some here spend that on lense's). Heat aside.

As usual the choice again of longer life at a bit of a performance hit especially as the more extreme 6800 go and
9700/9800 mobility video cards are not available with the P M chipset. If you dont do CAD or play Games then you can get
away with less.

I simply presented the options, if anyone printed something written from a forum, took it to harvey norman and said "i
want this" they'd deserve the 10k piece of unsuitable junk they got.

The idea is to take the information presented here, research online websites, research your local library online as well,
speak to some professionals in the area, talk to a few shops, see a demo or two if you can .. etc etc etc ...

To matco1974, my post was not specifically PIV 3ghz I also mentioned A64 they are a very capable 64 bit cpu,
with future potentional to expand to win xp 64 if it ever comes out. The A64 are much cooler than the PIV cpu's,
they do lack hyperthreading. Again test one out decide for yourself i am not starting a AMD vs INTEL Fanboy war here.

I know all about the history of the P M core, banias, dothan and onwards. Clock for clock (like AMD), the PIII architechture
has a greater IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) than the PIV. However it's pipeline depth is limited and it's core is not as
scalable so even though given Mhz for Mhz they are faster they do not compete at the top of the CPU ranks currently. They
are extremely viable in a laptop, you get punch and long battery life. Heat is a killer, you need to spend money to get
a decent laptop that is going to work in Australian heat, look for metal casing, and a copper heatsink inside.

Hopefully I have addressed a few issues.

[Onyx]

yraen69, thank you. I believed your first long-ish post taken on its own may have the potential to be misleading for potential notebook buyers, when read in addition to your latest post which has addressed issues and clarified some points that may be salient to lurking notebook buyers.

May I express my thanks to those whom provided options for disposing of a notebook computer 2nd hand, for raising awareness of the Mac Mini, and may I encourage the thread starter to inform us in due time what they ended up buying.

[MattC]

Yraen69

I only question the use of P4 or AMD64 processors, which are basically desktop processors, in notebooks. I am never going to get into a debate over which is better. I use both AMD and Intel processors, and I use them where appropriate.

What I took exception to was the blanket statement "What you really want..." not knowing what use the laptop is going to be put to. Primary computer or not? Level of performance? The one requirement that was stipulated was battery life. P4 (or AMD64) and good battery life are mutually exclusive. Sure, it is possible to haul around extra batteries, but light weight and P4 (or AMD64) are also mutually exclusive due to the extra cooling and power requirements. Combine the extra weight of the laptop with the extra weight of the batteries and things are getting weighty. Even power bricks are proportionally heavier. The computer stops being a laptop and becomes a portable or desktop replacement. Desktop replacements are fine (I have a Dell 8500 as a primary) but mobile they generally are not (even though they are portable).

I do not know if you have ever used a 3GHz desktop processor (Intel or otherwise) in a laptop. For the benefit of those who have not, cooling fans (often more than one) absolutely scream to keep the temp down. The noise level alone is enough to make many purchasers question their decision.

Pentium M, as you would know, is quite a different beast to the P3. Clock for clock the P-M outperforms the P3 and P4. Scalability is not an issue here. I am talking about products as they are offered. IPC, to my knowledge, was raised from P3 to P-M. This was one of the things that drew comparisons to the AMD Athlon XP.
Intel generally knows what they are doing when they develop a new processor and drop another (P4M at 2.6GHz). Did they make a mistake? I do not think so. The Banias P-M at 1.7GHz gave similar benchmark results as the P4M at 2.4GHz. The current Dothan runs at up to 2.0 GHz.

As far as raw processing grunt goes, it is hard to go past the P4 or AMD64, but there is a price to be paid.

Cheers

Matt

[ru32day]

As usual the choice again of longer life at a bit of a performance hit especially as the more extreme 6800 go and
9700/9800 mobility video cards are not available with the P M chipset. If you dont do CAD or play Games then you can get
away with less.

According to Dell, the Inspiron 9200 is a Centrino machine, with a Pentium M chip and a 9700 graphics card.

[AlistairF]

It may be worth waiting a little longer. I have a large corporate client who's delayed purchase of their laptop rollout due to the next generation centrino chips coming out. Better power consumption and 54mbs wireless etc. New machnes are due in the next month or two.

An interesting statistic also that 95% of Windows errors are traced back to device driver issues. Sticking with a tier-1 vendor (ie. Dell, HP, Toshiba and IBM) provides a much higher level of device support and compatability for Windows than some of the cheaper vendors.

Alistair

[MattC]

Gidday Alistair,

Interesting statistic and confirms my experience. Every blue screen that I have ever had has been the result of drivers misbehaving. The culprit has always been wireless drivers for.... Dell. Have to admit that Dell was reasonably quick getting the problem straightened which is something that could not be expected from cheaper vendors.

Cheers

Matt

[Andyt]

Onyx,

In hind sight I guess I should have been more specific in my intended use, which is apart from the usual office & internet applications while travelling, is to have the ability to download CF cards "on the go" then later in the day, usually in a hotel room, review the days pics, sort, file, delete so as to minimise workflow when home when time is at more of a premium. Also, generally get an idea of the finer detail of my pics so as to make adjustments the next day if necessary.

Also the ability to take my pics on the notebook and share with friends as a slide show or via TV will be a use as well.

So far I have learned that the bigger the notebook with 14" & 15" screens the more weight and features they have which in part defeates the purpose. Having resigned myself to the price range of $3K+ I am presently researching the class of notebooks known as "Ultra portables"

With less than 2kg in weight, battery life in excess of 5 hours they sound good but drawbacks include small screens, lack of a CD burner (I would like this to make back up copies of pics while away) and smallish 10" screens.

I have learn't a lot, and won't be rushed into a purchase, so the search continues, and I will definately let you know via this thread what I purchase and why. In the meantime I have a new 50mm F1.8 to play with......

Thanks again to all who posted,

Andyt

[Onyx]

Andyt, I suppose you're making progress on your shopping expedition now that you've identified what sub-class of notebooks you're intending to look at purchasing. Incidently, the ultra-portable class is probably the most costly of them all - given the engineering challenges imposed by size and mass restrictions (not to mention marketing appeal).

If the notebook has a PCMCIA slot, you can cheaply acquire adapters that would make any system capable of transferring from CF cards.

The Intel Extreme gfx chip (default video for many models) has the ability to simultaneously or independently output to two displays at once, so that would fit your criterion of picture sharing via TV or ext monitor.

I suggest taking a look at Fujitsu's range powered by the Transmeta Crusoe chip. My cousin has one and raves about it... then again, he's an arrogant d&^(head.

[bouyant_clown]

Andyt,
if you wanted to save some money you could go for a less portable (and less expensive) laptop. this would probably mean that you could have a cd or dvd writer onboard.
you could then use a portable hard drive system or large memory cards for your day trip purposes.
if you're going to use the laptop at a hotel anyway. . .
Portable laptop = $3500
Laptop + Portable Hard drive = $2000 + $500
This may be a worthwhile saving (depends on how you can work it with your salery sacrifice deal)

[MattC]

Andy,
It sounds like you are looking at the likes of the Toshiba R100. That one is a fantastic bit of kit and prices have really dropped in the last year. No optical drive but the screen is better than 10" and is in a class of its own at a little more than 1kg.

Cheers

Matt

[onimod]

So far I have learned that the bigger the notebook with 14" & 15" screens the more weight and features they have which in part defeates the purpose. Having resigned myself to the price range of $3K+ I am presently researching the class of notebooks known as "Ultra portables"

With less than 2kg in weight, battery life in excess of 5 hours they sound good but drawbacks include small screens, lack of a CD burner (I would like this to make back up copies of pics while away) and smallish 10" screens.

I have learn't a lot, and won't be rushed into a purchase, so the search continues, and I will definately let you know via this thread what I purchase and why. In the meantime I have a new 50mm F1.8 to play with......

Thanks again to all who posted,

Andyt

Andy,
I've held out till now because everyone has an opinion on notebooks, but everyone has different needs too. My GF and I started searching about a month ago and came to the same conclusion - ultraportable. There's a couple of nice ones, but he one the GF (she who pays the bills!) chose the Sony T series - 10.8" screen with a burner - about $AU4K. We have changed our mind though to Sony T series - it's a little larger (good and bad)13" screen, larger drive, vid card (as opposed to integrated) and looks a little classier. I'm a bit down on Sony Australia - the specs of the machines available are well down on the overseas markets so we'll be importing through a friend in the US - same price, better machine. I've done quite a bit of research so if you want to pose any questions then post away or PM me.
Try dynamism.com for some pretty stuff.
Nick

[birddog114]

Maybe another VAIO's victim

[ozimax]

If you can afford it, but a powerbook 12" or 14" with max ram, they are the Rolls Royce of laptops but not cheap.

A current 14" iBook with max ram is also a good choice for many reasons, but two things stands out above all - battery life of approx 4-5 hrs on standard battery and exceptional screen.

Max

[Andyt]

As promised, I am letting all those who responded to this thread (thanks again for all your advice / comments ) what the outcome was in regard to my pursuit of a notebook.

The end result was that I am now the proud owner of an Acer Aspire 1682, which is 1.6Ghz, 400Mhz FSB, 2 MB L2 cache, 512MB ram, 15.4" WXGA TFT LCD screen, Radeon 9700/64 MB, 60GB HDD, Dual Layer DVD burner, etc, etc. Lots of other features, WiFi, bluetooth etc. Great battery life, min 4.5hrs up to 8hrs. An extra $20 added a CF/PCMIA card. 3yr 2hr warranty.

Although this notebook was well under budget, I was anticipating $3K+, in comparison with the competition this one offered the most "bang-for-the-buck". My prioritis in the end came down to screen resolution, processor speed and battery life. The rest of the features would be O'K.

Remember its primary use was to download pics in the field and review them.

After 10 days I am still very pleased with this unit, it does everything I wanted and more. I have learn't from advice given that there are as many opinions on this subject as there are notebooks to choose from but in the end it comes down to personal choice for a machine that is specked up to suit your needs.

If only we could salary sacrifice a D2x!

Regards,

Andyt