More about Laptops

[Anonymous]

Am trying to reduce my footprint again - moving to a smaller place and needing to get down to a laptop and my big Samsung 23.1" LCD. Currently have a nice Sony 16.1" screen GRT-170- P4 2.8 and all and saw one of the newer IBM fast Centrino units at ACU West. Since there seems to be a dearth of info about Centrinos using AC, can anyone comment on the differences??

Dell has a workstation laptop that seems quite good ----BUT VERY expensive for my budget. It is a Centrino with a 7200 RPM hard drive. Amazing..Will be needing the info fairly soon.

Lew Bishop Architect
Soon to slow down

[David Pacifico]

Hello Lew
I'm looking also. It seems the
"Work Station" M60 has a 1.7 Ghz Pentium M
"Inspiron XPS" has 3.4 Ghz P4 Extreme Edition
"Inspiron 9100 has 3.2 Ghz P4 HT (hyper theard)
I'm Leaning to the 9100 for value.
Intel is trying to help:
http://www.intel.com/performance/index.htm

[Anonymous]

Thanks for chiming in Dave: My thing is to find one that is a little lighter - I've been lugging one of the heavies at near 9# and just would like some speed and some lightness... I've tried to find out the weight of the M60 and expect that it would be up there. Looking at IBM today, there are several Centrino units in the R and T series that appear to be under 6# but the price is astronomical - even more than MACs.

I guess that a little less speed and a lot more lightness wouldn't be too bad.

My main concern is the relative speed of the Centrino vs P4

Lew (dreaming again) Bishop

[David Pacifico]

It looks like the M60 starts at 7 Lbs
http://www1.us.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/precn_m60?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=vi...
The Inspiron XPS starts at 9 Lbs

Dell seems to think a 1.6 Ghz Pentium M (which seems to be built with Centrino technology) equals the performance of a 2.4 Pentium 4-M (but with better battery life)

I'm leaning now to the XPS with 3.4 Ghz P4-M HT. The case looks better than the 9100 and you don't have to pay the premium for the Extreme (although there does seem to be a good performance pop, but it's $1,140 more, ouch). I don't mind the wieght.

[aahatimo]

dell 9100 review:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.aspx?newsID=1841

[David Pacifico]

Thanks Tim
I discovered HP makes a nice model zd7000.
You can get the 3.2 Ghz HT Extreme for less, a 17" or 15" sceen and you can get a single 1 gig Memory module leaving room for more later. All for less, although every day dells price seems to change.
http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/cto/computer_customize_start.do
Still heavy though, Lew.

Can anybody point to a laptop model with the new AMD 64 bit processor? or a performance comparison to Intels 32 bit line up.

[aahatimo]

David wrote:
Can anybody point to a laptop model with the new AMD 64 bit processor? or a performance comparison to Intels 32 bit line up.

david this is the main review i have seen: http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20040318/index.html
it sounded like the test unit was not optimized.
should be a great mobile workstation when they get it together! so far not many notebook builders have gone over to the amd side. intel still seems to have that market.
btw, have you checked out the sager units?

[David Pacifico]

aahatimo wrote:

Tim wrote:
btw, have you checked out the sager units?

Tim
Yes Sager is in the running http://www.sagernotebook.com/index.html
They seem to have not as much customization on the web site, becuase they tend to include most of the good stuff as standard equipment.

[Jefferson]

Couldn't help but toss in my 2 cents. I bought an HP ZD7000 about 2 months ago and i am really enjoying it. The big screen is a real bonus with the ArchiCAD palettes. The high end video card enables dual screen use when at home, along with the 3.2 CPU + 1 G ram, expandable to 2G, smokes the less than 3 year old desktop. I would definitely buy this one again, for what that's worth.

I did my home work beforehand, (http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3121_7-5109594.html?tag=prmo1). It is heavy, around 9 lb, but only bad when standing talking to the client trying to get out the door, but that's always bad............

[Anonymous]

Jefferson wrote:
Couldn't help but toss in my 2 cents. I bought an HP ZD7000 about 2 months ago and i am really enjoying it. The big screen is a real bonus with the ArchiCAD palettes. The high end video card enables dual screen use when at home, along with the 3.2 CPU + 1 G ram, expandable to 2G, smokes the less than 3 year old desktop. I would definitely buy this one again, for what that's worth.

Bought the HP/CompacZD7040 17" about six months ago...its really heavy(in an airport delay) but a beautiful workstation. It runs hot, but IMHO, I would buy this one again...

or the Sager...hmmm...

Good Luck!