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

[Karl Ottenstein]

LewBishop wrote:
My Sony P4 2.8 w/ 60 GB hd has now been updated with a new 7200 rpm HD - the laptop used to take almost a minute and a half to do the same. Now the laptop starts in 40 sec.

Woo hoo! Thanks for sharing that, Lew. I didn't realize that laptop drives were up to 7200 RPM now. When I got my aged but still usable Dell, I opted for a 5400 rpm drive over the 'standard' 4500 ... knowing that that was still awful compared to desktop performance, but the only choice then. I'll have to see if an upgrade is possible or worthwhile for it...

Thanks,
Karl

[Dwight]

What has this new drive done to your battery power time?

[Anonymous]

Haven't tried the battery thing yet - will be doing that over the next several days. Am moving to Northern Ca and will have some opportunities to try more features. Duane was over this AM and was visibly impressed with the performance of the computer in both loads and in manuvering the 3D window and other tasks.

Will be posting the results as soon as done.

Lew Bishop

[aahatimo]

here are a few links for the hitachi 7200rpm notebook drives.
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/hgst/?epi_menuItemID=72dec1c7bd2c113aa5a8f2b6aac4f0a0&epi_menu...
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/techdocs/33C6A76DF9338B0A86256D34007054C0/$file/Why7200Mo...
i cannot find the 80 gig drive. been wanting to put one in my aging dell. wonder when the apple powerbook will offer them?

[Anonymous]

Shopping for laptop, the question is which hardware combination is fastest (assume same RAM and screen specs) faster CPU or Video:

P4-3400 with Radeon 9600/128 (Dell Outlet Inspiron XPS)
Athalon 64 3200 (2GHz) with Radeon 9600/64 (eMachines M6809)

Can't seem to find a laptop for under $2K that has both Athalon and 128 video. Any verdicts?

[Anonymous]

After the move: making good progress in comparison with my now old HP desktop 2.53 1 Gig 80 GB 7200rpm HD etc - The Sony is now faster in every operation. Startup is about 15% faster - the laptop is already at full screen when the desktop is trying to get the screen up. Virtually all ops in AC are not only faster but feel responsive vs just doing it. Having a lot of fun now in doing much 3D and elevations.

Havent had time to put the stopwatch on it but will do so shortly.

Recommend: Any of the large screen units - 15.4" wide screens seem to be OK and the Sony PCG-GRT170 with the new drive and a 16.1" screen is for me a good pick. Haven't checked the latest prices, but this unit is usually fairly priced.

Lew Bishop
P4-2.8 XPHome 768Ram 60GB AC8.1

[Steve Jepson]

For speed with ArchiCAD I think it all boils down to the graphics card. RAM will not compensate for a slow graphics card. What is the fastest open GL card you can get (afford) in a laptop? and which laptop has it? back when I bought my M60, Dell was the only one you could get with the nvidia 128MB card. If the NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1000 is THE card you want in a laptop, is there any other laptop besides the M60 that you can get it in?

http://www.nvidia.com/page/quadrofx_go.html

http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.data/specapc_3dsm6_summary.html

http://www.spec.org/gpc/apc.data/Dell/m60/3dsmax6/result.html

[Eduardo Rolon]

Any PowerBook comes with the option to update their ATI card to 128mb for $50.00 US.

[Steve Jepson]

ejrolon wrote:
Any PowerBook comes with the option to update their ATI card to 128mb for $50.00 US.

yes. but its not nvidia is it?

[Eduardo Rolon]

Steve wrote:

ejrolon wrote:
Any PowerBook comes with the option to update their ATI card to 128mb for $50.00 US.

yes. but its not nvidia is it?

I think is an ATI Radeon 9600