Looking for a notebook

[Nadeem]

I am looking for a laptop to buy as desktop replacement. I am not sure
what I am looking for, so I seek your advice. Actually I am a final year
student doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my
project using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my
work, 1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+. But I am going to france for four
months and I wish to buy a laptop primarily to continue on my project
there. So what kind of laptop do you recommend me? Asus? Dell?
Alienware? (are these available in france?) I am not sure about
Centrino, or P4 or Athlon64? I have a fairly limited budget, and I
wouldnt mind a good graphics card on the laptop.
Any suggestions? I can travel to UK to get the laptop there if prices in
the UK are significantly lower.

 

[George Macdonald]

I am looking for a laptop to buy as desktop replacement. I am not sure
what I am looking for, so I seek your advice. Actually I am a final year
student doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my
project using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my
work, 1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+. But I am going to france for four
months and I wish to buy a laptop primarily to continue on my project
there. So what kind of laptop do you recommend me? Asus? Dell?
Alienware? (are these available in france?) I am not sure about
Centrino, or P4 or Athlon64? I have a fairly limited budget, and I
wouldnt mind a good graphics card on the laptop.
Any suggestions? I can travel to UK to get the laptop there if prices in
the UK are significantly lower.

First, note that though Centrino usually is usually taken to mean Pentium
M, it really means the Intel platform of Pentium M, Intel chipset and Intel
Wi-Fi - IOW you can get a Pentium M which is not a Centrino if it has, say,
Cisco Wi-Fi.

You won't get prices much better than in the U.S. AFAIK. I used to buy
cheap notebooks, like Winbooks, but I got tired of damage from just general
use/abuse and flexible cases which sometimes led to other problems. I now
buy Thinkpad T4x models because they are rugged enough stand up to the
abuse they get on the road... and they have well designed keyboard, mousing
etc. AFAIK the R5x models are close in overall design for a bit less $$.

The only Dell notebook I've seen in the last 2 years or so was with
somebody from one of our other offices - it hung our entire network on
shutdown and had severe cursor drift problems. He now has a Thinkpad T4x.

You didn't say how important travel ruggedness and battery life is to you
and those are usually big factors in notebook choice IMO. If battery life
is a big plus, then I wouldn't look beyond a Pentium M based system. I
don't know much about other notebooks, other than Thinkpads, but when I
took a look at Toshibas, HPs etc. at CompUSA, I was not impressed.

If you're intrigued by an AMD CPU, one of the few mfrs is Acer but again, I
know nothing of their reliability/service record - they have Athlon64 and
Sempron models, the latter being an Athlon 64 with 64-bit mode disabled.
You might want to find one in a store to see how it feels - prices at
www.newegg.com are pretty good and AFAIK Acer is one of the few companies
which actually still manufactures notebooks. As for Celeron, P4, forget
them, underpowered and too hot respectively.

 

[Tony Hill]

I am looking for a laptop to buy as desktop replacement. I am not sure
what I am looking for, so I seek your advice. Actually I am a final year
student doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my
project using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my
work, 1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+. But I am going to france for four
months and I wish to buy a laptop primarily to continue on my project
there. So what kind of laptop do you recommend me? Asus? Dell?

I would generally avoid Dell, HPaq and Gateway, all three of which are
actually the same damn laptops under the stickers (these companies
have outsourced all their production to two or three companies in
Taiwan). Generally speaking the quality of these machines is pretty
low. If you do decide for on of these though, ONLY get one of their
"business" class laptops, support for consumer-grade laptops from
these companies is generally abysmal.

Asus has some VERY nice looking laptops, though I don't have any
personal experience with them one way or another.

Alienware? (are these available in france?) I am not sure about

To the best of my knowledge, Alienware is only really sold in North
America.

Centrino, or P4 or Athlon64?

First off, P4 and Athlon64 are processors, Centrino is a marketing
campaign, kinda different beasts here. What you might be thinking of
is the Pentium-M processor which is part of the Centrino marketing
campaign, and it's probably the best mobile processor out there. The
downside to the P-M is that it's also the most expensive mobile
processor out there.

Athlon64 mobile chips consume a fair bit more power than Pentium-M
chips, but are cheaper and often faster. Pentium4 mobile chips
consume more power, are expensive and are not faster... so they really
can be ruled out quite safely (I have no idea why anyone would buy one
of those chips for a laptop these days!)

Another option, if you can find them, would be AMD's mobile Sempron
"Thin and Light" chips. Performance in the same range as the
Pentium-M, only slightly higher power consumption and MUCH lower
prices. Sadly though, these chips are VERY hard to find in decent
laptops, the few companies that do use Sempron chips seem to use the
more power-hungry "Desktop Replacement" chips.

Intel's low-cost alternative isn't so great. High power consumption
and low performance make it rather unattractive, though at least they
are cheap and plentiful. The Celeron-M is slightly better, though I
always get a foul taste in my mouth with the way that Intel just
intentionally disables some power-saving features from their Pentium-M
chips to make the Celeron-M, just so that they can segment the market
better.

I have a fairly limited budget, and I
wouldnt mind a good graphics card on the laptop.

Personally if it were me, I would probably opt for a Toshiba laptop
using a Pentium-M processor (actually I would probably opt for an
Apple iBook... but that's a whole other can of worms!). If you want
decent graphics than you'll probably have to pony up a few extra bucks
for an upgrade option to something like an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700.
Such a setup can be found for $1250 for a Satellite M30X with a bit of
tweaking.

IBM is also a good option, though you tend to pay a definite premium
for a Thinkpad.

Any suggestions? I can travel to UK to get the laptop there if prices in
the UK are significantly lower.

Prices in the UK tend to be exorbitant, though I suspect that they are
no better in France. If you're currently in North America (or
South-East Asia) where prices are cheap, I would recommend buying
before you leave. Just keep in mind that you'll need a different
power adapter over there.

 

[George Macdonald]

First off, P4 and Athlon64 are processors, Centrino is a marketing
campaign, kinda different beasts here. What you might be thinking of
is the Pentium-M processor which is part of the Centrino marketing
campaign, and it's probably the best mobile processor out there. The
downside to the P-M is that it's also the most expensive mobile
processor out there.

Athlon64 mobile chips consume a fair bit more power than Pentium-M
chips, but are cheaper and often faster. Pentium4 mobile chips
consume more power, are expensive and are not faster... so they really
can be ruled out quite safely (I have no idea why anyone would buy one
of those chips for a laptop these days!)

Another option, if you can find them, would be AMD's mobile Sempron
"Thin and Light" chips. Performance in the same range as the
Pentium-M, only slightly higher power consumption and MUCH lower
prices. Sadly though, these chips are VERY hard to find in decent
laptops, the few companies that do use Sempron chips seem to use the
more power-hungry "Desktop Replacement" chips.

I see Acer has a mobile Sempron model,
http://us.acer.com/acerpanam/page4....oupCtxParam=0&dctx1=25&ctx1=US&crc=1875133230
but I've no idea how Acer's general quality is. Anybody any idea? IIRC a
couple of years ago they were making one of IBM's lower priced range -- the
i-Series -- and people didn't think much of it. Then again, Unichrome
graphics is probably not what we want.

Personally if it were me, I would probably opt for a Toshiba laptop
using a Pentium-M processor (actually I would probably opt for an
Apple iBook... but that's a whole other can of worms!). If you want
decent graphics than you'll probably have to pony up a few extra bucks
for an upgrade option to something like an ATI Mobility Radeon 9700.
Such a setup can be found for $1250 for a Satellite M30X with a bit of
tweaking.

IBM is also a good option, though you tend to pay a definite premium
for a Thinkpad.

If you're willing to go for a model with 1 year warranty, I see Thinkpads
not much more than other decent systems.

Prices in the UK tend to be exorbitant, though I suspect that they are
no better in France. If you're currently in North America (or
South-East Asia) where prices are cheap, I would recommend buying
before you leave. Just keep in mind that you'll need a different
power adapter over there.

Huh? Aren't all the power bricks universal now? The ones that come with
Thinkpads are.

 

[Nadeem]

First, note that though Centrino usually is usually taken to mean Pentium
M, it really means the Intel platform of Pentium M, Intel chipset and Intel
Wi-Fi - IOW you can get a Pentium M which is not a Centrino if it has, say,
Cisco Wi-Fi.

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am a bit unsure choosing the
Pentium M because I am going to use the machine for relatively power
consuming jobs, java compilation, application server & local mysql
database, and perhaps a little bit of gaming. Can you assure me that the
Pentium M is ok for that? That is why I was bending more towards an
Athlon64. And yes, is the mobile Sempron the same as a mobile Athlon64
with 64-bit mode disabled? Same cache?

From your posts, I see that IBM Thinkpads are among the best laptops. I
will surely look out for these. I have also been looking at Alienware's
laptops but their prices are way out of my budget!!! Its too bad I shall
not be in the US to benefit the low prices there.

 

[George Macdonald]

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am a bit unsure choosing the
Pentium M because I am going to use the machine for relatively power
consuming jobs, java compilation, application server & local mysql
database, and perhaps a little bit of gaming. Can you assure me that the
Pentium M is ok for that? That is why I was bending more towards an
Athlon64. And yes, is the mobile Sempron the same as a mobile Athlon64
with 64-bit mode disabled? Same cache?

No, you're right - the Sempron has a smaller cache. Take a look at Acer's
Web site and www.amd.com for details. As for the Pentium M, figure its
clock speeds as roughly comparable performance-wise to Athlon XP actual
clock speeds; it suffers a bit on memory bandwidth because of lower FSB
speed and lack of dual channel memory chipsets... until recently anyway. I
don't know if we'll see dual channel notebooks very soon, nor at what
price. Take a look here
http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q1/dfi-855gme-mgf/index.x?pg=1 for
comparative performance of Pentium M in a desktop mbrd.

From your posts, I see that IBM Thinkpads are among the best laptops. I
will surely look out for these. I have also been looking at Alienware's
laptops but their prices are way out of my budget!!! Its too bad I shall
not be in the US to benefit the low prices there.

Sorry it wasn't clear to me where you were traveling from. In the
Euro-zone, you might also look at some of the Fujitsu-Siemens laptops -
they had some AMD systems a while back but I haven't looked recently. See
http://www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk/products/mobile/notebooks/index.html

 

[keith]

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 09:23:33 +0400, Nadeem wrote:

Thank you everyone for your responses. I am a bit unsure choosing the
Pentium M because I am going to use the machine for relatively power
consuming jobs, java compilation, application server & local mysql
database, and perhaps a little bit of gaming. Can you assure me that the
Pentium M is ok for that?

Mobile systems aren't as fast as their desktop counterparts, in any case.
They tend to be optimized for power, not performance. If you're really
worried about performance be sure to look hard at the disk drives. Most
disk drives used in laptops are sloowwww. Also, juice up the laptop with
as much memory as you can afford (in an attempt to offset the drive speed).

<snip other stuff answered by George>

 

[Nadeem]

Sorry it wasn't clear to me where you were traveling from. In the
Euro-zone, you might also look at some of the Fujitsu-Siemens laptops -
they had some AMD systems a while back but I haven't looked recently. See
http://www.fujitsu-siemens.co.uk/products/mobile/notebooks/index.html

I am travelling from my home country, Mauritius.

 

[Tony Hill]

I see Acer has a mobile Sempron model,
http://us.acer.com/acerpanam/page4....oupCtxParam=0&dctx1=25&ctx1=US&crc=1875133230

It does indeed use a Sempron, but only one of the Desktop Replacement
chips with a TDP of 62W. The interesting Semprons are the "Thin and
Light" chips which cost only about $30 more and had a TDP of only 25W.

but I've no idea how Acer's general quality is. Anybody any idea? IIRC a
couple of years ago they were making one of IBM's lower priced range -- the
i-Series -- and people didn't think much of it. Then again, Unichrome
graphics is probably not what we want.

Definitely not!

If you're willing to go for a model with 1 year warranty, I see Thinkpads
not much more than other decent systems.

Laptops are one of the few computer parts where I might spring for the
3 year warranty, regardless of who I bought it from. Laptop are
rather fragile and replacement parts are hard to find and expensive.

Huh? Aren't all the power bricks universal now? The ones that come with
Thinkpads are.

Could be, I can't say I've used one for a while. At the very least
though you'll need a different power cable, and in some cases the
cable is integrated into the power brick.

 

[nobody]

I am looking for a laptop to buy as desktop replacement. I am not sure
what I am looking for, so I seek your advice. Actually I am a final year
student doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my
project using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my
work, 1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+. But I am going to france for four
months and I wish to buy a laptop primarily to continue on my project
there. So what kind of laptop do you recommend me? Asus? Dell?
Alienware? (are these available in france?) I am not sure about
Centrino, or P4 or Athlon64? I have a fairly limited budget, and I
wouldnt mind a good graphics card on the laptop.
Any suggestions? I can travel to UK to get the laptop there if prices in
the UK are significantly lower.

1. Brand name these days matters not much more than the logo
representing it. Anyway all these laptops are built these days in
China (best case - Taiwan) from mostly Taiwanese components by
Taiwanese contractors for ____(Dell, HP, Gateway - fill the blank).
IBM Thinkpad? Learn its new name - Lenovo Thinkpad. Well, IBM logo
may be loaned to Lenovo for marketing purpose, but it will not change
the fact that it's a Chinese company making them.
2. If you are concerned about battery life, nothing beats Pentium M
at this. However, being tweaked for low power consumption, it is not
the speed demon. A64 beats PM at almost every benchmark, but it will
drain the battery almost twice as fast. Besides, A64-based notebooks
tend to have bigger, heavier displays, so don't waste your time
looking for A64 in thin-and-light class - this one is reserved for PM,
often in the shape of Celeron M (with cut down cache and even lower
power consumption). P4? It's the hottest chip out there (thermally),
and its performance is generally below that of A64, though a tad above
PM.
Having said all that, I'd still advice you to search both Internet and
local newspapers and look at the deals and specs. It might happen
that the particular deal, while not offering the best components,
gives the best bang for your buck (or Euro, Pound, or whatever
currency is used at that place).

 

[George Macdonald]

It does indeed use a Sempron, but only one of the Desktop Replacement
chips with a TDP of 62W. The interesting Semprons are the "Thin and
Light" chips which cost only about $30 more and had a TDP of only 25W.

The dearth of details on such info is one area where AMD is falling down
badly - if people don't know what they are buying they will look elsewhere.
IOW I dunno where you got it... but Acer is claiming battery life up to
3hrs

Definitely not!

What?... even worse than Extreme(ly) bad?

Laptops are one of the few computer parts where I might spring for the
3 year warranty, regardless of who I bought it from. Laptop are
rather fragile and replacement parts are hard to find and expensive.

Parts? Apart from HDs you're pretty much at the mercy of the
manufacturer... and repair is usually not an option outside warranty. In
one case, with a broken screen, I found it was cheaper to buy a new
base-model same-series laptop and swap parts than to have the broken screen
replaced.

Could be, I can't say I've used one for a while. At the very least
though you'll need a different power cable, and in some cases the
cable is integrated into the power brick.

I haven't seen a voltage specific power module for years - our Thinkpads
and InFocus projector and my Samsung LCD monitor all came with universal.
As for the power cord, you can pick up a multi-plug adapter at any small
appliance or hardware store in the destination country.

 

[Tony Hill]

The dearth of details on such info is one area where AMD is falling down
badly - if people don't know what they are buying they will look elsewhere.

I agree, the info is damn near impossible to find, even if you know
what you're looking for. It doesn't help that AMD doesn't provide ANY
technical docs for their mobile processors, so you have to kind of
feel your way through things in their marketing trash.

IOW I dunno where you got it... but Acer is claiming battery life up to
3hrs

Claiming 3 hour battery life is par for the course in a desktop
replacement these days. Whether or not you'll actually see that is
another question. However the good long-life mobile solutions have 5+
hour battery lives.

As for where I got the info, to tell you the truth, I'm not 100% sure
at this stage. I had being going on AMD's own terminology for things,
that the "Mobile AMD Sempron" is one chip and the "Mobile AMD Sempron
for Thin and Light notebooks" was another chip. However they may well
be ignoring this naming convention and using whatever the hell chip
they feel like.

Either way, chances are that if they don't specify, they're using the
cheaper alternative. You are quite correct though that there is a
HUGE lack of information from AMD with regards to their mobile
processors.

What?... even worse than Extreme(ly) bad?

Worse, it's Hyper-bad! :>

Parts? Apart from HDs you're pretty much at the mercy of the
manufacturer... and repair is usually not an option outside warranty. In
one case, with a broken screen, I found it was cheaper to buy a new
base-model same-series laptop and swap parts than to have the broken screen
replaced.

That's about the long and the short of it, hence the reason for the
3-year warranty.

 

[George Macdonald]

Either way, chances are that if they don't specify, they're using the
cheaper alternative. You are quite correct though that there is a
HUGE lack of information from AMD with regards to their mobile
processors.

The AMD product "info" is taking on a paranoid "compare with 'equivalent'
Intel" flavor - it was always there to a certain extent but it's getting
worse instead of better and unhealthy IMO. This is not the stance of a
player who believes they can really compete on equal terms on an even
playing field... and we know the field is not even anyway. Time to stand
up and act like they *know* they have better stuff.

Personally I don't believe that Centrino has been the reason for the
Pentium M success in notebooks... not as much as Intel wants to believe it
anyway. They could be on the wrong track completely with the soon to be
announced "Desktrino" but I guess we'll see. At any rate, I wish AMD would
get its propaganda machine working effectively as far as getting accurate
info out which can be used to make purchasing decisions.

 

[Nadeem]

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 19:47:13 -0500, George Macdonald

Hi! How about AMD Athlon XP laptops? Here in mauritius I can find a
Laptop Toshiba AthlonXP 3000+ with 15', 512MB & DVD-ROM CDRW Combo at
around Rs 39,000 ( Rs 30 = 1$).

Are these CPUs power drains?

 

[nobody]

Hi! How about AMD Athlon XP laptops? Here in mauritius I can find a
Laptop Toshiba AthlonXP 3000+ with 15', 512MB & DVD-ROM CDRW Combo at
around Rs 39,000 ( Rs 30 = 1$).

Are these CPUs power drains?

Judging by your original posting that started the thread -
:doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my project
:using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my work,
:1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+.
- this spec has plenty of power for your needs. I had some
experience with Toshiba, some good (486 circa 1993), some bad (P166MMX
circa 1997 and P2-400? circa 1999), but it's hardly relevant today.
As for the price, it looks outrageously high by US standards - you
should've gotten a PM or A64 for that kind of money around here, but
you know better your local prices. While AXP does not compare to PM
in terms of power drain, it's roughly in the same league as equally
performing P4. Also it depends pretty much on the kind of task you
run. If you encode DVDs, even with PM the battery probably would quit
before it's done.

 

[Nadeem]

Judging by your original posting that started the thread -
:doing my degree programme in Computing, and i am doing my project
:using a J2EE architecture. My home machine is pretty fine for my work,
:1 Gig RAM with Athlon XP 2400+.
- this spec has plenty of power for your needs.

I think so too, but I would surely like 1 Gig RAM...you know..for the
sake of boasting around with friends...

I had some
experience with Toshiba, some good (486 circa 1993), some bad (P166MMX
circa 1997 and P2-400? circa 1999), but it's hardly relevant today.
As for the price, it looks outrageously high by US standards

Well Mauritius is a country on the other side of the globe..

- you

should've gotten a PM or A64 for that kind of money around here, but
you know better your local prices. While AXP does not compare to PM
in terms of power drain, it's roughly in the same league as equally
performing P4. Also it depends pretty much on the kind of task you
run. If you encode DVDs, even with PM the battery probably would quit
before it's done.

How about batteries?! Should I buy a spare battery if ever am choosing a
laptop?

 

[Tony Hill]

Hi! How about AMD Athlon XP laptops? Here in mauritius I can find a
Laptop Toshiba AthlonXP 3000+ with 15', 512MB & DVD-ROM CDRW Combo at
around Rs 39,000 ( Rs 30 = 1$).

Are these CPUs power drains?

I would tend to avoid them unless you're getting a good deal on the
system. The power consumption of the AthlonXP is not huge, but it
would be higher than an Athlon64 or Sempron of similar performance
levels. Probably fairly similar to a P4 chip, though at a somewhat
lower cost. Nothing too interesting though.

Personally my choice would be either an AMD Mobile Sempron or
Celeron-M for the low-end of things, or a Pentium-M or possibly Mobile
Athlon64 for the higher end of things. Unless prices in your neck of
the woods are quite different from around here, there probably won't
be much of a cost advantage to this AthlonXP vs. the Sempron or
Celeron-M.