So you've finally decided to buy an external hard drive as a backup option for your computer. This is a great choice for you because you're making backing up your data faster and easier than you could ever have imagined. You're also making your data far more portable in larger quantities than before.
You'll no longer be limited to storing a few hundred megabytes or even several gigabytes. Nope. Now you can look forward to portable and reliable storage capacities ranging into terabytes. That frustrating desktop computer or network file server backup job just got a whole lot easier.
If you've never bought an external hard disk before then there's a few pointers here that may help to have on your shopping list before you go and make that final purchase.
1. Buy A Brand
Do yourself a huge favor and buy a brand name that you easily recognize. Sure these may cost a little more than brand x but with computer accessories like this you really do get what you pay for. If a Western Digital 100GB external drive costs $200 and another brand x 100GB drive costs $80 why do you think that is? Because the company likes you? Because they like making smaller profits? No it's because it's a cheaper drive made with inferior parts that's going to break a lot sooner than you might expect.
The other aspect of sticking with a brand is your warranty. For example Maxtor, Western Digital and Iomega are all reliable companies and well known for their external hard disks. If something goes wrong with your drive you can have it fixed. With brand x you'll probably not even be able to find an email address that you can contact the parent company on. Is saving a few dollars worth that risk?
2. Google It
Whatever brand or model you decide on make sure you do some research before purchasing. Always, always Google the exact brand and model of the drive you're considering buying. Look for reviews and especially any feedback on how reliable a drive is. You'll be very surprised to find that some companies have particularly bad reputations in terms of equipment reliability and what's known as the "click of death" in the external hard drive industry.
Spend time in Google checking out your prospective purchase. You'll be glad that you did.
3. Connectivity
When it comes to external hard drives you'll need to choose carefully when selecting your connection types. Your external hard drive will support either USB or Firewire. Firewire is the fastest option available at the moment but your computer may not support this. The vast majority of modern computers will, however, feature a USB port.
The next question now is what type of USB port do you have - USB 1.0 or 2.0? If your computer only has a USB 1.0 port then your external hard drive is going to transfer data VERY slowly. USB 2.0 is the minimum you should consider as connection options for both your computer and your external hard drive. If you don't have a USB 2.0 port (also called HiSpeed USB) on your computer you may need to get a USB 2.0 card fitted.
4. Speed
Now of course we need to talk about speed. The faster your hard drive operates the faster data will get transferred to your computer and vice versa. Without boggling you with comptuer jargon there's a couple of technical things you need to include on your shopping list.
Seek time - this needs to be 10ms (milliseconds) or less
Buffer size - more is better. Get a drive with at least a 4MB buffer.
RPM - higher is better. 5400rpm as a minimum. 7200rpm being preferred.
Stick to the above basic pointers and you'll do just fine.
5. Size
This is the simple part of the whole "buying an external hard drive" equation. Buy as much as you can afford. If you can afford 100GB then get it. However if you can afford 200GB then get it. Then again if you scraped together a few dollars more you could afford 300GB then do it.
This isn't a sales pitch. Far from it. There is simply no such thing as having too much data storage space. The 160GB drive that I have here was filled up in a little under a month. Currently a terabye option sounds good for my future needs.
Always add 50% to your data storage requirements. Honestly. You'll thanks yourself within the first 90 days of buying your external drive.
Hopefully now you'll be better prepared for purchasing your new external hard drive. It's one of the best purchases you'll ever make.
Looking for the best external hard drive? Visit BackupAdvice.com for more information on your options.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Niall_Roche
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
How To Choose The Best Gaming Laptop
The gaming laptop is coming of age! It is steadily increasing in popularity as performance quality goes up. Gamers now regularly consider laptops or notebooks when searching for that perfect gaming machine.
With each new generation of notebooks we are seeing some novel breakthroughs: dual core notebooks, PCI Express, Sonoma chipset, increased storage, increased RAM, faster CPUs, better battery life and better wireless connections including a Cellular Modem. All welcome news for gamers and notebook lovers alike.
Generally, gamers are a very demanding group, they know their computers and they know what they want in their computers. Most gamers like to order their gaming laptop with their own specs and configurations. In that light, if you closely examine the main points gamers consider when configuring or building their Dream Machine -- you will have a good blueprint for the best gaming machine.
Since notebook technology changes every two years or so, it's probably wise to purchase a laptop that can be easily upgraded as new products come on line. So consider the upgradable factor in any notebook that you plan to buy.
Now, lets look at some of these key gaming factors:
GRAPHICS
You must have the best/latest/fastest Graphics on the market. DUH!
Serious gamers are concerned with graphics, obsessed would probably be a better word. And rightly so! Graphics or the quality of the graphic chipset in your notebook computer will be your first area of consideration and it will greatly determine the gaming performance of your PC.
Go with the latest Graphic Chipset and also check to see if you can upgrade your Graphics Card on the particular machine you're thinking about buying. Many machines allow this.
Here are some Graphic Chipsets that are highly rated: ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, ATI's Mobility FireGL V3200 or Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.
ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 is a high quality Graphics Card or visual processing unit (VPU) present in many next generation notebooks. It will give you higher performance at a lower power level, saving battery power.
It makes your notebook computer capable of many functions: 3D games, wide-screen HDTV, dynamic presentations, mobile video editing studio and graphic processor.
Many notebooks now come with integrated graphics, where components interact and are sometimes shared, especially memory. If you want a notebook computer for 3D games -- check the amount of video RAM -- this is memory that's dedicated to graphic or video applications.
Other common graphic chipsets are: STMicro, NVIDIA, 3D Labs, Matrox, Trident S3 and SIS.
RAM
Get the largest amount of RAM possible. DUDE!
RAM or random-access memory will determine how much graphics your notebook computer will be able to handle. It's best to get the largest amount possible on your machine or what you can afford.
It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.
RAM or the amount of RAM on your notebook computer is extremely important if you want to handle heavy graphic files or want to play games on your notebook. The more RAM you have, the more applications you will be able to handle. Some notebook now come with up to 2GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM!
DDR2 SDRAM - is a new standard that can boost conventional SDRAM memory up to speeds well over 200MHz and beyond. For example, the IBM ThinkPad T43, thanks to the Sonoma Chipset or platform has 533MHz DDR 2 SDRAM.
This is much better than standard SDRAM which tops out around 150- 166MHz and DDR SDRAM which starts at 200MHz and goes up to around 400MHz.
Video RAM or VRAM is special memory that's used by video adapters on your notebook. This is RAM that is dedicated to handling the visuals and graphics on your notebook computer. This is helpful if you want to play a lot of the latest 3D video games on your notebook.
It is somewhat different from ordinary RAM because it can be accessed by two different devices at once -- enabling screen updates while the video processor processes new data. VRAM provides better graphics but is more expensive than ordinary RAM.
SPEED
You need the fastest computer money can buy. Period!
In order to get the maximum performance from your ultimate gaming computer you must have the fastest speed you can get or afford. Your ultimate PC must be able to process and handle the latest 3D video games with ease. There is nothing as annoying as your PC freezing up in the middle of some major gaming action!
Therefore, your Processor's speed is very important.
CPU or Central Processing Unit, you probably know it as the processor! It's the heart or rather the brain of your notebook or computer. It does all your computer's data processing and applications. Since it does most of the work, it's usually the most expensive part of your notebook computer.
Go with SATA!
SATA is a type of hard drive and stands for Serial Advanced Technology Architecture. It was developed by a whole group of companies including Seagate, Intel, Maxtor, Dell and others. SATA transmit data in a serially (in a single stream) as opposed to PATA or Parallel ATA which is commonly referred to as an IDE hard drive.
Serial ATA hard drives uses less power and are ideal for notebook computers, they are also more advanced than PATA hard drives which uses multipe streams of data -- go figure! But Serial Technology carries data in a single stream and unlike PATA is not limited to a particular clock speed, Serial transfers data packets almost 30 times faster than parallel.
If top performance in your notebook is one of your goals, go with a SATA hard drive.
Intel Pentium M processors are commonly found in a lot of notebooks and laptops. When in doubt also go with a Pentium!
The speed of microprocessors is measured in MHz.
MHz is short for megahertz. One MHz equals one million cycles per second. The speed of processors, usually known as clock speed, is measured in megahertz (MHz) or these days in gigahertz (GHz).
The higher the clock speed, the faster the computer will process applications and data. It determines how powerful your notebook computer will be. Processor speeds for notebooks or laptops are steadily increasing, not quite the same as a desktop but the gap is narrowing quickly. Speeds of 3.4GHz or more.
Don't forget to ask or check the hard drive speed! A 7,200rpm hard drive is faster than a 4,200rpm or 5,400rpm and usually gives better performance.
DISPLAY
You need the sharpest, brightest display screen or all the above points are moot!
Display quality is also extremely important to your gaming experience. Make sure the resolution and display quality of your notebook computer can handle the graphics for 3D Gaming.
What to keep in mind...
SVGA Resolution. Put simply, computer images are made up of dots, the more dots you have -- the better the image. SVGA Resolution is made up of 800 x 600 dots.
Many notebook computer have XGA (1024 by 768 dots) or SXGA (1280 x 1024 dots), these resolutions will give a higher quality image. WXGA stands for widescreen XGA.
TFT Active Matrix Display. TFT stands for thin-film transistors and many high-end notebook computers use (TFT) active matrix liquid crystal displays.
If display quality is your main reason for buying a notebook, it's best to give it the 'old eye test' and check out the image quality first-hand and decide for yourself. Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, and others are known for their high quality monitors -- this quality is also present in their notebook display screens.
So when buying your perfect Gaming Notebook Remember This:
Graphics + Ram + Speed + Display = Perfect Gaming Notebook
Consider all of the above factors before you buy or config your perfect gaming machine. Chances are high that you will get a top-notch quality Gaming Notebook that will give you hours and hours of pure gaming bliss!
For a list of the top rated Gaming Notebooks and Laptops Click Here:
Best Gaming Laptops & Notebooks.
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins
With each new generation of notebooks we are seeing some novel breakthroughs: dual core notebooks, PCI Express, Sonoma chipset, increased storage, increased RAM, faster CPUs, better battery life and better wireless connections including a Cellular Modem. All welcome news for gamers and notebook lovers alike.
Generally, gamers are a very demanding group, they know their computers and they know what they want in their computers. Most gamers like to order their gaming laptop with their own specs and configurations. In that light, if you closely examine the main points gamers consider when configuring or building their Dream Machine -- you will have a good blueprint for the best gaming machine.
Since notebook technology changes every two years or so, it's probably wise to purchase a laptop that can be easily upgraded as new products come on line. So consider the upgradable factor in any notebook that you plan to buy.
Now, lets look at some of these key gaming factors:
GRAPHICS
You must have the best/latest/fastest Graphics on the market. DUH!
Serious gamers are concerned with graphics, obsessed would probably be a better word. And rightly so! Graphics or the quality of the graphic chipset in your notebook computer will be your first area of consideration and it will greatly determine the gaming performance of your PC.
Go with the latest Graphic Chipset and also check to see if you can upgrade your Graphics Card on the particular machine you're thinking about buying. Many machines allow this.
Here are some Graphic Chipsets that are highly rated: ATi Mobility Radeon 9700, ATI's Mobility FireGL V3200 or Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900.
ATi Mobility Radeon 9700 is a high quality Graphics Card or visual processing unit (VPU) present in many next generation notebooks. It will give you higher performance at a lower power level, saving battery power.
It makes your notebook computer capable of many functions: 3D games, wide-screen HDTV, dynamic presentations, mobile video editing studio and graphic processor.
Many notebooks now come with integrated graphics, where components interact and are sometimes shared, especially memory. If you want a notebook computer for 3D games -- check the amount of video RAM -- this is memory that's dedicated to graphic or video applications.
Other common graphic chipsets are: STMicro, NVIDIA, 3D Labs, Matrox, Trident S3 and SIS.
RAM
Get the largest amount of RAM possible. DUDE!
RAM or random-access memory will determine how much graphics your notebook computer will be able to handle. It's best to get the largest amount possible on your machine or what you can afford.
It's generally agreed that you need at least 256MB for Windows XP and Mac OS X. You will only need 128MB for other operating systems in Windows or Mac.
RAM or the amount of RAM on your notebook computer is extremely important if you want to handle heavy graphic files or want to play games on your notebook. The more RAM you have, the more applications you will be able to handle. Some notebook now come with up to 2GB of DDR2 533MHz RAM!
DDR2 SDRAM - is a new standard that can boost conventional SDRAM memory up to speeds well over 200MHz and beyond. For example, the IBM ThinkPad T43, thanks to the Sonoma Chipset or platform has 533MHz DDR 2 SDRAM.
This is much better than standard SDRAM which tops out around 150- 166MHz and DDR SDRAM which starts at 200MHz and goes up to around 400MHz.
Video RAM or VRAM is special memory that's used by video adapters on your notebook. This is RAM that is dedicated to handling the visuals and graphics on your notebook computer. This is helpful if you want to play a lot of the latest 3D video games on your notebook.
It is somewhat different from ordinary RAM because it can be accessed by two different devices at once -- enabling screen updates while the video processor processes new data. VRAM provides better graphics but is more expensive than ordinary RAM.
SPEED
You need the fastest computer money can buy. Period!
In order to get the maximum performance from your ultimate gaming computer you must have the fastest speed you can get or afford. Your ultimate PC must be able to process and handle the latest 3D video games with ease. There is nothing as annoying as your PC freezing up in the middle of some major gaming action!
Therefore, your Processor's speed is very important.
CPU or Central Processing Unit, you probably know it as the processor! It's the heart or rather the brain of your notebook or computer. It does all your computer's data processing and applications. Since it does most of the work, it's usually the most expensive part of your notebook computer.
Go with SATA!
SATA is a type of hard drive and stands for Serial Advanced Technology Architecture. It was developed by a whole group of companies including Seagate, Intel, Maxtor, Dell and others. SATA transmit data in a serially (in a single stream) as opposed to PATA or Parallel ATA which is commonly referred to as an IDE hard drive.
Serial ATA hard drives uses less power and are ideal for notebook computers, they are also more advanced than PATA hard drives which uses multipe streams of data -- go figure! But Serial Technology carries data in a single stream and unlike PATA is not limited to a particular clock speed, Serial transfers data packets almost 30 times faster than parallel.
If top performance in your notebook is one of your goals, go with a SATA hard drive.
Intel Pentium M processors are commonly found in a lot of notebooks and laptops. When in doubt also go with a Pentium!
The speed of microprocessors is measured in MHz.
MHz is short for megahertz. One MHz equals one million cycles per second. The speed of processors, usually known as clock speed, is measured in megahertz (MHz) or these days in gigahertz (GHz).
The higher the clock speed, the faster the computer will process applications and data. It determines how powerful your notebook computer will be. Processor speeds for notebooks or laptops are steadily increasing, not quite the same as a desktop but the gap is narrowing quickly. Speeds of 3.4GHz or more.
Don't forget to ask or check the hard drive speed! A 7,200rpm hard drive is faster than a 4,200rpm or 5,400rpm and usually gives better performance.
DISPLAY
You need the sharpest, brightest display screen or all the above points are moot!
Display quality is also extremely important to your gaming experience. Make sure the resolution and display quality of your notebook computer can handle the graphics for 3D Gaming.
What to keep in mind...
SVGA Resolution. Put simply, computer images are made up of dots, the more dots you have -- the better the image. SVGA Resolution is made up of 800 x 600 dots.
Many notebook computer have XGA (1024 by 768 dots) or SXGA (1280 x 1024 dots), these resolutions will give a higher quality image. WXGA stands for widescreen XGA.
TFT Active Matrix Display. TFT stands for thin-film transistors and many high-end notebook computers use (TFT) active matrix liquid crystal displays.
If display quality is your main reason for buying a notebook, it's best to give it the 'old eye test' and check out the image quality first-hand and decide for yourself. Panasonic, Toshiba, Sony, and others are known for their high quality monitors -- this quality is also present in their notebook display screens.
So when buying your perfect Gaming Notebook Remember This:
Graphics + Ram + Speed + Display = Perfect Gaming Notebook
Consider all of the above factors before you buy or config your perfect gaming machine. Chances are high that you will get a top-notch quality Gaming Notebook that will give you hours and hours of pure gaming bliss!
For a list of the top rated Gaming Notebooks and Laptops Click Here:
Best Gaming Laptops & Notebooks.
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins.
This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Sony VAIO C150P/B
Sony's VAIO laptops have always elevated form to the same level as function. With the thin-and-light C series, Sony is again heavily promoting the aesthetic qualities of its industrial design, calling the system a "functional fashion statement merging portability, power and style." The main selling point of this thin-and-light laptop may be aesthetics, but under the eye-catching paint job, the $ 1,550 Sony VAIO C150P/B offers a speedy Intel Core 2 Duo CPU in a in a sophisticated package that isn't much more expensive than the less photogenic competition.
It sounds like you're browsing the paint aisle at your local big-box home-improvement retailer, as laptops in the Sony VAIO C series are available in seashell white, blush pink, spring green, espresso black, and urban gray. Our review system is the fixed-configuration C150P/B, disappointingly available only in espresso black (we thought spring green would bring out the color of our eyes). It still looks very slick, with tapered edges and copper accents around the touch pad, and a subtle patterned texture on the wrist rests. The keyboard has totally flat keys, instead of the slightly concave ones you may be used to, but it was still comfortable and easy to use.
Measuring 13 inches wide, 9.3 inches deep, and 1.5 inches high, the VAIO C150 sits firmly in the thin-and-light category of laptops: small enough to carry around without much hassle but big enough to work on comfortably for long stretches. The C150 weighs 5 pounds (5.8 pounds with the A/C adapter), which is at the upper end of what we'd want to have in our shoulder bag for a daily commute or extensive traveling.
The 13.3-inch wide-screen LCD offers a nice 1,280x800 native resolution, giving you plenty of detail, but not so high the Web page text disappears. Sony uses its Xbrite technology in the screen, which the company claims gives you deeper blacks and richer colors. More important perhaps is the antireflective coating on the screen surface, which kept the display very readable--even in our brightly lit Labs.
The Sony VAIO C150P/B is a fixed-configuration system, offering a set list of components. Those components include a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 CPU, a healthy 2GB of RAM, Intel 950 graphics, a DVD burner, and a 120GB 5,400rpm hard drive. If you're looking for different specs, Sony offers a customizable version of the system, the C190, where you can take the CPU up to a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo T7600 or opt for less RAM or a smaller hard drive.
We found a standard array of connections on the VAIO C150, including two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port, modem and Ethernet jacks, headphone and mic jacks, an ExpressCard slot, and VGA and S-Video outputs for hooking up an external monitor. There's built-in wireless 802.11a/b/g for networking but no Bluetooth.
Compared to other similarly configured systems, the Sony VAIO C150 performed well on CNET Labs' Multitasking test, beating the Fujitsu LifeBook A6010 and the Gateway M255-E, even though the Gateway steps up the CPU to a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T5600. In our Photoshop CS2 test, the VAIO finished in a dead heat with even a high-end system, the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660, which has a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200. Photoshop shows the importance of the memory subsystem: the Gateway had only 1GB of RAM, compared to 2GB in other systems, and it ended up in last place by a wide margin.
The VAIO C150 ran for 3 hours, 36 minutes on our MobileMark battery life test, using the included six-cell battery, which is toward the low end of acceptable for a system in its class. You can order an extended nine-cell battery for $299, but it will stick out slightly from the back of the system. Sony's batteries can be expensive (the standard six-cells are $199 on their own), but they are compatible across a large swath of the VAIO laptop line.
Sony backs the system with an industry-standard warranty: one year of free service, including free shipping both ways, and 24/7, toll-free telephone tech support. Sony offers several warranty extensions; a two-year plan with onsite service costs $150. The company's Web site provides a knowledge base, as well as driver downloads and e-mail support, and the Web site makes it fairly painless to drill down to the drivers for a specific model.
It sounds like you're browsing the paint aisle at your local big-box home-improvement retailer, as laptops in the Sony VAIO C series are available in seashell white, blush pink, spring green, espresso black, and urban gray. Our review system is the fixed-configuration C150P/B, disappointingly available only in espresso black (we thought spring green would bring out the color of our eyes). It still looks very slick, with tapered edges and copper accents around the touch pad, and a subtle patterned texture on the wrist rests. The keyboard has totally flat keys, instead of the slightly concave ones you may be used to, but it was still comfortable and easy to use.
Measuring 13 inches wide, 9.3 inches deep, and 1.5 inches high, the VAIO C150 sits firmly in the thin-and-light category of laptops: small enough to carry around without much hassle but big enough to work on comfortably for long stretches. The C150 weighs 5 pounds (5.8 pounds with the A/C adapter), which is at the upper end of what we'd want to have in our shoulder bag for a daily commute or extensive traveling.
The 13.3-inch wide-screen LCD offers a nice 1,280x800 native resolution, giving you plenty of detail, but not so high the Web page text disappears. Sony uses its Xbrite technology in the screen, which the company claims gives you deeper blacks and richer colors. More important perhaps is the antireflective coating on the screen surface, which kept the display very readable--even in our brightly lit Labs.
The Sony VAIO C150P/B is a fixed-configuration system, offering a set list of components. Those components include a 1.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 CPU, a healthy 2GB of RAM, Intel 950 graphics, a DVD burner, and a 120GB 5,400rpm hard drive. If you're looking for different specs, Sony offers a customizable version of the system, the C190, where you can take the CPU up to a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo T7600 or opt for less RAM or a smaller hard drive.
We found a standard array of connections on the VAIO C150, including two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port, modem and Ethernet jacks, headphone and mic jacks, an ExpressCard slot, and VGA and S-Video outputs for hooking up an external monitor. There's built-in wireless 802.11a/b/g for networking but no Bluetooth.
Compared to other similarly configured systems, the Sony VAIO C150 performed well on CNET Labs' Multitasking test, beating the Fujitsu LifeBook A6010 and the Gateway M255-E, even though the Gateway steps up the CPU to a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo T5600. In our Photoshop CS2 test, the VAIO finished in a dead heat with even a high-end system, the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660, which has a 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7200. Photoshop shows the importance of the memory subsystem: the Gateway had only 1GB of RAM, compared to 2GB in other systems, and it ended up in last place by a wide margin.
The VAIO C150 ran for 3 hours, 36 minutes on our MobileMark battery life test, using the included six-cell battery, which is toward the low end of acceptable for a system in its class. You can order an extended nine-cell battery for $299, but it will stick out slightly from the back of the system. Sony's batteries can be expensive (the standard six-cells are $199 on their own), but they are compatible across a large swath of the VAIO laptop line.
Sony backs the system with an industry-standard warranty: one year of free service, including free shipping both ways, and 24/7, toll-free telephone tech support. Sony offers several warranty extensions; a two-year plan with onsite service costs $150. The company's Web site provides a knowledge base, as well as driver downloads and e-mail support, and the Web site makes it fairly painless to drill down to the drivers for a specific model.
Compaq Presario V2410US PC Notebook
I bought this Compaq Presario notebook because I was looking for a machine that would be very compatible with Windows Vista when it arrived. This machine was basically my choice over a iBook because of avaliability.
I was pleasently surprised with the performance of this little powerpack - The Turion 64Bit processor harnesses amazing power that is really unleashed during times of power use such as games and graphic detailing programs. The 512mb of RAM is quite enough for this machine however when Vista is released I think I will add another 512Mb - The graphics processer is one of few that is capable of making the new graphics part of Vista perform properly.
The 80Gb HDD is easily capable of anything you can throw at it and will hold more than enough data for all but the most demanding of users (that would probly use a desktop anyway). The machine itself is very well constructed and in a very smart move they have made it with a dark outer casing - this makes it much more scratch resistant than my Acer Aspire - Silver lids on a notebook is not a good idea. It seems as if it is very well put together - everything fits well, the ports are well positioned and everything is labeled VERY clearly.
The sound from the Altec Lansing speakers are the BEST I have ever experienced on any notebook - not tinny sounding but loud, clear and the perfect amount of non-destorting bass.
The screen - with the 'now standard' coating is a pleasure to view. Bright, Vivid colors almost jump out at you, it is very fast with a good refresh rate. The only thing I notice will ALL of these coated screens is that they seem to attract dust very easily and you really need to carry a cloth in your case.
As for the asthetics of the notebook - it is one beautiful article. It has nice bright orange lights as indicators and a striking blue wireless enabled light. one handy feature for movies is the touchpad 'on/off' button which allows you to interupt the use of the touchpad. The touchpad also has scrolling lanes (edges of the touchpad used for scrolling).
My only annoyance with the unit is the lip that is present when using a PCMCIA card - it is too close to where your arms sit on the left side of the notebook - on the Acer Aspire the PCMCIA card slot sits much lower and therefore doesn't get in the way.
The Notebook also has a memory card reader - which will read 6 types of memory card including the elusive xD card used by Olympus and Fuji.
The battery life isn't anything to write home about but it does last a good 3 hours under general use inc. maybe burning 2 dvds...
In conclusion this unit is a great notebook that could be used for a multitude of purposes but probly best as a business or study machine for a gamer (UNI STUDENTS TAKE NOTE).
I was pleasently surprised with the performance of this little powerpack - The Turion 64Bit processor harnesses amazing power that is really unleashed during times of power use such as games and graphic detailing programs. The 512mb of RAM is quite enough for this machine however when Vista is released I think I will add another 512Mb - The graphics processer is one of few that is capable of making the new graphics part of Vista perform properly.
The 80Gb HDD is easily capable of anything you can throw at it and will hold more than enough data for all but the most demanding of users (that would probly use a desktop anyway). The machine itself is very well constructed and in a very smart move they have made it with a dark outer casing - this makes it much more scratch resistant than my Acer Aspire - Silver lids on a notebook is not a good idea. It seems as if it is very well put together - everything fits well, the ports are well positioned and everything is labeled VERY clearly.
The sound from the Altec Lansing speakers are the BEST I have ever experienced on any notebook - not tinny sounding but loud, clear and the perfect amount of non-destorting bass.
The screen - with the 'now standard' coating is a pleasure to view. Bright, Vivid colors almost jump out at you, it is very fast with a good refresh rate. The only thing I notice will ALL of these coated screens is that they seem to attract dust very easily and you really need to carry a cloth in your case.
As for the asthetics of the notebook - it is one beautiful article. It has nice bright orange lights as indicators and a striking blue wireless enabled light. one handy feature for movies is the touchpad 'on/off' button which allows you to interupt the use of the touchpad. The touchpad also has scrolling lanes (edges of the touchpad used for scrolling).
My only annoyance with the unit is the lip that is present when using a PCMCIA card - it is too close to where your arms sit on the left side of the notebook - on the Acer Aspire the PCMCIA card slot sits much lower and therefore doesn't get in the way.
The Notebook also has a memory card reader - which will read 6 types of memory card including the elusive xD card used by Olympus and Fuji.
The battery life isn't anything to write home about but it does last a good 3 hours under general use inc. maybe burning 2 dvds...
In conclusion this unit is a great notebook that could be used for a multitude of purposes but probly best as a business or study machine for a gamer (UNI STUDENTS TAKE NOTE).
Hewlett Packard Pavilion dv8140us PC Notebook
Pros: Excellent screen, high size HDD and RAM, great quick play system, fast processor, excellent Wi-Fi
Cons: None
This is an excellent and very powerful machine. High quality 17" screen in wide format provides user with good clear picture. I checked it playing DVD movies and it gives picture far better than I saw on other machines of the same class. It has very good full size keyboard with numeric pad. Hard disc size (200Gb) is more than user can find in other machines on the market. The same goes for the RAM (2Gb). Processor is fast 2,2 GHz 64-bit Turion which is providing speed and efficiency. Quick play system provides you with 17”-size portable DVD player. Bluetooth connection works perfectly connecting Pavilion and my Nokia 6600, as well as other types of cells, with no problems. I am very pleased with this laptop!
Cons: None
This is an excellent and very powerful machine. High quality 17" screen in wide format provides user with good clear picture. I checked it playing DVD movies and it gives picture far better than I saw on other machines of the same class. It has very good full size keyboard with numeric pad. Hard disc size (200Gb) is more than user can find in other machines on the market. The same goes for the RAM (2Gb). Processor is fast 2,2 GHz 64-bit Turion which is providing speed and efficiency. Quick play system provides you with 17”-size portable DVD player. Bluetooth connection works perfectly connecting Pavilion and my Nokia 6600, as well as other types of cells, with no problems. I am very pleased with this laptop!
Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 Notebook
Next-generation optical drives are slowly making their way into more and more households, and the somewhat surprising Trojan horse behind this move is the multimedia laptop. Sony's PlayStation 3, with its built-in Blu-ray drive, will be in short supply for some time to come, and we've seen only a handful of desktop PCs with next-gen optical drives. More and more big-screen laptops, however, are offering these drives as an option. Most of these systems come from Toshiba, one of the creators of the HD-DVD format, but we've also seen HD-DVD drives in recent laptops from HP and Acer. The $2,499 Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 joins the next-gen party with an HD-DVD drive and high-end specs that make for a powerful desktop replacement. It's cheaper than other HD-DVD laptops, such as the Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660 and offers some proprietary features not found on a similarly priced HP Pavilion dv9000t. The trade-off is slightly slower performance and weak battery life that won't get you through an average movie.
Compared to a flashier system such as the Toshiba Qosmio, the LifeBook N6420 feels somewhat underdesigned. The exterior and interior are basic gray with black accents. The N6420's physical measurements are imposing at 16.3 inches wide by 12.0 inches deep by 1.9 inches thick. It's not the absolute heaviest 17-inch laptop we've ever seen, but it's a close contender. At 9.7 pounds (11.6 with the massive A/C adapter), it's awkward to even carry across the room, but it's still about a pound less than the Qosmio. The 17-inch Gateway NX860XL, at a mere 8.5 pounds, seems positively svelte by comparison.
The system has a standard set of connections, including four USB 2.0 jacks, a mini FireWire jack, PC Card and ExpressCard slots, a media card reader, and a VGA output. For a high-end system such as this, we would have liked to see at least a DVI output for outputting HD-DVD signals to your home theater setup. Networking connections include a 56Kbps modem, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, and integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless.
The included 200GB hard drive is sufficiently roomy, but it's a shame it's only a 4,200rpm drive. Even budget laptops usually have 5,400rpm drives and about half of the desktop replacements we've looked at recently have had desktop-speed 7,200rpm drives. The 1GB of RAM is upgradable to 2GB for a fairly reasonable $180 extra.
Like other HD-DVD desktop replacements, such as the Acer Aspire 9800 and the HP Pavilion dv9000t, the table-hogging footprint allows for a full-size keyboard and a separate number pad. The touch pad is offset to the left side of the chassis, with a fingerprint reader nestled between the two mouse buttons. A set of media control buttons sit above the keyboard, including a volume rocker switch, an on-off switch for the wireless card, and a four-way circular switch--similar to an iPod wheel--that can launch four programs of your choice, such as a Web browser or an e-mail client.
Another button above the keyboard is labeled Visual Optimizer. That's a pretty intriguing name for a button, and it almost makes you wonder why you'd want a switch to turn it on and off: optimized visuals sound like the kind of thing you'd want on all the time. Fujitsu describes the Visual Optimizer as a "special image processing subsystem [that] enhances images from any source so that they are optimized for the LCD." Rather than just bumping up the brightness and the contrast of an image, the visual optimizer adds edge enhancement and attempts to expand the luminance range of the image. In practice, it adds a pleasing color saturation and brightness to many images, along with richer blacks. It can be a matter of taste, as some images appear blown out when the Visual Optimizer is engaged, and attempting to use it while watching an HD-DVD movie, we found that we lost too much detail in the darker parts of the frame to make it worthwhile.
Even without the Visual Optimizer, the 17-inch wide-screen display looks good, although it has a native resolution of 1,440x900--many high-end 17-inch laptops have a resolution of 1,920x1,200. The included Windows Media Center remote and receiver add even more flexibility, as you can set up the laptop across the room and kick back for a small-scale cinematic experience.
Running Intel's Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU, the Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 has more than enough computing power for robust multimedia apps, but saddled with only 1GB of RAM and a slower hard drive, it fell behind the T7200-powered Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660 in CNET Labs' Multitasking and Photoshop CS2 tests, and it was significantly slower than desktop replacement models with faster processors, such as the Gateway NX860XL. With an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 GPU, the N6420 can handle mid-level gaming chores, turning in an acceptable if not impressive 37.8 frames per second in Quake 4 at 1,024x768.
The Achilles' heel of many desktop replacement systems is battery life, and the N6420 is no exception. Scraping the very bottom of our battery ratings, the system couldn't even complete our standard MobileMark battery life test, but we were able to anecdotally clock an average of 81 minutes of battery life--not even enough for a full-length feature film. This is definitely a laptop that you'll want to run on AC power.
Fujitsu covers the system with a one-year warranty. Support is available through a 24/7 toll-free phone line, and technicians can connect to your computer over the Internet to diagnose problems. Standard FAQs and driver downloads are also available. Adding an extra year of service costs $99, and upgrading to next-business-day onsite service is an additional $50 per year
Compared to a flashier system such as the Toshiba Qosmio, the LifeBook N6420 feels somewhat underdesigned. The exterior and interior are basic gray with black accents. The N6420's physical measurements are imposing at 16.3 inches wide by 12.0 inches deep by 1.9 inches thick. It's not the absolute heaviest 17-inch laptop we've ever seen, but it's a close contender. At 9.7 pounds (11.6 with the massive A/C adapter), it's awkward to even carry across the room, but it's still about a pound less than the Qosmio. The 17-inch Gateway NX860XL, at a mere 8.5 pounds, seems positively svelte by comparison.
The system has a standard set of connections, including four USB 2.0 jacks, a mini FireWire jack, PC Card and ExpressCard slots, a media card reader, and a VGA output. For a high-end system such as this, we would have liked to see at least a DVI output for outputting HD-DVD signals to your home theater setup. Networking connections include a 56Kbps modem, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet, and integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless.
The included 200GB hard drive is sufficiently roomy, but it's a shame it's only a 4,200rpm drive. Even budget laptops usually have 5,400rpm drives and about half of the desktop replacements we've looked at recently have had desktop-speed 7,200rpm drives. The 1GB of RAM is upgradable to 2GB for a fairly reasonable $180 extra.
Like other HD-DVD desktop replacements, such as the Acer Aspire 9800 and the HP Pavilion dv9000t, the table-hogging footprint allows for a full-size keyboard and a separate number pad. The touch pad is offset to the left side of the chassis, with a fingerprint reader nestled between the two mouse buttons. A set of media control buttons sit above the keyboard, including a volume rocker switch, an on-off switch for the wireless card, and a four-way circular switch--similar to an iPod wheel--that can launch four programs of your choice, such as a Web browser or an e-mail client.
Another button above the keyboard is labeled Visual Optimizer. That's a pretty intriguing name for a button, and it almost makes you wonder why you'd want a switch to turn it on and off: optimized visuals sound like the kind of thing you'd want on all the time. Fujitsu describes the Visual Optimizer as a "special image processing subsystem [that] enhances images from any source so that they are optimized for the LCD." Rather than just bumping up the brightness and the contrast of an image, the visual optimizer adds edge enhancement and attempts to expand the luminance range of the image. In practice, it adds a pleasing color saturation and brightness to many images, along with richer blacks. It can be a matter of taste, as some images appear blown out when the Visual Optimizer is engaged, and attempting to use it while watching an HD-DVD movie, we found that we lost too much detail in the darker parts of the frame to make it worthwhile.
Even without the Visual Optimizer, the 17-inch wide-screen display looks good, although it has a native resolution of 1,440x900--many high-end 17-inch laptops have a resolution of 1,920x1,200. The included Windows Media Center remote and receiver add even more flexibility, as you can set up the laptop across the room and kick back for a small-scale cinematic experience.
Running Intel's Core 2 Duo T7200 CPU, the Fujitsu LifeBook N6420 has more than enough computing power for robust multimedia apps, but saddled with only 1GB of RAM and a slower hard drive, it fell behind the T7200-powered Toshiba Qosmio G35-AV660 in CNET Labs' Multitasking and Photoshop CS2 tests, and it was significantly slower than desktop replacement models with faster processors, such as the Gateway NX860XL. With an ATI Mobility Radeon x1600 GPU, the N6420 can handle mid-level gaming chores, turning in an acceptable if not impressive 37.8 frames per second in Quake 4 at 1,024x768.
The Achilles' heel of many desktop replacement systems is battery life, and the N6420 is no exception. Scraping the very bottom of our battery ratings, the system couldn't even complete our standard MobileMark battery life test, but we were able to anecdotally clock an average of 81 minutes of battery life--not even enough for a full-length feature film. This is definitely a laptop that you'll want to run on AC power.
Fujitsu covers the system with a one-year warranty. Support is available through a 24/7 toll-free phone line, and technicians can connect to your computer over the Internet to diagnose problems. Standard FAQs and driver downloads are also available. Adding an extra year of service costs $99, and upgrading to next-business-day onsite service is an additional $50 per year
Dell Inspiron™ E1705 PC Notebook
DELL Inspiron E1705:
Inspiron Series:
The Inspiron series was designed for the hip, new generation users as well as for the high-end power users. It showcases stylish design and a great price, unlike the Latitudes which are usually dull/uninspiring to look at but very robust business laptops. The Inspirons are priced less than comparable Latitudes.
Out of the Box:
The drabby brown box is typical DELL, all the bells & whistles are inside, not on the box. The box contains:
1. The E1705 Laptop,
2. Driver CD & OS re-install CD (option), and software CDs (DVD player, DVD burner, dell media center etc.)
3. Power adapter & cables
4. S-video cable (to connect the laptop to the TV)
5. DVI cable for connecting to a digital monitor
6. User manual & quick setup guide
Design:
Laptop body:
True to the E-series laptops, the E1705 looks very similar to the Inspiron 6000 ( http://www.epinions.com/content_223346134660 ), in terms of color combination, multimedia buttons & keyboard layout. The laptop is predorminantly silver with white edges. The silver is finger print resistant, thats good, it does not catch any visible dirt off sweaty hands. The white edges on my 1 1/2 old inspiron 6000 did develope one minute crack on each corner of the laptop and I think this could be the problem with the E1705 too. But the cracks are very very minute.
I/O ports:
This Laptop is loaded with I/O ports, it has more USB ports than any other E-Series laptops and new to the E1705 is the DVI video out to connect to an external digital monitor. There is also a analog video out and S-video out
1 x mini Firewire
6 x USB 2.0 (4 pin connectors)
Digital Video Interface (DVI)
RJ45 (Ethernet) and RJ11 (modem port)
Video – 15 pin and S-video – 7 pin connectors
5-in-1 removable memory card reader
Audio jacks for speakers and microphone mini-connectors.
Keyboard & Touchpad:
New to this model is the flex-keyboard, it is supposed to enhance the ease of the keyboard usage. The Keyboard is well laid out, the key placement is in the right places and are easy to reach. The keys are very responsive and make soft clicks. The touch pad is neat and is silver in color. It has the up-down & left-right scroll built into it. The touchpad too is very responsive and better than the one on the Latitude. Apart from the touchpad, there is also a mouse button between the "G,H,B" keys and the corresponding left & right clicks for those not used to touch pads.
Multimedia controls:
The multimedia controls are placed in the front of the laptop and can be accessed while the laptop cover is closed. New to the Inspiron series is the fact that you can watch pictures from the inbuilt memory card or listen to music and watch DVDs while the laptp is powered off. This is a convenient feature, since the laptop need not be ON to listen to the music & also it saves on the valuable battery charge.
Graphics card and LCD:
There are 2 options for the graphics cards, (1) Integrated Intel graphics media accelerator 950 and (2) 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON x1400 HyperMemory. The ATI card is way better and supports higher screen resolutions. The LCD screen is a beauty. At 17 inches, it is widescreen, making the laptop look very cool. There are 3 choices while choosing the LCD screen, Active Matrix WXGA (1280 x 800 max screen resolution, 1 mega pixel rating) and the Active Matrix WXGA with TrueLife (1280 x 800 max screen resolution and 1 mega pixel rating) and WSXGA+ with TrueLife (1680 x 1050 max screen resolution and 1.76 mega pixels) The third option, WXGA+ with TrueLife combined with the ATI graphics card is brilliant, this is a must have for a techie. It offers acres of desktop space.
Battery:
The 9 cell battery is supposed to give 4 hours of power to the laptop. The 4 hour battery life for a 17in screen is good, especially the screen is so brilliant and bright. But the battery life is far from stellar.
Sound card/speakers:
Here again there are 2 options, the integrated stereo sound and the Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy Advanced HD audio. The HD audio is much better and sounds more crisper. For just $30 more it is a good upgrade. The built-in speakers are louder than most laptops I used. But if you use your laptop for listening to music, I would suggest getting external laptop speakers. The built-in speakers are good, but they sound flat and their frequency response is limited. Though laptop speakers are prone to this problem, Sony has one laptop that has a built-in subwoofer... thats cool.
Hard disk & DVD/CD driver:
Dell offers tons of options for laptop hard disks. I did not see so much choice on anyother brand. You can choose from 40, 60, 80 and 100 GB hard disks in 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. The hard drive is the slowest part in a computer and choosing the fastest hard drive (7200 rpm) is always good. The DVD/CD ROM drive is fixed and cannot be removed unlike the Latitudes. There is an option of a CD RW/DVD ROM drive and DVD RW/CD RW drive. Both drives offer 24x/10x/24x for CD and 8x for DVD read & write.
Performance and Usage:
The E1705 is very very big and heavy, especially if you are used to smaller laptops. Even though it is only 1.44 inches thick and starting weight is 8 lbs, it can very quickly increase when adding the options like 9 cell battery, DVD drive etc. My laptop weighs 10.8 lbs and carrying it on a daily basis can be a real pain. The Wide-screen is a beauty, looks very good and it is very bright. The E1705 performance is based on the processor, there are 5 choices of processors, 1.66 MHz Solo, 1.66 Mhz/1.86 Mhz/2.0 Mhz/2.16 MHz Dual core processors. Needless to say the higher processor speed the better the performance. The RAM memory too makes a lot of difference. It supports max 2GB of Dual Channel 667MHz DDR2 memory, and I find the 1 GB to be sufficient for now. The laptop is very fast, especially with the dual core processor. In performance tests I have found the Pentium M DualCore 1.66 MHz is 130% better than the Pentium M 1.66 MHz Solo processor. Though it may not seem to be much, but consider this, the performance difference on an average new processor to the previous model is just 110%. The laptop came with a lot of junk software installed (might be useful to some), I uninstalled most of them and the memory utilization has dropped from 620MB to 430MB. And the performance has only been better. The installed DELL’s multimedia software is good, it is feature rich and comprehensive.
The many ports are very convenient. Connecting the E1705 to the TV via the S-video or DVI is very simple. The mini-Firewire is very useful too, especially when dumping the video from a camcorder to the laptop. The 6 USB ports are more than adequate. I connect external speakers when using the laptop as a media player, there is a world of a difference. The built in speakers are loud enough but produce flat tones. The multimedia buttons are accessible when the laptop cover is closed, that’s a nice touch and the fact that you can play DVDs,CDs and memory card media while the laptop is OFF, is really cool.
Customer Support:
Customer Support has been Dell’s selling point. Since there are hardly any stores to check out the products before buying them, the customer service is available 24x7x365. The customer service personnel seem to bend over backwards to help the customers. I received a $100 coupon for complaining about some issue that dell messed up. That sure shut me up with a smile. Most hardware failures are replaced free of charge. (within the warranty) and repairing is out of question. The wait time on the phone is minimal. Having said that, the skill level of the average customer service personnel seems to be not up to standards. But if an issue is not resolved, it is promptly forwarded to a more knowledgeable person.
Intend market:
Thi laptop is so heavy that it seems to be a bridge between a desktop and a laptop. It is not meant for carrying it around on a daily basis. This model is targetted as a desktop replacement in homes. It has a big screen like a typical home desktop would have. and probably more powerful than the desktop it replaced. With options to connect to externat analog & digital monitors, there is a scope to have a bigger monitor. With tons of I/O ports, it is ideal for connecting devices like camcorder, digital camera, webcam, MP3 player, USB flash cards, SD card etc.
Some Issues:
1. Laptop is loaded with junk software that hogs up the memory and bringing down the laptop’s performance.
2. Hard disk is rated at 100 GB, but the effective space is only 86 GB, because DELL has some space hidden for the OS restore. But loosing 14 GB for that is way too much. Also this is not mentioned anywhere on the Dell website.
3. Not as modular as the latitude – the Inspiron has a fixed CD/DVD bay, meaning it cannot be easily replaced with a Floppy drive or external hard disk like in a Latitude.
Some things to note:
1. When buying any DELL search for dell coupons online before buying it. There are coupons upto $750 off.
2. Find a dell store around you, usually they are in malls. Look at the product and use it before you buy it online. Never buy in the store, they offer no discounts. Buying online can save you tons of money
3. Laptop being a fairly long term investment, always buy the best configuration you can afford. With technology changing so fast, your laptop could get out-dated in as little as 8 months. So get the highest configuration you can afford.
4. Always choose the laptop size based on what you use it for, if you need to carry it around, you might want to choose a smaller/lighter one like the Inspiron 1405 . If you use it primarily at home to watch movies, it is ok to get a large screen maybe a 15.4 inch (Inspiron E1505)or a 17 inch (inspiron E1705.)
5. when choosing the RAM memory, always choose the highest you can afford and also choose the RAM in a single module. Laptops have only 2 slots for memory modules, if you choose 1 GB in 2 x 512 MB modules, any upgrade would render one module useless, if not both.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1549
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Inspiron Series:
The Inspiron series was designed for the hip, new generation users as well as for the high-end power users. It showcases stylish design and a great price, unlike the Latitudes which are usually dull/uninspiring to look at but very robust business laptops. The Inspirons are priced less than comparable Latitudes.
Out of the Box:
The drabby brown box is typical DELL, all the bells & whistles are inside, not on the box. The box contains:
1. The E1705 Laptop,
2. Driver CD & OS re-install CD (option), and software CDs (DVD player, DVD burner, dell media center etc.)
3. Power adapter & cables
4. S-video cable (to connect the laptop to the TV)
5. DVI cable for connecting to a digital monitor
6. User manual & quick setup guide
Design:
Laptop body:
True to the E-series laptops, the E1705 looks very similar to the Inspiron 6000 ( http://www.epinions.com/content_223346134660 ), in terms of color combination, multimedia buttons & keyboard layout. The laptop is predorminantly silver with white edges. The silver is finger print resistant, thats good, it does not catch any visible dirt off sweaty hands. The white edges on my 1 1/2 old inspiron 6000 did develope one minute crack on each corner of the laptop and I think this could be the problem with the E1705 too. But the cracks are very very minute.
I/O ports:
This Laptop is loaded with I/O ports, it has more USB ports than any other E-Series laptops and new to the E1705 is the DVI video out to connect to an external digital monitor. There is also a analog video out and S-video out
1 x mini Firewire
6 x USB 2.0 (4 pin connectors)
Digital Video Interface (DVI)
RJ45 (Ethernet) and RJ11 (modem port)
Video – 15 pin and S-video – 7 pin connectors
5-in-1 removable memory card reader
Audio jacks for speakers and microphone mini-connectors.
Keyboard & Touchpad:
New to this model is the flex-keyboard, it is supposed to enhance the ease of the keyboard usage. The Keyboard is well laid out, the key placement is in the right places and are easy to reach. The keys are very responsive and make soft clicks. The touch pad is neat and is silver in color. It has the up-down & left-right scroll built into it. The touchpad too is very responsive and better than the one on the Latitude. Apart from the touchpad, there is also a mouse button between the "G,H,B" keys and the corresponding left & right clicks for those not used to touch pads.
Multimedia controls:
The multimedia controls are placed in the front of the laptop and can be accessed while the laptop cover is closed. New to the Inspiron series is the fact that you can watch pictures from the inbuilt memory card or listen to music and watch DVDs while the laptp is powered off. This is a convenient feature, since the laptop need not be ON to listen to the music & also it saves on the valuable battery charge.
Graphics card and LCD:
There are 2 options for the graphics cards, (1) Integrated Intel graphics media accelerator 950 and (2) 256MB ATI MOBILITY RADEON x1400 HyperMemory. The ATI card is way better and supports higher screen resolutions. The LCD screen is a beauty. At 17 inches, it is widescreen, making the laptop look very cool. There are 3 choices while choosing the LCD screen, Active Matrix WXGA (1280 x 800 max screen resolution, 1 mega pixel rating) and the Active Matrix WXGA with TrueLife (1280 x 800 max screen resolution and 1 mega pixel rating) and WSXGA+ with TrueLife (1680 x 1050 max screen resolution and 1.76 mega pixels) The third option, WXGA+ with TrueLife combined with the ATI graphics card is brilliant, this is a must have for a techie. It offers acres of desktop space.
Battery:
The 9 cell battery is supposed to give 4 hours of power to the laptop. The 4 hour battery life for a 17in screen is good, especially the screen is so brilliant and bright. But the battery life is far from stellar.
Sound card/speakers:
Here again there are 2 options, the integrated stereo sound and the Integrated Sound Blaster Audigy Advanced HD audio. The HD audio is much better and sounds more crisper. For just $30 more it is a good upgrade. The built-in speakers are louder than most laptops I used. But if you use your laptop for listening to music, I would suggest getting external laptop speakers. The built-in speakers are good, but they sound flat and their frequency response is limited. Though laptop speakers are prone to this problem, Sony has one laptop that has a built-in subwoofer... thats cool.
Hard disk & DVD/CD driver:
Dell offers tons of options for laptop hard disks. I did not see so much choice on anyother brand. You can choose from 40, 60, 80 and 100 GB hard disks in 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm. The hard drive is the slowest part in a computer and choosing the fastest hard drive (7200 rpm) is always good. The DVD/CD ROM drive is fixed and cannot be removed unlike the Latitudes. There is an option of a CD RW/DVD ROM drive and DVD RW/CD RW drive. Both drives offer 24x/10x/24x for CD and 8x for DVD read & write.
Performance and Usage:
The E1705 is very very big and heavy, especially if you are used to smaller laptops. Even though it is only 1.44 inches thick and starting weight is 8 lbs, it can very quickly increase when adding the options like 9 cell battery, DVD drive etc. My laptop weighs 10.8 lbs and carrying it on a daily basis can be a real pain. The Wide-screen is a beauty, looks very good and it is very bright. The E1705 performance is based on the processor, there are 5 choices of processors, 1.66 MHz Solo, 1.66 Mhz/1.86 Mhz/2.0 Mhz/2.16 MHz Dual core processors. Needless to say the higher processor speed the better the performance. The RAM memory too makes a lot of difference. It supports max 2GB of Dual Channel 667MHz DDR2 memory, and I find the 1 GB to be sufficient for now. The laptop is very fast, especially with the dual core processor. In performance tests I have found the Pentium M DualCore 1.66 MHz is 130% better than the Pentium M 1.66 MHz Solo processor. Though it may not seem to be much, but consider this, the performance difference on an average new processor to the previous model is just 110%. The laptop came with a lot of junk software installed (might be useful to some), I uninstalled most of them and the memory utilization has dropped from 620MB to 430MB. And the performance has only been better. The installed DELL’s multimedia software is good, it is feature rich and comprehensive.
The many ports are very convenient. Connecting the E1705 to the TV via the S-video or DVI is very simple. The mini-Firewire is very useful too, especially when dumping the video from a camcorder to the laptop. The 6 USB ports are more than adequate. I connect external speakers when using the laptop as a media player, there is a world of a difference. The built in speakers are loud enough but produce flat tones. The multimedia buttons are accessible when the laptop cover is closed, that’s a nice touch and the fact that you can play DVDs,CDs and memory card media while the laptop is OFF, is really cool.
Customer Support:
Customer Support has been Dell’s selling point. Since there are hardly any stores to check out the products before buying them, the customer service is available 24x7x365. The customer service personnel seem to bend over backwards to help the customers. I received a $100 coupon for complaining about some issue that dell messed up. That sure shut me up with a smile. Most hardware failures are replaced free of charge. (within the warranty) and repairing is out of question. The wait time on the phone is minimal. Having said that, the skill level of the average customer service personnel seems to be not up to standards. But if an issue is not resolved, it is promptly forwarded to a more knowledgeable person.
Intend market:
Thi laptop is so heavy that it seems to be a bridge between a desktop and a laptop. It is not meant for carrying it around on a daily basis. This model is targetted as a desktop replacement in homes. It has a big screen like a typical home desktop would have. and probably more powerful than the desktop it replaced. With options to connect to externat analog & digital monitors, there is a scope to have a bigger monitor. With tons of I/O ports, it is ideal for connecting devices like camcorder, digital camera, webcam, MP3 player, USB flash cards, SD card etc.
Some Issues:
1. Laptop is loaded with junk software that hogs up the memory and bringing down the laptop’s performance.
2. Hard disk is rated at 100 GB, but the effective space is only 86 GB, because DELL has some space hidden for the OS restore. But loosing 14 GB for that is way too much. Also this is not mentioned anywhere on the Dell website.
3. Not as modular as the latitude – the Inspiron has a fixed CD/DVD bay, meaning it cannot be easily replaced with a Floppy drive or external hard disk like in a Latitude.
Some things to note:
1. When buying any DELL search for dell coupons online before buying it. There are coupons upto $750 off.
2. Find a dell store around you, usually they are in malls. Look at the product and use it before you buy it online. Never buy in the store, they offer no discounts. Buying online can save you tons of money
3. Laptop being a fairly long term investment, always buy the best configuration you can afford. With technology changing so fast, your laptop could get out-dated in as little as 8 months. So get the highest configuration you can afford.
4. Always choose the laptop size based on what you use it for, if you need to carry it around, you might want to choose a smaller/lighter one like the Inspiron 1405 . If you use it primarily at home to watch movies, it is ok to get a large screen maybe a 15.4 inch (Inspiron E1505)or a 17 inch (inspiron E1705.)
5. when choosing the RAM memory, always choose the highest you can afford and also choose the RAM in a single module. Laptops have only 2 slots for memory modules, if you choose 1 GB in 2 x 512 MB modules, any upgrade would render one module useless, if not both.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1549
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Intel Pentium
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Gateway MX6920 PC Notebook
Found this machine on an incredible sale at Best Buy, and it has most of the features I most wanted, so I decided to get it. I am "mostly" happy with the purchase, but there are a couple things missing that weren't obvious, and I overlooked them at purchase time, to my chagrin.
First of all, there is no internal microphone. That was a total surprise to me, since every laptop I've ever owned (this is the 6th one in 10 years) had one, and I just took for granted that there would be one. Secondly, although there is a button on the keyboard imprinted with the bluetooth icon, there is no bluetooth on board. This is less of a problem, but I was very surprised to bring home a machine marked so obviously for a service that was not offered. Okay, enough whining. Those things are my bad for not doing better research. The price blinded me. :-)
Now for the things I love -- they are many:
* The screen in large and beautifully clear. DVD's look fabulous!
* The keyboard layout is wonderful, intuitive, and key touch is perfect.
* In comparison to others of this size, it is quite light.
* It came with software interface called "Big Fix" that gathered all the necessary updates and presented them in one spot to be downloaded and installed. This made the initial setup very painless.
* Operating system/initial setup CD is included.
* Trying to get some things set up initially, I was able to go to the Gateway site and have an immediate chat with a polite and helpful technician. BRAVO! Thumbs up for that!
* It is EXTREMELY quiet.
* Processor very capable of intense graphic work I throw at it.
* LOVE that it has DVD +-RW included, and software to operate the burning function.
* 4 USB ports, located conveniently on the right side.
* Microphone and headphone ports located conveniently on the front.
* S-video port on left side.
* Monitor port on back corner.
* Touch pad includes a scroll section -- convenient and easy to use.
* I can work comfortably with this machine on my lap. While the bottom gets mildly warm, it's nothing like my last machine (a Dell D-800) that got hot enough to burn, and very uncomfortable on my lap.
This machine gets two thumbs way up from me. The missing components can be easily added if I want, and you can see that the positives totally outweigh the negatives.
First of all, there is no internal microphone. That was a total surprise to me, since every laptop I've ever owned (this is the 6th one in 10 years) had one, and I just took for granted that there would be one. Secondly, although there is a button on the keyboard imprinted with the bluetooth icon, there is no bluetooth on board. This is less of a problem, but I was very surprised to bring home a machine marked so obviously for a service that was not offered. Okay, enough whining. Those things are my bad for not doing better research. The price blinded me. :-)
Now for the things I love -- they are many:
* The screen in large and beautifully clear. DVD's look fabulous!
* The keyboard layout is wonderful, intuitive, and key touch is perfect.
* In comparison to others of this size, it is quite light.
* It came with software interface called "Big Fix" that gathered all the necessary updates and presented them in one spot to be downloaded and installed. This made the initial setup very painless.
* Operating system/initial setup CD is included.
* Trying to get some things set up initially, I was able to go to the Gateway site and have an immediate chat with a polite and helpful technician. BRAVO! Thumbs up for that!
* It is EXTREMELY quiet.
* Processor very capable of intense graphic work I throw at it.
* LOVE that it has DVD +-RW included, and software to operate the burning function.
* 4 USB ports, located conveniently on the right side.
* Microphone and headphone ports located conveniently on the front.
* S-video port on left side.
* Monitor port on back corner.
* Touch pad includes a scroll section -- convenient and easy to use.
* I can work comfortably with this machine on my lap. While the bottom gets mildly warm, it's nothing like my last machine (a Dell D-800) that got hot enough to burn, and very uncomfortable on my lap.
This machine gets two thumbs way up from me. The missing components can be easily added if I want, and you can see that the positives totally outweigh the negatives.
Lenovo ThinkPad T60p PC Notebook
When I make a purchase, epinions is one of my most valuable resources for non-biased experiences and information. When I come here to research a product I read all of the reviews and the product specifications and details on other sites as well. You will find that my reviews try to focus on my personal experiences and research discoveries that I think are not easy to discover through pre-purchase research. I will also highlight any differences between actual product features and performance and what the vendor's marketing states or implies. This means that my review will not spend a lot of time on basic specifications, procedures or stock commentary that you can read in other places.
Vendor and Product Info Links
Excellent Review: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2663&p=16
Good Review: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2767
Lenovo T60 Information: http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/3dtours/t60/demo.html
My Relevant Product Background
I am a small business owner in computer training. My laptop serves as my main business machine both on the road while training and for all business processes such as preparing courseware. My laptop needs to be reliable and able to be warrantied for business use - such as a 3 or 4 year "no fault" warranty. It must be a full desktop replacement and more - due to the software I use, it must be fast and be able to have two hard drives installed. The most intensive software I use is Photoshop and VMWare (for loading and running other operating systems on a computer). I am coming from a Toshiba Tecra 9100 (3.5 years old). In addition, since I am a trainer I use dual displays during teaching as well as at my desk for course development - so anything that helps in this area is a real plus.
My Purchase
To prepare for this purchase I also spec'ed and priced the Dell Precision M65 and the Toshiba Tecra M5. I also considered the warranties available. I have a good local provider who does both Toshiba and IBM - which eases this part of the decision for me. My priorities for this purchase were: Enhanced VMWare and Photoshop performance through Core Duo and more than 1 GB of RAM (VMWare and Photoshop are dual-processor aware), 14" screen with high resolution graphics to keep the unit small, but graphics capabilities high, Video memory / adapter capable of supporting Windows Vista (in beta), Gigabit ethernet and USB 2.0 for fast external hard drive access.
I was able to use the IBM Employee Purchase program through a referral from a friend who works there. It is quite easy to get if you know someone who works there and the odd thing is that once you are referred, it appears that you can refer someone else! HOWEVER, read the fine print - there are NO returns. I am sure that depending on your state laws you could still return the unit with some hassles, but it wouldn't be the Walmart return experience offered with the full pricing. This way I saved about $600 and this brought this price in line (or beat) the other two vendors. IBM's memory upgrade to 1.5 GBytes was a STEAL compared to the other vendors. I actually was planning on buying memory separate when working with the other vendors, but IBM made it worth my while to buy it bundled. Getting 2GB, on the other hand, was very expensive. In addition, the actual order that came to me in email outlined a 30 day return policy and made no mention of the employee purchase program (aka EPP).
With the laptop I also purchased the four year, no fault, next business day onsite warranty - very wise idea if you are spending this kind of money on a laptop and depend on it in any serious way - I have always done this on my previous Toshiba laptops and always had to use it - maybe these IBMs are so good I won't have to use it! :)
I also purchased the "Advanced Mini-Dock" (250410U) which greatly, greatly simplifies cable management if you have a primary desk location you work at with many attachments. And I purchased a Hard drive adapter for the Ultra-Bay (40Y8725) as well as an extra 9 cell battery (40Y6797).
Since I could not purchase it as a system option I also immediately purchased a 7200 RPM Seagate 2.5" SATA hard drive. One of the bummers of the newest crop of laptops is they all use SATA hard drives. I had two 7200 RPM ATA drives (aka Parallel ATA or PATA) that I could not use on this laptop. If you purchase a hard drive upgrade for this laptop, please becareful to order the right technology or you will be disappointed. After reading a this review => (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/mobile-hdds/index.x?pg=1) I decided on the 2.5IN Seagate 100 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive and bought it at buy.com for $186 (http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201658132). I benchmarked before and after the 7200 RPM hard drive and the benchmark reported a 50% gain in write performance and close to that in read - I also notice a big difference in system operation. See below for general guidance on how to accomplish this upgrade. It doesn't make any sense to me to have a dual processor, lots of ram and then hamstring it with a 5400 RPM drive.
I see now that on the Lenovo site you can order the laptop with a 7200 RPM 100 GB drive (not the employee program site) - it's worth it!
The laptop shipped 1 week before it's estimated 4 week shipment date.
I know there are many possible configurations of the T60, so here is my configuration details:
Processor: Intel Core Duo processor T2500 (2GHz, 2MB L2, 667MHz FSB) (Standard)
Display type: 14.1 inch SXGA+ (1400x1050) TFT (Standard)
Memory: 512MB PC2-5300 CL5 NP DDR2 SDRAM SODIMM
Memory: 1GBMB PC2-5300 CL5 NP DDR2 SDRAM SODIMM
Graphics: 128MB ATI Radeon X1400 (Standard)
Hard drive: 100 GB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive
Optical device: ThinkPad 4x Max DVD Recordable Dual Layer Ultrabay Slim Drive
Integrated data/fax modem: 56K V.92 Designed Modem (Standard)
Integrated Ethernet: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (Standard)
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN: Wi-Fi wireless upgradable and Bluetooth (Standard)
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter
Integrated wireless WAN: Verizon Sierra CDMA2000 (Standard)
Battery: ThinkPad 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery 40Y6798
USB ports: 3 USB 2.0 (back) (Standard)
Security: Embedded Security Subsystem 2.0 and Integrated fingerprint reader (Standard)
Hidden Gems and Extras
I discovered some cool things about the laptop AFTER buying it that I could not reasonably determine before purchasing. For instance, I had wondered if the DVI (digital video for LCD monitors) port on the docking station could be used along with the laptop LCD for dual-screen mode. It turns out you can do this and you can also do the external VGA port and DVI together for dual screen! You cannot do tripple monitors with the laptop LCD and both external video ports. I also wondered if Intels new chip extensions for virtualization would be available on Core Duo machines that were available this early - good news it's on this laptop! Right now the only commercial virtualization product that has support for them (experimental support) is VMWare's free VMServer product (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/), but I am pretty sure this support will eventually work it's way into VMWare Workstation.
UPDATE: Even though the graphics card has 128 MB of RAM, many utilities report 512 MB. This is because the laptop has a PCIe bus which allows the video card to share some of the system memory - another good reason to get a good memory upgrade when you purchase this laptop.
Lenovo's built in hardware management agents are also surprisingly useful and feature rich. I generally ignore these type of add-ons unless the system forces me to use them. Their display management software (Presentation Manager) allows many profiles to be setup for presenting, dual-screens at your desk as well as setting different resolutions for each display for each profile and controlling whether the secondary display mirrors your desktop or extends it. Most of these options are available in the Display applet in the control panel of Windows XP, but the software allows quick access to a set of profiles that configure everything with one selection. It also automatically switches to a specific profile upon dock / undock. I also run "UltraMon" (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/) for some other features it has - but the Lenovo software is surprisingly functional. Also the ATI Hydravision software provides many functions similar to Ultramon (remembering which monitor an application appears on, configuring an application to come up automatically on a specific display, etc.). Hydravision also has one VERY handy feature for training - forcing an applications pop-up dialog boxes to appear on the monitor where the application is currently displaying - it can be a real pain to constantly drag these over to the secondary monitor.
Lenovo's built in connection management software is similiarly useful allowing profiles to be set for both built-in wireless technologies (Wireless G and Verizon cellular data network). It also allows specific profiles to be setup for dock / undock. You can even tell it to find the "best connection" and give it a list of wired and wireless options and it will figure out which one to choose based on your ordered priority list.
Lenovo's docking / hot swapping utility is good as well. Also, it seems like using the Windows applet to hot swap peripherals does not work well - I'm not sure, but I suspect this is because the Lenovo one is installed and is the preferred method to stop hot swappable peripherals.
Lenovo's built in updating programs work well too - the software installer installed over ten updates with no reboots and no hitches.
I didn't really give much weight to the special Lenovo reliability and security features when making my decision, but they have grown on me. The Active Protection System shuts down the hard drive when excessive movement is detected. I wondered how I would really know if it worked - but there is a realtime monitor that shows whether the machine is being jolted or moved. It even detects when I rap the table the laptop is sitting on. It is also setup to ignore repeated movements typical of train travel or car transportation so that your hard drive isn't shutdown all the time in these situations - this can be turned off if desired.
The liquid resistant keyboard is growing on me - although thankfully not by actual experience. I am always closing the lid of my laptop when stewardesses hand a drink to other passengers in my isle because I know one slip and my laptop is toast - I will still do this, but I do breathe easier knowing it can sustain a reasonable spill.
The internal roll cage is also growing on me since my laptop position in my travelling bag puts a lot of weight on it when stowed in the overhead bin on airplanes.
The finger print scanner is cool and it works well - but I can't bring myself to make it the only way to login (no more passwords) in case the scanner malfunctions. The scanner does seem a little slow to respond during startup as well - which makes keying the password a quicker way to get in.
I have been relatively impressed with the 9 cell battery life - getting 2.75-3.25 hours while using WiFi. Lenovo also has battery life management software that can be set to maximize battery life by not constantly recharging to 100% when the battery has only been moderately depleated.
Tips and Advice
I found the Advanced Mini Dock to be the same as Toshiba's regular dock - unless you need peripherals at the desk that you don't take on the road (e.g. extra optical or hard drive), don't bother with the regular advanced dock. On the advanced mini you get a DVI port, serial port, parallel port, 4 USB ports, (plus the T60's other 3 are still accessible), one PS/2 port as well as Ethernet, Phone, VGA video, speaker and microphone ports.
Coming from the Toshiba Tecra 9100 I lost a firewire port as well as the parallel port (no biggie) and the serial port - which I did use for GPS plug-in for on the road navigation. I purchased a USB to serial adapter cable at buy.com and my GPS works fine with it. The loss of firewire is somewhat offset by USB 2.0 - however for sustained performance on hard drive access firewire is still a better performer than USB 2.0 (like when using virtual machines installed on external drives). I already had a firewire PC Card - so I can use that if I get in a pinch.
Dislikes
The display seems to have blocky artifacts in color gradients (gradual shift from one color to another) in 16 bit color mode and even in 32 bit color mode they can seen on certain colors at a below normal viewing angle (looking up toward the display), but not at above normal viewing angles. I never had this on my Tecra 9100 lcd panel which has the same resolution and much, much lower end video hardware. I am keeping an eye on this.
UPDATE: I have found one slight horizontal ghosting artifact. When i am editing in powerpoint and I am click the main slide area to enter content, the content area is highlighted with a square hashed border (made of tiny characters like the forward slash "/////"). For the horizontal lines only, this hashed border extends from edge to edge on the LCD - it is extremely difficult to see unless you get right up to the panel. I have not adjusted any of the seemly 100's of ATI graphics card settings to try to fix this because I wouldn't know where to start and it's not that bothersome.
UPDATE COLOR CALIBRATION: I have color calibrated the LCD panel and my external monitor with the Spyder2 device and software and I like the results! Here are a couple tips: *) I believe the ATI Radeon X1400 has dual LUTs (color look up tables) required to support different color profiles for each monitor - I currently have a support incident in with them to confirm. *) You can calibrate and support both monitors without buying Colovisions SpyderPro (can use Express or Suite instead). Colorvision advertises that you can only do this with their PRO product and further claims Windows cannot support separate color profiles for multiple monitors in any case. Here's how you do it. Profile each display individually (while sending the laptop video output to just the LCD panel and then just the external monitor). Use Colorvision's "Profile Chooser" to setup the profiles. This utility is confusing because it does not SHOW you the currently applied profile. It always pops up on both monitors with the first profile select, no matter what is currently applied. However, by misapplying the two color profiles on the opposite monitor you can see that it is individually applying and retaining the color profile selected on each monitor. It seems like they took the ability to Profile two monitors in the same profiling session out of the non-pro software, but once you successfully build two profiles the chooser will allow you to apply them independently. Also Microsoft's new XP Color Control Panel Applet appears to work fine to apply separate profiles to two displays. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/colorcontrol.mspx
A couple minor annoyances with the external VGA port - when the laptop is in dual display mode and I close the lid, it switches the external monitor to mirror the laptop panel, rather than be a desktop extension. I have no idea why. I have the power management setting for closing the lid set to "None" (rather than the default of "standby"). Also the Presentation Manager software has been having trouble switching the refresh rate on the external video port when switching to a dual-monitor, extended desktop configuration - it fails and falls back to monitor mirroring again. It can then be changed using the Windows Display applet with no problem. Occasionally it will unexpectedly make the external monitor the primary monitor and the laptop LCD the secondary (a feature I have always wanted - but it does not seem to be occurring according to any Presentation Manager profile)
The 9 cell battery sticks 1 inch along all but 3" inches of the length of the back of the laptop. I think this will mean I will put it in the bag face down so it does not sit crooked and possibly impact a corner more if dropped. I don't know what the 6 cell looks like since I have two 9's.
The wireless antenna for verizon sticks out about 1/4 inch along the right side of the monitor. It is fairly sturdy, but like any protrusion it has to be kept in mind when stowing the laptop. This can be seen in the Anandtech review above.
The hard drive bay adapter has no cover - you can see the top of the drive. The drive seems secure, but if you travel with it out of the laptop you should definitely look for a case to carry it in. Samsonite makes a line of CD holders called AXS that make a perfect case for laptop swappable internal drives.
The DVD seems to have occasional issues. So far - taking a long time to open after pressing the eject button and remaining in internet explorer after being ejected with the Lenovo utility. I am keeping an eye on it - but I'm not too concerned. I haven't burned anything with the drive yet, but I don't have a lot of need to do that normally.
My KVM switch setup started malfunctioning with the T60. Since there is only one PS/2 port on the docking station it was necessary to use a PS/2 Y cable to merge the mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors coming from the KVM. I noticed the latest BIOS upgrade fixed this and I downloaded and applied it and it helped, however, the mouse sync is still off. When the mouse is left alone for about 1/4 second is stops responding. About 1-2 seconds of moving it brings it back again - but that gets old very quick. The same PS/2 mouse and keyboard and Y cable work fine when directly connected to the docking station PS/2 port - so it seems to be the KVM itself or the combination of connections (this mouse also has a USB to PS/2 converter on the way INTO the KVM switch. To attempt to resolve this I have ordered a PS/2 Y cable which goes into a USB cable to connect to the docking station. I will post an update if this fixes the issue. I am hoping the translation to USB will resolve the issue.
Support Experiences
Compared to Toshiba's support I found Lenovo's website easy to navigate, their built-in updates software comprehensive and it updated 10 programs with no reboots and no problems. I have done one technical support call and found the phone to be answered within 5 minutes and all my questions were answered.
Hard Drive Upgrade Procedure (VERY TECHNICAL)
At the time I purchased, only 5400 RPM laptop drives were available. (Toshiba allows you to configure 7200 RPM by the way). I found the performance of this drive very worth it. If you decide to do this, either buy the drive new with the system or also purchase a Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter to make upgrading a used system easier. FYI - the Lenovo Parallel Serial Drive Bay Adapter adds a parallel and serial port to the laptop IT IS NOT for a Parallel ATA hard drive (current laptop hard drive technology).
Hard drive upgrade procedure:
The Lenovo does not come with recovery CDs (most laptops do not), but does allow you to create them. BEFORE you remove the old drive you must create the recovery CDs. Click "Start / All Programs / ThinkVantage / Create Recovery Media" On the first screen under "Recovery Discs" click "Create a set of Product Recovery discs now" I made all CDs, but a note next to this menu option implies you can use a CD for the first disc and DVDs for the remaining content (if you have a DVD burner on your unit). There are seven CDs (numbered "Startup" through Disk 6) so the DVD option might be nice to prevent too much disk swapping.
The disks that this generates will install the base build and associated software (cd burning, Lenovo agents, etc.) If you purchased bundled software I was told by support that your laptop should come with CDs and license codes for the additional software (obviously I didn't buy any bundled software).
Once these disks are made you can remove the old hard drive (and optionally place it in the hard drive adapter if you received one) and install the new one. I do not have space here to describe this process but the manual that comes with the drive bay adapter describes it with pictures! I could not locate a respectable 2.5" SATA to USB hard drive enclosure - so the IBM option is the easiest option at this point. The IBM adapter does not require any additional hardware to mount.
If you have a docking station, take your laptop out of the docking station for the rebuild as this is how the original build would have been done. The Lenovo restore CDs are NOT an image, which means that the restore process has many steps and many reboots - but it was fully automatic when I did it.
If you need to retrieve data off the old drive, you can swap out the optical drive for the hard drive and copy any needed files.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2133
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Vendor and Product Info Links
Excellent Review: http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2663&p=16
Good Review: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2767
Lenovo T60 Information: http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/thinkpad/3dtours/t60/demo.html
My Relevant Product Background
I am a small business owner in computer training. My laptop serves as my main business machine both on the road while training and for all business processes such as preparing courseware. My laptop needs to be reliable and able to be warrantied for business use - such as a 3 or 4 year "no fault" warranty. It must be a full desktop replacement and more - due to the software I use, it must be fast and be able to have two hard drives installed. The most intensive software I use is Photoshop and VMWare (for loading and running other operating systems on a computer). I am coming from a Toshiba Tecra 9100 (3.5 years old). In addition, since I am a trainer I use dual displays during teaching as well as at my desk for course development - so anything that helps in this area is a real plus.
My Purchase
To prepare for this purchase I also spec'ed and priced the Dell Precision M65 and the Toshiba Tecra M5. I also considered the warranties available. I have a good local provider who does both Toshiba and IBM - which eases this part of the decision for me. My priorities for this purchase were: Enhanced VMWare and Photoshop performance through Core Duo and more than 1 GB of RAM (VMWare and Photoshop are dual-processor aware), 14" screen with high resolution graphics to keep the unit small, but graphics capabilities high, Video memory / adapter capable of supporting Windows Vista (in beta), Gigabit ethernet and USB 2.0 for fast external hard drive access.
I was able to use the IBM Employee Purchase program through a referral from a friend who works there. It is quite easy to get if you know someone who works there and the odd thing is that once you are referred, it appears that you can refer someone else! HOWEVER, read the fine print - there are NO returns. I am sure that depending on your state laws you could still return the unit with some hassles, but it wouldn't be the Walmart return experience offered with the full pricing. This way I saved about $600 and this brought this price in line (or beat) the other two vendors. IBM's memory upgrade to 1.5 GBytes was a STEAL compared to the other vendors. I actually was planning on buying memory separate when working with the other vendors, but IBM made it worth my while to buy it bundled. Getting 2GB, on the other hand, was very expensive. In addition, the actual order that came to me in email outlined a 30 day return policy and made no mention of the employee purchase program (aka EPP).
With the laptop I also purchased the four year, no fault, next business day onsite warranty - very wise idea if you are spending this kind of money on a laptop and depend on it in any serious way - I have always done this on my previous Toshiba laptops and always had to use it - maybe these IBMs are so good I won't have to use it! :)
I also purchased the "Advanced Mini-Dock" (250410U) which greatly, greatly simplifies cable management if you have a primary desk location you work at with many attachments. And I purchased a Hard drive adapter for the Ultra-Bay (40Y8725) as well as an extra 9 cell battery (40Y6797).
Since I could not purchase it as a system option I also immediately purchased a 7200 RPM Seagate 2.5" SATA hard drive. One of the bummers of the newest crop of laptops is they all use SATA hard drives. I had two 7200 RPM ATA drives (aka Parallel ATA or PATA) that I could not use on this laptop. If you purchase a hard drive upgrade for this laptop, please becareful to order the right technology or you will be disappointed. After reading a this review => (http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2006q1/mobile-hdds/index.x?pg=1) I decided on the 2.5IN Seagate 100 GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive and bought it at buy.com for $186 (http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=201658132). I benchmarked before and after the 7200 RPM hard drive and the benchmark reported a 50% gain in write performance and close to that in read - I also notice a big difference in system operation. See below for general guidance on how to accomplish this upgrade. It doesn't make any sense to me to have a dual processor, lots of ram and then hamstring it with a 5400 RPM drive.
I see now that on the Lenovo site you can order the laptop with a 7200 RPM 100 GB drive (not the employee program site) - it's worth it!
The laptop shipped 1 week before it's estimated 4 week shipment date.
I know there are many possible configurations of the T60, so here is my configuration details:
Processor: Intel Core Duo processor T2500 (2GHz, 2MB L2, 667MHz FSB) (Standard)
Display type: 14.1 inch SXGA+ (1400x1050) TFT (Standard)
Memory: 512MB PC2-5300 CL5 NP DDR2 SDRAM SODIMM
Memory: 1GBMB PC2-5300 CL5 NP DDR2 SDRAM SODIMM
Graphics: 128MB ATI Radeon X1400 (Standard)
Hard drive: 100 GB 5400 rpm SATA Hard Drive
Optical device: ThinkPad 4x Max DVD Recordable Dual Layer Ultrabay Slim Drive
Integrated data/fax modem: 56K V.92 Designed Modem (Standard)
Integrated Ethernet: Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (Standard)
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN: Wi-Fi wireless upgradable and Bluetooth (Standard)
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Mini-PCI Express Adapter
Integrated wireless WAN: Verizon Sierra CDMA2000 (Standard)
Battery: ThinkPad 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery 40Y6798
USB ports: 3 USB 2.0 (back) (Standard)
Security: Embedded Security Subsystem 2.0 and Integrated fingerprint reader (Standard)
Hidden Gems and Extras
I discovered some cool things about the laptop AFTER buying it that I could not reasonably determine before purchasing. For instance, I had wondered if the DVI (digital video for LCD monitors) port on the docking station could be used along with the laptop LCD for dual-screen mode. It turns out you can do this and you can also do the external VGA port and DVI together for dual screen! You cannot do tripple monitors with the laptop LCD and both external video ports. I also wondered if Intels new chip extensions for virtualization would be available on Core Duo machines that were available this early - good news it's on this laptop! Right now the only commercial virtualization product that has support for them (experimental support) is VMWare's free VMServer product (http://www.vmware.com/products/server/), but I am pretty sure this support will eventually work it's way into VMWare Workstation.
UPDATE: Even though the graphics card has 128 MB of RAM, many utilities report 512 MB. This is because the laptop has a PCIe bus which allows the video card to share some of the system memory - another good reason to get a good memory upgrade when you purchase this laptop.
Lenovo's built in hardware management agents are also surprisingly useful and feature rich. I generally ignore these type of add-ons unless the system forces me to use them. Their display management software (Presentation Manager) allows many profiles to be setup for presenting, dual-screens at your desk as well as setting different resolutions for each display for each profile and controlling whether the secondary display mirrors your desktop or extends it. Most of these options are available in the Display applet in the control panel of Windows XP, but the software allows quick access to a set of profiles that configure everything with one selection. It also automatically switches to a specific profile upon dock / undock. I also run "UltraMon" (http://www.realtimesoft.com/ultramon/) for some other features it has - but the Lenovo software is surprisingly functional. Also the ATI Hydravision software provides many functions similar to Ultramon (remembering which monitor an application appears on, configuring an application to come up automatically on a specific display, etc.). Hydravision also has one VERY handy feature for training - forcing an applications pop-up dialog boxes to appear on the monitor where the application is currently displaying - it can be a real pain to constantly drag these over to the secondary monitor.
Lenovo's built in connection management software is similiarly useful allowing profiles to be set for both built-in wireless technologies (Wireless G and Verizon cellular data network). It also allows specific profiles to be setup for dock / undock. You can even tell it to find the "best connection" and give it a list of wired and wireless options and it will figure out which one to choose based on your ordered priority list.
Lenovo's docking / hot swapping utility is good as well. Also, it seems like using the Windows applet to hot swap peripherals does not work well - I'm not sure, but I suspect this is because the Lenovo one is installed and is the preferred method to stop hot swappable peripherals.
Lenovo's built in updating programs work well too - the software installer installed over ten updates with no reboots and no hitches.
I didn't really give much weight to the special Lenovo reliability and security features when making my decision, but they have grown on me. The Active Protection System shuts down the hard drive when excessive movement is detected. I wondered how I would really know if it worked - but there is a realtime monitor that shows whether the machine is being jolted or moved. It even detects when I rap the table the laptop is sitting on. It is also setup to ignore repeated movements typical of train travel or car transportation so that your hard drive isn't shutdown all the time in these situations - this can be turned off if desired.
The liquid resistant keyboard is growing on me - although thankfully not by actual experience. I am always closing the lid of my laptop when stewardesses hand a drink to other passengers in my isle because I know one slip and my laptop is toast - I will still do this, but I do breathe easier knowing it can sustain a reasonable spill.
The internal roll cage is also growing on me since my laptop position in my travelling bag puts a lot of weight on it when stowed in the overhead bin on airplanes.
The finger print scanner is cool and it works well - but I can't bring myself to make it the only way to login (no more passwords) in case the scanner malfunctions. The scanner does seem a little slow to respond during startup as well - which makes keying the password a quicker way to get in.
I have been relatively impressed with the 9 cell battery life - getting 2.75-3.25 hours while using WiFi. Lenovo also has battery life management software that can be set to maximize battery life by not constantly recharging to 100% when the battery has only been moderately depleated.
Tips and Advice
I found the Advanced Mini Dock to be the same as Toshiba's regular dock - unless you need peripherals at the desk that you don't take on the road (e.g. extra optical or hard drive), don't bother with the regular advanced dock. On the advanced mini you get a DVI port, serial port, parallel port, 4 USB ports, (plus the T60's other 3 are still accessible), one PS/2 port as well as Ethernet, Phone, VGA video, speaker and microphone ports.
Coming from the Toshiba Tecra 9100 I lost a firewire port as well as the parallel port (no biggie) and the serial port - which I did use for GPS plug-in for on the road navigation. I purchased a USB to serial adapter cable at buy.com and my GPS works fine with it. The loss of firewire is somewhat offset by USB 2.0 - however for sustained performance on hard drive access firewire is still a better performer than USB 2.0 (like when using virtual machines installed on external drives). I already had a firewire PC Card - so I can use that if I get in a pinch.
Dislikes
The display seems to have blocky artifacts in color gradients (gradual shift from one color to another) in 16 bit color mode and even in 32 bit color mode they can seen on certain colors at a below normal viewing angle (looking up toward the display), but not at above normal viewing angles. I never had this on my Tecra 9100 lcd panel which has the same resolution and much, much lower end video hardware. I am keeping an eye on this.
UPDATE: I have found one slight horizontal ghosting artifact. When i am editing in powerpoint and I am click the main slide area to enter content, the content area is highlighted with a square hashed border (made of tiny characters like the forward slash "/////"). For the horizontal lines only, this hashed border extends from edge to edge on the LCD - it is extremely difficult to see unless you get right up to the panel. I have not adjusted any of the seemly 100's of ATI graphics card settings to try to fix this because I wouldn't know where to start and it's not that bothersome.
UPDATE COLOR CALIBRATION: I have color calibrated the LCD panel and my external monitor with the Spyder2 device and software and I like the results! Here are a couple tips: *) I believe the ATI Radeon X1400 has dual LUTs (color look up tables) required to support different color profiles for each monitor - I currently have a support incident in with them to confirm. *) You can calibrate and support both monitors without buying Colovisions SpyderPro (can use Express or Suite instead). Colorvision advertises that you can only do this with their PRO product and further claims Windows cannot support separate color profiles for multiple monitors in any case. Here's how you do it. Profile each display individually (while sending the laptop video output to just the LCD panel and then just the external monitor). Use Colorvision's "Profile Chooser" to setup the profiles. This utility is confusing because it does not SHOW you the currently applied profile. It always pops up on both monitors with the first profile select, no matter what is currently applied. However, by misapplying the two color profiles on the opposite monitor you can see that it is individually applying and retaining the color profile selected on each monitor. It seems like they took the ability to Profile two monitors in the same profiling session out of the non-pro software, but once you successfully build two profiles the chooser will allow you to apply them independently. Also Microsoft's new XP Color Control Panel Applet appears to work fine to apply separate profiles to two displays. You can download it at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/colorcontrol.mspx
A couple minor annoyances with the external VGA port - when the laptop is in dual display mode and I close the lid, it switches the external monitor to mirror the laptop panel, rather than be a desktop extension. I have no idea why. I have the power management setting for closing the lid set to "None" (rather than the default of "standby"). Also the Presentation Manager software has been having trouble switching the refresh rate on the external video port when switching to a dual-monitor, extended desktop configuration - it fails and falls back to monitor mirroring again. It can then be changed using the Windows Display applet with no problem. Occasionally it will unexpectedly make the external monitor the primary monitor and the laptop LCD the secondary (a feature I have always wanted - but it does not seem to be occurring according to any Presentation Manager profile)
The 9 cell battery sticks 1 inch along all but 3" inches of the length of the back of the laptop. I think this will mean I will put it in the bag face down so it does not sit crooked and possibly impact a corner more if dropped. I don't know what the 6 cell looks like since I have two 9's.
The wireless antenna for verizon sticks out about 1/4 inch along the right side of the monitor. It is fairly sturdy, but like any protrusion it has to be kept in mind when stowing the laptop. This can be seen in the Anandtech review above.
The hard drive bay adapter has no cover - you can see the top of the drive. The drive seems secure, but if you travel with it out of the laptop you should definitely look for a case to carry it in. Samsonite makes a line of CD holders called AXS that make a perfect case for laptop swappable internal drives.
The DVD seems to have occasional issues. So far - taking a long time to open after pressing the eject button and remaining in internet explorer after being ejected with the Lenovo utility. I am keeping an eye on it - but I'm not too concerned. I haven't burned anything with the drive yet, but I don't have a lot of need to do that normally.
My KVM switch setup started malfunctioning with the T60. Since there is only one PS/2 port on the docking station it was necessary to use a PS/2 Y cable to merge the mouse and keyboard PS/2 connectors coming from the KVM. I noticed the latest BIOS upgrade fixed this and I downloaded and applied it and it helped, however, the mouse sync is still off. When the mouse is left alone for about 1/4 second is stops responding. About 1-2 seconds of moving it brings it back again - but that gets old very quick. The same PS/2 mouse and keyboard and Y cable work fine when directly connected to the docking station PS/2 port - so it seems to be the KVM itself or the combination of connections (this mouse also has a USB to PS/2 converter on the way INTO the KVM switch. To attempt to resolve this I have ordered a PS/2 Y cable which goes into a USB cable to connect to the docking station. I will post an update if this fixes the issue. I am hoping the translation to USB will resolve the issue.
Support Experiences
Compared to Toshiba's support I found Lenovo's website easy to navigate, their built-in updates software comprehensive and it updated 10 programs with no reboots and no problems. I have done one technical support call and found the phone to be answered within 5 minutes and all my questions were answered.
Hard Drive Upgrade Procedure (VERY TECHNICAL)
At the time I purchased, only 5400 RPM laptop drives were available. (Toshiba allows you to configure 7200 RPM by the way). I found the performance of this drive very worth it. If you decide to do this, either buy the drive new with the system or also purchase a Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter to make upgrading a used system easier. FYI - the Lenovo Parallel Serial Drive Bay Adapter adds a parallel and serial port to the laptop IT IS NOT for a Parallel ATA hard drive (current laptop hard drive technology).
Hard drive upgrade procedure:
The Lenovo does not come with recovery CDs (most laptops do not), but does allow you to create them. BEFORE you remove the old drive you must create the recovery CDs. Click "Start / All Programs / ThinkVantage / Create Recovery Media" On the first screen under "Recovery Discs" click "Create a set of Product Recovery discs now" I made all CDs, but a note next to this menu option implies you can use a CD for the first disc and DVDs for the remaining content (if you have a DVD burner on your unit). There are seven CDs (numbered "Startup" through Disk 6) so the DVD option might be nice to prevent too much disk swapping.
The disks that this generates will install the base build and associated software (cd burning, Lenovo agents, etc.) If you purchased bundled software I was told by support that your laptop should come with CDs and license codes for the additional software (obviously I didn't buy any bundled software).
Once these disks are made you can remove the old hard drive (and optionally place it in the hard drive adapter if you received one) and install the new one. I do not have space here to describe this process but the manual that comes with the drive bay adapter describes it with pictures! I could not locate a respectable 2.5" SATA to USB hard drive enclosure - so the IBM option is the easiest option at this point. The IBM adapter does not require any additional hardware to mount.
If you have a docking station, take your laptop out of the docking station for the rebuild as this is how the original build would have been done. The Lenovo restore CDs are NOT an image, which means that the restore process has many steps and many reboots - but it was fully automatic when I did it.
If you need to retrieve data off the old drive, you can swap out the optical drive for the hard drive and copy any needed files.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 2133
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 14 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Toshiba Satellite M105-S3004 PC Notebook
Pros: You get the most bang for your buck. I love the fingerprint security feature.
Cons: The speakers are not that loud but you can always use headphones or external speakers
15.4" screen was too big for my bag and to heavy to carry around especially when you include the battery, power supply, cds and more. The bag got more than 10 lbs easily. I looked around and m105-s3004 has 100 gigs with 5400 rpm hard drive, 1 gig ram. 14.1" screen. Just what I was looking for. The fingerprint security works wonders. The security does work because I let other people try to log in by swiping their finger but did not let them log in. It also saves some time because you can swipe you finger instead of typing your password. Keep in mind that you need to have your finger moist because it will have a hard time reading your finger print.
Cons: The speakers are not that loud but you can always use headphones or external speakers
15.4" screen was too big for my bag and to heavy to carry around especially when you include the battery, power supply, cds and more. The bag got more than 10 lbs easily. I looked around and m105-s3004 has 100 gigs with 5400 rpm hard drive, 1 gig ram. 14.1" screen. Just what I was looking for. The fingerprint security works wonders. The security does work because I let other people try to log in by swiping their finger but did not let them log in. It also saves some time because you can swipe you finger instead of typing your password. Keep in mind that you need to have your finger moist because it will have a hard time reading your finger print.
Sony VAIO® VGN-FE770G PC Notebook
The Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G Notebook comes with the new Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 120MB hard drive. A lot of processor power and hard drive space for storage. On top of that is a slim, lightweight notebook with a beautiful widescreen display. The notebook measures 14.4 inches wide, by 10.8 inches deep, by 1.39 inches thick and weighs 6.17 pounds.
The VGN-FE770G is also loaded with 1 Gigabyte of DDR2 memory at 533MHz. (512MBx2) The 120 MB hard drive is a Serial ATA drive running at 5400-rpm. (revolutions per minute) There is a built-in camera and microphone. The color display measures 15.4 inches with 1280 x 800 display in the widescreen mode, which lets you see more on the page.
The Strong Points
The Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5600 (1.83GHz) is a good choice for an Intel chip. The processor has 2MB of L2 Cache on-board. I prefer an AMD 64-bit dual core processor because of a better price and they seem to perform faster then the Intel chips.
The 1 Gigabyte of DDR2 memory at 533MHz is a very good choice for speed, performance and plenty of memory to run all the applications. It is expandable to 2GB maximum.
I love the widescreen color display on the notebook; it has brilliant colors and is crystal clear. The LCD screen has XBRITE-ECO LCD technology to give movies better color purity and saturation, even in bright light. It is powered with an integrated 128MB video, which is shared from the 1GB of on board memory.
The VGN-FE770G has a built-in 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) Wireless Networking Adapter; this is a nice feature on any notebook. With Wi-Fi you can connect wirelessly at many places that offer free wireless connections, like some airports, colleges and hotels, plus you can use it wirelessly between your home computer if it is equipped for it. Some of the cell phones today are starting to include Wi-Fi like the UtStarcom 6700, which can communicate with this notebook.
The DVD reader/writer is a nice addition with 4x DL DVD+R/-R, and 8x DVD+R/-R, with 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+RW and 5x DVD-RAM. It also has 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. A nice veritable reader and writer that should satisfy all you needs.
There is a multimedia card reader built-in that supports many of today’s cards. This makes it easy to pop out your digital or MP3 memory card and plug it in the notebook for fast use.
The Weak Points
The biggest weak point to the Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G Notebook is the hard drive. The choice of using a Serial ATA drive is good verses an IDE because of a faster transfer rate, but 5400-rpm is the slowest of the speeds, they should have at least used a hard drive with a speed of 7200-rpm. This slows down the performance of the whole computer. My choice would have been a 7200-rpm 16MB SATA-300 hard drive or one of the newer 10K rpm hard drives.
The video having to share the on board memory is not what I would consider performance. 128MB of it’s own dedicated memory would be much nicer and for gamers 512MB of dedicated memory would be nice.
The built-in speakers like on all notebooks do not have enough of a bass sound. There is an Audio Enhancer for making sound adjustments to your pleasure. Attaching an external speaker system with a nice subwoofer is the way to go for gaming, watching movies and music playing.
Other Features
A Lithium ion battery for about 5.4 hours of usage.
One year of warranty
Network Card 10Base-T/100Base-TX
Modem Integrated V.92/V.90
Included AC adapter
667MHz FSB
PCMCIA/PC-Card connection
There are three USB ports
One Firewire port
Intel 945GM chipset
My Thoughts
The Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G Notebook looks good, is very slim and designed well. The performance is good, but I feel like AMD still has an advantage over Intel when it comes to speed for the Internet, gaming and complex graphics. The notebook is easy to use, especially the built-in mouse pad, even though when possible I like to plug in a regular 3-button mouse.
Included is a copy of Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2 and WinDVD, Roxio DigitalMedia SE, Sony software suite, plus more. Also included for a 60-day trial period is Microsoft Works 8.5 and Norton Internet security. The media edition is geared more for gaming and music, but can be used in the business world. Microsoft works is a basic of Microsoft office, good for the home user, but I do prefer MS office myself. Roxio is all right, but here again I prefer Nero for my media burning and listening pleasures.
Gaming is great with plenty of speed and performance; I do recommend an outside set of speakers for a better sound and a plugged in mouse for better control. Video performance form a DVD provide excellent picture quality, with an added speaker system the sound is awesome. Without an added speaker system, movies just seem to have too much treble sound, which takes away from the movie action. Internet surfing is smooth on broadband with good color and clarity.
The battery is rated at 5.4 hours, well at about 5 hours the notebook warned me that it needed to be recharged; I played with it for about 15 more minutes before it died on me. It wasn’t too far off; it took over 4 hours to fully recharge.
The built-in camera does a fair job, nothing special, about like any low cost add-on camera. The built-in microphone does a fair job; there is a port to add an external microphone. There is also a port for connecting a set of headphones.
The DVD reader/ writer worked flawlessly, I burned a couple of DVD-R and CD-R discs without any problems. The player read my save MP3 files without problems and they sounded great!
The hard drive is a little slow, but with 120MB of storage, it should have plenty of space for all your needs.
Overall I would recommend this notebook because of the storage space, descent speed performance and a beautiful colorful screen that give you life like with movies. This is a nice notebook for the home and office.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1299
Operating System: Windows
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
The VGN-FE770G is also loaded with 1 Gigabyte of DDR2 memory at 533MHz. (512MBx2) The 120 MB hard drive is a Serial ATA drive running at 5400-rpm. (revolutions per minute) There is a built-in camera and microphone. The color display measures 15.4 inches with 1280 x 800 display in the widescreen mode, which lets you see more on the page.
The Strong Points
The Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5600 (1.83GHz) is a good choice for an Intel chip. The processor has 2MB of L2 Cache on-board. I prefer an AMD 64-bit dual core processor because of a better price and they seem to perform faster then the Intel chips.
The 1 Gigabyte of DDR2 memory at 533MHz is a very good choice for speed, performance and plenty of memory to run all the applications. It is expandable to 2GB maximum.
I love the widescreen color display on the notebook; it has brilliant colors and is crystal clear. The LCD screen has XBRITE-ECO LCD technology to give movies better color purity and saturation, even in bright light. It is powered with an integrated 128MB video, which is shared from the 1GB of on board memory.
The VGN-FE770G has a built-in 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) Wireless Networking Adapter; this is a nice feature on any notebook. With Wi-Fi you can connect wirelessly at many places that offer free wireless connections, like some airports, colleges and hotels, plus you can use it wirelessly between your home computer if it is equipped for it. Some of the cell phones today are starting to include Wi-Fi like the UtStarcom 6700, which can communicate with this notebook.
The DVD reader/writer is a nice addition with 4x DL DVD+R/-R, and 8x DVD+R/-R, with 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+RW and 5x DVD-RAM. It also has 24x CD-R and 16x CD-RW. A nice veritable reader and writer that should satisfy all you needs.
There is a multimedia card reader built-in that supports many of today’s cards. This makes it easy to pop out your digital or MP3 memory card and plug it in the notebook for fast use.
The Weak Points
The biggest weak point to the Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G Notebook is the hard drive. The choice of using a Serial ATA drive is good verses an IDE because of a faster transfer rate, but 5400-rpm is the slowest of the speeds, they should have at least used a hard drive with a speed of 7200-rpm. This slows down the performance of the whole computer. My choice would have been a 7200-rpm 16MB SATA-300 hard drive or one of the newer 10K rpm hard drives.
The video having to share the on board memory is not what I would consider performance. 128MB of it’s own dedicated memory would be much nicer and for gamers 512MB of dedicated memory would be nice.
The built-in speakers like on all notebooks do not have enough of a bass sound. There is an Audio Enhancer for making sound adjustments to your pleasure. Attaching an external speaker system with a nice subwoofer is the way to go for gaming, watching movies and music playing.
Other Features
A Lithium ion battery for about 5.4 hours of usage.
One year of warranty
Network Card 10Base-T/100Base-TX
Modem Integrated V.92/V.90
Included AC adapter
667MHz FSB
PCMCIA/PC-Card connection
There are three USB ports
One Firewire port
Intel 945GM chipset
My Thoughts
The Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G Notebook looks good, is very slim and designed well. The performance is good, but I feel like AMD still has an advantage over Intel when it comes to speed for the Internet, gaming and complex graphics. The notebook is easy to use, especially the built-in mouse pad, even though when possible I like to plug in a regular 3-button mouse.
Included is a copy of Microsoft’s Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 with Update Rollup 2 and WinDVD, Roxio DigitalMedia SE, Sony software suite, plus more. Also included for a 60-day trial period is Microsoft Works 8.5 and Norton Internet security. The media edition is geared more for gaming and music, but can be used in the business world. Microsoft works is a basic of Microsoft office, good for the home user, but I do prefer MS office myself. Roxio is all right, but here again I prefer Nero for my media burning and listening pleasures.
Gaming is great with plenty of speed and performance; I do recommend an outside set of speakers for a better sound and a plugged in mouse for better control. Video performance form a DVD provide excellent picture quality, with an added speaker system the sound is awesome. Without an added speaker system, movies just seem to have too much treble sound, which takes away from the movie action. Internet surfing is smooth on broadband with good color and clarity.
The battery is rated at 5.4 hours, well at about 5 hours the notebook warned me that it needed to be recharged; I played with it for about 15 more minutes before it died on me. It wasn’t too far off; it took over 4 hours to fully recharge.
The built-in camera does a fair job, nothing special, about like any low cost add-on camera. The built-in microphone does a fair job; there is a port to add an external microphone. There is also a port for connecting a set of headphones.
The DVD reader/ writer worked flawlessly, I burned a couple of DVD-R and CD-R discs without any problems. The player read my save MP3 files without problems and they sounded great!
The hard drive is a little slow, but with 120MB of storage, it should have plenty of space for all your needs.
Overall I would recommend this notebook because of the storage space, descent speed performance and a beautiful colorful screen that give you life like with movies. This is a nice notebook for the home and office.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1299
Operating System: Windows
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Hewlett Packard Pavilion zd8230us PC Notebook
I've been a laptop user for over ten years. Once you go mobile with a pc, it is extremely difficult to be tied to a desktop. The trade off is that you give up upgradeability for mobility. This machine as it is out of the box is good enough for most games, all office products, and most A/V software and still has enough processing power to handle more.
As the cliche goes, a pc is obsolete as soon as you buy it. This has traditionally been even more true for laptops. In the case of the HP Pavilion 8230us, this is much less true.
Monitor
It has a very clear 17" LCD monitor that puts every other laptop I have used to shame. The screen real estate allows for easy switching between multiple applications if necessary. It also makes for a fantastic DVD experience. There are no cons to the monitor.
Speakers
The native speakers are acceptable. This is a laptop, so high fidelity sound isn’t going to be a purchasing point, but these work at least as well as speakers standard for desktops.
Battery
We buy laptops for mobility and a good portion of this mobility is the battery. When fully charged, the battery will run about 2 hours when running applications that are not disk input/output intensive, less so when running more intensive applications. If you are on an airplane and want to watch a movie, the battery should get you from opening to closing credits for most non-epic movies. The con here is that the battery life isn't as long as they can be for smaller laptops. Another con is the size of the power supply; it is bulky and also fairly weighty. I believe the laptop itself is just under nine pounds. With the power supply, the weight is increased by almost two pounds.
Keyboard etc
The HP Pavilion 8230us has a full keyboard--number pad included. This is extremely helpful if you need to use the laptop for business functions that require lots of numbers. The mouse that is part of the keyboard has automatic scroll, tap-to-click, and (most importantly) can be turned off if a mouse is attached.
Ports
There are ample ports to run any peripheral. For ease of use, it has USB ports on each three sides.
General Usage
I can type nearly 100 words/minute on a laptop keyboard, so the ease of use for the HP Pavilion 8230us is more than acceptable. I can type for hours and not run into any pain, so the layout is at least not problematic.
This is a full keyboard, 17” LCD screen machine; it isn’t going to be ‘light.’ The weight isn’t generally a problem, but it can be if you have to lug it for long distances or pack it/unpack it multiple times. This is one of the trade offs for getting a larger screen and full keyboard. Along with this size comes an extra fan. The machine does tend to run hot, so you don’t want to keep it on your lap unless you like to sweat. Others have complained about the noise of the fans, but I don’t see this as a real con or problem. The fans are just part of the trade off to have a full featured machine that is portable but large.
I have had the machine for several months now and can confidently recommend it to just about anyone.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
As the cliche goes, a pc is obsolete as soon as you buy it. This has traditionally been even more true for laptops. In the case of the HP Pavilion 8230us, this is much less true.
Monitor
It has a very clear 17" LCD monitor that puts every other laptop I have used to shame. The screen real estate allows for easy switching between multiple applications if necessary. It also makes for a fantastic DVD experience. There are no cons to the monitor.
Speakers
The native speakers are acceptable. This is a laptop, so high fidelity sound isn’t going to be a purchasing point, but these work at least as well as speakers standard for desktops.
Battery
We buy laptops for mobility and a good portion of this mobility is the battery. When fully charged, the battery will run about 2 hours when running applications that are not disk input/output intensive, less so when running more intensive applications. If you are on an airplane and want to watch a movie, the battery should get you from opening to closing credits for most non-epic movies. The con here is that the battery life isn't as long as they can be for smaller laptops. Another con is the size of the power supply; it is bulky and also fairly weighty. I believe the laptop itself is just under nine pounds. With the power supply, the weight is increased by almost two pounds.
Keyboard etc
The HP Pavilion 8230us has a full keyboard--number pad included. This is extremely helpful if you need to use the laptop for business functions that require lots of numbers. The mouse that is part of the keyboard has automatic scroll, tap-to-click, and (most importantly) can be turned off if a mouse is attached.
Ports
There are ample ports to run any peripheral. For ease of use, it has USB ports on each three sides.
General Usage
I can type nearly 100 words/minute on a laptop keyboard, so the ease of use for the HP Pavilion 8230us is more than acceptable. I can type for hours and not run into any pain, so the layout is at least not problematic.
This is a full keyboard, 17” LCD screen machine; it isn’t going to be ‘light.’ The weight isn’t generally a problem, but it can be if you have to lug it for long distances or pack it/unpack it multiple times. This is one of the trade offs for getting a larger screen and full keyboard. Along with this size comes an extra fan. The machine does tend to run hot, so you don’t want to keep it on your lap unless you like to sweat. Others have complained about the noise of the fans, but I don’t see this as a real con or problem. The fans are just part of the trade off to have a full featured machine that is portable but large.
I have had the machine for several months now and can confidently recommend it to just about anyone.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1700
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: Greater than 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
Dell Inspiron 9300 Notebook Computer
The Dell Inspiron 9300 is the latest offering from the venerable manufacturer of personal computers. Widely touted as an “entertainment powerhouse,” the 9300 promises to deliver exceptional performance for the multimedia fan. Let’s take a look at what makes this notebook computer the standout that it is.
You have to admire Dell. Not a month goes by where a new model is offered, prices are reduced, and the whole package is sweetened with the inclusion of some sort of free upgrade. True to form, the Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook computer is a prime example of all that as it is a new model, fully loaded, and is available to you at an attractive price.
Some of the top features of this particular model include:
# A 17" screen – perfect for gamers and movie watchers.
# Intel Pentium M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB).
# A whopping 1 GB of memory.
# 80GB hard drive.
# Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
# 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability.
# McAfee Security Center.
# 3 Year Service Plan.
Depending on how you order the 9300 some of the included features may be slightly different. All models do come equipped with PCI Express graphics options for entertainment applications, including: digital video editing, digital photography, and movies. However, to watch television or view your DVDS, you must purchase the optional TV tuner for an extra $150. Another drawback is that you cannot play audio or video on the 9300 without booting up; some will find this step to be a big inconvenience. Expect future models from Dell to rectify this oversight.
The 9300 is no lightweight, weighing in at just over 9 lbs.; of course if you are moving from a desktop unit the weight will seem inconsequential.
Perhaps the best feature of the 9300 is its price. Dell is forever running specials on just about everything they sell. This particular model retails for $2209 on their site, but with an instant rebate of $750 your price begins at $1459. Even with taxes, shipping and handling charges, the tuner, and a couple of software packages thrown in you can still get the 9300 for under $2000. Comparable models from HP, Gateway, and Toshiba are likely to run several hundreds dollars more than the 9300 and Dell’s special price includes their popular three year extended warranty.
Overall, the 9300 is a nice entrant in the “full blown entertainment” category of notebook computers. With the low price and extended warranty you will find that it is a value leader as well.
Matthew Keegan is The Article Writer who writes on just about any and every issue imaginable. You can preview samples from his high performing site at http://www.thearticlewriter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Keegan
You have to admire Dell. Not a month goes by where a new model is offered, prices are reduced, and the whole package is sweetened with the inclusion of some sort of free upgrade. True to form, the Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook computer is a prime example of all that as it is a new model, fully loaded, and is available to you at an attractive price.
Some of the top features of this particular model include:
# A 17" screen – perfect for gamers and movie watchers.
# Intel Pentium M Processor 730 (1.60 GHz/2MB Cache/533MHz FSB).
# A whopping 1 GB of memory.
# 80GB hard drive.
# Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.
# 8x CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) with double-layer write capability.
# McAfee Security Center.
# 3 Year Service Plan.
Depending on how you order the 9300 some of the included features may be slightly different. All models do come equipped with PCI Express graphics options for entertainment applications, including: digital video editing, digital photography, and movies. However, to watch television or view your DVDS, you must purchase the optional TV tuner for an extra $150. Another drawback is that you cannot play audio or video on the 9300 without booting up; some will find this step to be a big inconvenience. Expect future models from Dell to rectify this oversight.
The 9300 is no lightweight, weighing in at just over 9 lbs.; of course if you are moving from a desktop unit the weight will seem inconsequential.
Perhaps the best feature of the 9300 is its price. Dell is forever running specials on just about everything they sell. This particular model retails for $2209 on their site, but with an instant rebate of $750 your price begins at $1459. Even with taxes, shipping and handling charges, the tuner, and a couple of software packages thrown in you can still get the 9300 for under $2000. Comparable models from HP, Gateway, and Toshiba are likely to run several hundreds dollars more than the 9300 and Dell’s special price includes their popular three year extended warranty.
Overall, the 9300 is a nice entrant in the “full blown entertainment” category of notebook computers. With the low price and extended warranty you will find that it is a value leader as well.
Matthew Keegan is The Article Writer who writes on just about any and every issue imaginable. You can preview samples from his high performing site at http://www.thearticlewriter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Keegan
Toshiba Qosmio G15-AV501 Notebook Computer
Purchasing a notebook computer can be a mind boggling experience with all the different makes and models out there. Toshiba has a strong entry in their Toshiba Qosmio G15-AV501 notebook computer. Let's examine why this particular model is certain to be an effective competitor.
Unlike most laptops the Qosmio takes computing to the next level. You can watch your favorite TV programs, play DVDs, or listen to music by way of its Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system. Sporting a 17" screen the Qosmio offers a nifty 1440 x 900 pixels resolution perfect for TV or video watching. Other key features of the Qosmio include:
* Intel Pentium M 745 Processor (Centrino), 1.8 GHz
* 512MB Memory
* Television Tuner
* Exceptionally Bright Screen
* DVD±RW/CD-RW Combination, 2 Hard Drives
* Wireless LAN Antenna
* Remote Controller
* Video Card
* NVIDIA GeForce FX Go 5700
* Weighs just under 10 lbs.
As much as the Qosmio is an effective performer, I have learned that the battery life is very short compared to models half its $2500. sticker price. That's right, $2500 [shop around, as prices vary]. So, only serious multimedia experts will go for this machine and they will be keeping it constantly plugged in to boot! Any software you add will be extra, therefore expect to shell out well in excess of three grand if adding a productivity package, extended warranty, shipping, handling, taxes and the like.
Still, serious multimedia fans will find the Toshiba Qosmio to be a top performer in an ever expanding sea of laptop computers. For that reason alone it is worth a special look.
Matt writes product reviews as well as manages websites. Please check out his portfolio of projects at http://www.thearticlewriter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Keegan
Unlike most laptops the Qosmio takes computing to the next level. You can watch your favorite TV programs, play DVDs, or listen to music by way of its Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 operating system. Sporting a 17" screen the Qosmio offers a nifty 1440 x 900 pixels resolution perfect for TV or video watching. Other key features of the Qosmio include:
* Intel Pentium M 745 Processor (Centrino), 1.8 GHz
* 512MB Memory
* Television Tuner
* Exceptionally Bright Screen
* DVD±RW/CD-RW Combination, 2 Hard Drives
* Wireless LAN Antenna
* Remote Controller
* Video Card
* NVIDIA GeForce FX Go 5700
* Weighs just under 10 lbs.
As much as the Qosmio is an effective performer, I have learned that the battery life is very short compared to models half its $2500. sticker price. That's right, $2500 [shop around, as prices vary]. So, only serious multimedia experts will go for this machine and they will be keeping it constantly plugged in to boot! Any software you add will be extra, therefore expect to shell out well in excess of three grand if adding a productivity package, extended warranty, shipping, handling, taxes and the like.
Still, serious multimedia fans will find the Toshiba Qosmio to be a top performer in an ever expanding sea of laptop computers. For that reason alone it is worth a special look.
Matt writes product reviews as well as manages websites. Please check out his portfolio of projects at http://www.thearticlewriter.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Keegan
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