dunno about everyone else here but I'd say get a removable HD bay, they're about $20 and saves a whole lot of time if you tend to take your HDs around to other peoples' computers..

quote:

Originally posted by kid_dynamite dunno about everyone else here but I'd say get a removable HD bay, they're about $20 and saves a whole lot of time if you tend to take your HDs around to other peoples' computers..

Thats a NO NO for Pro's (like me)!! Delicate things Like Large capacity Hard Disks don't like beeign moved around, plugged and un-plugged so often. Considering most ppl don't have 'em whast the use of having a HDD bay in your PC (+ it looks ugly) If you wanna move Data around its best to buy one of those USB memory sticks. 256mb sells like $150 and 90% of PC have USB ports installed some of them even at the front side of the PC...
my 2c

quote:

Originally posted by Ghostface wow, cheers for the advice everyone, it's appreciated as I really know sfa about this kind of stuff. I'll probably bump it up when I get some packages for you guys to analyse. Some people are saying to steer away from Soundblaster sound cards? any opinion's on this?

AFAIK, Soundblaster crap on all others, especially with the latest series out. If you can afford it and would get use out of it, then get the ones budled with the front bay drive - otherwise, a simple PCI slot (in the back thingy) will do fine.. No point in having great soundcard with crap speakers though..

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yep

While the topic is still kind of fresh...

I'm thinking of getting a laptop PC soon. I have a couple questions:

What's the best brand to buy?

Where's the cheapest to buy from?

Does anyone know anything about Intel's new mobile technology? I think it's called Centrino.

Thanks.

with laptops it depends what you want it for. If you want it for games your going to spending a lot of money, if not then not so much.

List what you want the laptop to do, figure out the specs, go shopping for the best price.

escee knows the score... with notebook laptops, you need to find out what the main use of it will be. With the so called new Centrino technology, it is aimed more for power-saving use - which it does very well. Intel have been putting heaps into marketing the Centrino - don't believe all the hype. IMO, it does not live up to its hype and especially when it comes to price.
Centrino comes down to 3 things - Intels new Pentium-M CPU, the i855 chipset and its onboard Wireless network adaptor. In benchmakrs, there are some cases where a lower clocked P-M cpu will thrash a much higher clocked P4-m CPU, and that is because the P-M executes more instructions per clock than a P4. Intel thought it would sell more if they higher there frequencies because apparently, we - the customers and general public think that the higher the GHz, the faster it is - which is definitely not the case. Which brings me to AMD. AMD's Athlon desktop CPU's have a much higher IPC than Intel's processors. Only problem is that they are using desktop CPU's in notebooks i.e. chewing your batterey life like theres no tomorrow. I'm not too sure if they have a dedicated mobile-version of Athlons, Can someone confirm this? Also beware that there are some notebook models that have desktop versions of P4's too.
In terms of gaming, in a practical sense, theres not much room. In most cases, if all you do is gaming, then you are a hardcore gamer - which means you are always playing the latest games - which require the latest the greatest video cards to run @ a decent speed. There are notebooks with Nvidia's Geforce4 GO! cards or ATI's Radeon 7000 - 8000 range, but they are indeed quite costly and does not justify for it.

Brands: Toshiba, Sony, Fujitsu and IBM are quite good. But the specs and nitty gritty stuff is more important. IMO, the motherboard/chipset is the most important factor.

Price: Theres not much margin on laptops for retailers, so expect prices to be around the same @ all retailers. Those little local PC shops seem to sell them a bit cheaper than places like Harvey Norman, Harris Tech and so forth, BUT check that they provide full waranty and all of that... Theres nothing more farked up than a dodgy PC store

Harris Technology have the biggest range of notebooks that I know of :
http://www.ht.com.au




/me is bored indeed... works sucks

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" I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need "
American composer John Cage on his aesthetic of silence

i find that i use my laptop when its plugged in the majority of the time anyway.

Soundblasters are crap, look at
http://www.pcavtech.com/soundcards/compare/index.htm
if you want something decent. See if you can pick up an old turtle beach card, they are very, very nice, some of the others there like the event and midiman stuff is expensive. Also old soundblasters based on the ensoniq chips (es1570 i think). The live's are not as nice as the older sb 128's based on this chip, i know i have both of them. The SB live's are nice for some things.... not too bad for recording. It does depend what you listen to it through though. If you are using "normal" consumer grade shite speakers you won't be able to tell. I am listening now to mp3s through 2 150 rms watt Peerless speakers, 3 way made in Denmark with custom few 100 liter speaker boxs. One of my amps is AB class transister only no chips made in melbourne..... and sennheiser headphones.... but still, there are a lot of nice options in soundcards....

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Fall in love with everything, fall in love with life. Just fall in love with music and you will get by. Ride in the night.
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Greatest Tracks of all time:
YAHEL - VOYAGE
Planet Funk - Inside all the people (deep dish 80's tata)
Bob Dylan - anything by him... esp. Black diamond bay.

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Aaahhh laptops Well, I happen to be close friends with the laptop guys at work, so I get to play with practically every major lappy there is (except Acer for some reason).

I can say, with the new Centrinos

The Dell ones are flimsy. The Inspirons weigh a tonne (3.something kg). The get hot where you rest your hands. They have fairly dull screens, though the 1400x1050 is a nice res Not very good battery life.

The IBM ones are solid, weigh about 2.2kg (with the small battery). Their screens are good (reasonably bright). They do get hot where you rest your hands. Excellent battery life.

The Toshiba I played with was super-dooper light, thin. It was nice and rugged too. Only one type 2 PCMCIA slot though. Very nice screen. Didn't seem to get too hot under my hands. Very good battery life.

From talking to others, Acer are the best, but then again, what do you expect from the most expensive by quite a margin?

Centrino is a nice chipset for the Windows crowd, but there's no Linux support for the 802.11 (Wi-Fi) chipset in it yet.

Beware with the first generation of any new technology though, it's usually got it's bugs to wrinkle out. This applies to phones too (all the 1st gen camera phones are duds, all the 1st gen 3G phones are duds).

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I'm running! I'm running! I'm running! ... I'm naked!

quote:

Originally posted by bragi Beware with the first generation of any new technology though, it's usually got it's bugs to wrinkle out. This applies to phones too (all the 1st gen camera phones are duds, all the 1st gen 3G phones are duds).

not having either of these, can you tell me why they are duds and what bugs they have?

Being in the telco industry, yes - photo phones suck. Some phones support only 256 colours with a maximum resolution of 640 x 480, some phones have half of that - YUK! Screen runs on STN, but there are some phones that run off TFT displays (4000 - 65K colours). With Telstra customers, you can only send photo's to Telstra or Vodaphone users @ the moment. 75cents per photo - rip off. JPEG compression is utter shite. Its all just a gimmick.
Not too sure about 3rd Generation mobile though.

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" I have nothing to say and I am saying it and that is poetry as I need "
American composer John Cage on his aesthetic of silence