Laptop advice

[KLB]

I like IBM and DELL laptops. They seem to be better built!

I called IBM today in relation to the status of my order and we started talking. I told him about the one I saw thrown down the stairs and he said he has seen a 250lb sales rep stand on a ThinkPad that had the Magnesium shell like the T42s without even damaging the laptop. He said the rep than stood on a different brand of laptop and ended up smashing it. In another incident he said a European customer had accidentally left one on the roof of a taxi. It fell off the taxi and proceeded to get driven over by another vehicle. When retrieved and plugged into an external monitor it fired up and ran. The only serious damage was to the flat screen, which had to be replaced.

Personally I really like the idea of a Magnesium case rather than a plastic one, although I don't plan on using mine as a step stool nor would I recommend such brutal treatment. Given the rough life most laptops live, I think ruggedness and survivability is an important trait. I'll take the durability of a ThinkPad over the beauty of a Sony Viao any day.

[KLB]

I received my new ThinkPad yesterday. It had been sitting out our UPS depot since Saturday and it killed me to know it was only fifteen minutes away but I had to wait until Monday to get it.

Any how, its really sweet. Its only about an inch high and just large enough to fit the 15" LCD in the cover. It looks very sleek and the metal casing has a nice sound to it when tapped as it doesn't sound like a plastic shell just waiting to crack.

The fingerprint scanner is pretty radical. I've configured the system such that you can't even boot up or access the hard drive without my pass phrase or fingerprint scan. You can even have multiple digits scanned such that it doesn't matter which finger you use. The nice thing about this is you can give someone else the ability to log in as you without giving them any of your passwords.

Its native resolution is 1400 x 1050, but it handles smaller resolutions quite well which is a marked change from previous laptops I've used. I haven't really pushed the limits of the laptop yet and I am still waiting for my second 512mb of RAM, so I can't report on any performance related issues. I can say that it was much cleaner software wise than most new computers I've seen. So far all I have uninstalled from it has been Outlook and MS-Messenger.

There appears to be a lot of accessibility type stuff configured into the laptop like voice recognition and maybe screen reading, but I haven't yet played with that.

My only real gripe is the same gripe I've had with every laptop I have ever owned. The track pad requires too much movement of the finger even on the fastest setting. I wish track pads would function more like the Cirque Glidepoint touchpad on my normal keyboard. It has a built in acceleration feature that allows me to control how quickly and far the curser moves across the screen simply by how I move my finger. If I roll my finger, it moves ever so slightly. If I jerk my finger, the cursor will scoot across the biggest screen with only an half inch of finger movement. My feeling is that the finger should be able to move the cursor across the entire desktop display with one pass of the trackpad.

[Kayn]

Nice!

I still haven't made my purchase yet. Probably will in a few days or so.

Anyway, I keep coming across the various types of Pentium processors for laptops, like the P4 Mobiles.

Now, I'd like to hear your thoughts between a couple of them.

The first is the Pentium 4 Mobile 538 3.2 GHz (3.2GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB)

The second is Intel Pentium M Processor 745 (1.80GHz, 2MB L2 cache).

Now, the only real difference is the L2 cache, which is still something I'm not 100% certain on. Faster processor with less cache, or slower processor with MORE cache? Thoughts?

[KLB]

Now, the only real difference is the L2 cache, which is still something I'm not 100% certain on. Faster processor with less cache, or slower processor with MORE cache? Thoughts?

Slower processor more cache. Cache and memory will almost always be the bottle neck that slows down your computer.

[Kayn]

Wow, so one meg of cache actually increases the overall speed of the system, even if the processor speed is almost cut in half?

[KLB]

Well I don't know the exact figures, but think of it this way. The processor can only work as fast as the cache and RAM can provide it with data to crunch. Compared to the processor and L2 cache, RAM is very slow. Thus the more data that can be stored within the L2 cache, the less the processor has to wait for data to be tranfered from RAM, the more processing it can do. This is why Intel focuses so much of their efforts on their higher end processors on L2 cache rather than pushing the clock speed higher.

Also, in the case of laptops, another very critical consideration is how much electricity the processor consumes. In the case of processors like the Pentium M, the processor powers down unnessary parts to conserve electrcity and extend battery life.

In the case of my ThinkPad, I bought one that has a 1.8gHz Pentium M and 1gb of RAM. It is plenty fast and seems to do very well when running on battery (although I haven't really pushed it hard on battery).

Another thing to think about, is how come low end E-Machines have a 2.6gHz processor while my mid range IBM ThinkPads only come with 1.8gHz processor? The reason, because clock speed isn't the end all be all factor in system performance.

[astericks]

I bought an iBook a month ago. I LOVE IT!

thanks for reading

[mixcat]

Hey guys...
For what its worth. I sell notebooks / laptops for years now and I sell them all. Mostly Dell (most popular) But Toshiba is the Jaguar of laptops. Its worth every penny, All the parts are built to last and you get the speed out of them. The displays seem to run longer and brighter than all the others. If price is not an issue as they said Alienware makes a killer laptop.
One of the biggest factors besides cache on the the CPU is the Hard Drive. The faster RPM and more Cache on the drive the better. The overall performance will really amaze you. I had a 1.6 celeron Toshiba that I was going to sell and buy a newer laptop. It was the s105-1415 Great Unit and lasted me the past 2 years.. I replaced 1 keyboard because of use. I wore off the letters lol.. But it came with a 30 gig 4200 rpm toshiba drive in it with 512 ram. I upgraded the drive because I needed the space to a 80 gig 5400 RPM drive with 8 megs of cache. I can honestly say it now runs as fast as my 2.2 P4 Toshiba! The speed boost was insane. Needless to say I still have that unit too and still use it. I would get a good P4 chip with a VERY fast drive and Ram you can always add. More the better.

[KLB]

Hey guys...
For what its worth. I sell notebooks / laptops for years now and I sell them all. Mostly Dell (most popular) But Toshiba is the Jaguar of laptops.

I've heard a lot of bad things about Toshibas and wasn't at all impressed with Dell laptops. In fact when I was pricing out laptops an equally spec'd Dell laptop was more expensive than the IBM Thinkpad and the Thinkpad had more security features. I'd also take a 1.8gHz Pentium M over a 3gHz Celeron any day.

[truelysam]

I have an IBM laptop
So far so good, nothing wrong with the hardware and the driver softwares are updated once they r outdated