THE Laptop Thread: Configs, deals and questions.

[Digital Vampire]

Dont know whether this is still a problem, but the Toshiba A series earlier had lots of MotherBoard Issues. My friend's Toshiba A-Series Laptop packed up within 2 weeks after we brought from Canada. Please check out with some users before buying.

Also I'd suggest to add as much RAM as your budget permits. Rather than raw CPU power, more RAM can do wonders to your day-to-day computer use.

Also check for RAM upgradeability (some models have limited expansion capabilities). Also if you plan to upgrade RAM in the near future, prefer to buy laptops with just one RAM slot populated. Ex if your Laptop has 512 MB RAM, it is better to choose 1x512 rather than 2x256 keeping upgradeability in mind. Else while upgrading, you might have to throw away both your 256 modules since most of the laptop motherboards have only 2 memory slots.

Here is what I have.

Acer Extenza 4102 WLMi
- 1.73 GHz Centrino running 533 FSB
- 2GB RAM
- ATI X700 128 MB Graphics
- 80 GB HDD (5200 RPM)
- 15.4 " Wide Screen
- Dual Layer DVD Writer
- WLAN
- Running XP Pro SP2 and RHEL4 Dual Boot

[R.P.M]

Why dont you go in for a Fujitsu Siemens

Centrino 1.73
512 Mb Ram
60 Gb HDD
Dual layer DVD writer
15.4 WXGA XBRITE screen
all standard ports
WIFI
Memory card reader

All this for only Rs 52500 all inclusive.

[mktgheadferrari]

i have recently purchased a acer aspire 5002 nwlmi and its awsome.its got the 64bit amd processor thts d same in the ferrari notebooks and i upgraded it to 512 mb ram with external tv and fm tuner external bluetooth and card reader with infrared,keyboard light,cam with night vision.the whoole package came to me for 50K with a metal carry breifcase.the laptops realy quick and it kicks *** of my frnds new sony which he purchased for over a lakh.even graphics performance is good and battery life is about 4hours.i simpli love it and i feel in this price its d best.the other option would be the sahara notrebook with amd 64.my acers screen is also very good with great clarity.i agree all wht devarshi says and i think its right now wiser to go in for a 64 bit laptop thn to go for a quicker dual core thing tht will not support new operating systems in the near future.

Note from Support Staff :

The usage of sms and slang language is strictly prhibited on Team BHP. Please take the time to type out your post correctly

[kpzen]

Compaq Presario V2620 TS
Intel pentium 1.7Ghz Centrino
60GB HDD ultra DMA
8X double layer DVD +R/+RW Writer
14" widescreen TFT screen
Altec Lansing Stereo speakers
Lan 802.11
Integrated bluetooth
Li ion battery
S-Video TV out
3 USB 2.0
Win XP Home
leather carry case

Rs.50000 all inclusive

[Dippy]

Congo on your purchase dude

Is it a one year warranty? Because I bought my Thinkpad R51 for 51,000 which including 3 year global warranty

[kpzen]

Yup..!!!
All compaq laptops come with 1year warranty....

Hey Dippy...
How do u connect a laptop to desktop pc for data transfer ????
I got a USB cable is that of any use ....

[abhi182]

goodchoice

don't believe in these widescreens .. i mean they are not actually wide! they just chopp off the top .. and thats why the 14" (Mine is not wide)

Sorry buddy, it's not as simple as that....14" widescreens have a higher resolution (1280X768/1280X800 vs. 1024X768 on 14/15" normal scree) thus they display more info on the screen....

Also, as for the difference between celeron-M and Pentium-M...
Both teh chips are based on the Dothan core architecture...The difference being 1MB of L2 Cache(Celeron-M) vs 2MB on Pentium-M and the lack of speestep on Celeron-M.

In real life, this translates to minimal performance difference but close to 20% better battery life on the Pentium-M...
However, unlike desktops where celeron earnmed a bad reputationsa as sluggish performer, the Celeron-Ms are pretty good vis-a-vis Pentium-M

Though all said & done, given the big price difference, Celeron-M based machines do make a very good VFM choice

AMD Turions in comparison lie somewhere between comparable clocked Celeron-M and Pentium-M in terms of both performance and Battery life....
Turion come in two flavors, ML and MT..MT series is motre expensive but has lower heat dissipation....

However, the Turions win over P-M/C-M because of the fact that they are relatively more future proof (Read windows Vista ready) becuase:
a) They are 64bit capable
b) They typically come with a Radeon X200 based Graphics chipset which is way superior to the Intel 915 chipset GFX on the Pentium-M based machines

[devarshi84]

Originally Posted by abhi182

goodchoice



Sorry buddy, it's not as simple as that....14" widescreens have a higher resolution (1280X768/1280X800 vs. 1024X768 on 14/15" normal scree) thus they display more info on the screen....

Also, as for the difference between celeron-M and Pentium-M...
Both teh chips are based on the Dothan core architecture...The difference being 1MB of L2 Cache(Celeron-M) vs 2MB on Pentium-M and the lack of speestep on Celeron-M.

In real life, this translates to minimal performance difference but close to 20% better battery life on the Pentium-M...
However, unlike desktops where celeron earnmed a bad reputationsa as sluggish performer, the Celeron-Ms are pretty good vis-a-vis Pentium-M

Though all said & done, given the big price difference, Celeron-M based machines do make a very good VFM choice

AMD Turions in comparison lie somewhere between comparable clocked Celeron-M and Pentium-M in terms of both performance and Battery life....
Turion come in two flavors, ML and MT..MT series is motre expensive but has lower heat dissipation....

However, the Turions win over P-M/C-M because of the fact that they are relatively more future proof (Read windows Vista ready) becuase:
a) They are 64bit capable
b) They typically come with a Radeon X200 based Graphics chipset which is way superior to the Intel 915 chipset GFX on the Pentium-M based machines

Some corrections here.

The difference between battery life of pentium M and celeron M comes to 20% if both are allowed to downclock. Otherwise on constant usage the difference is lessened.

Pentium M is a marketing gimmick that earned Intel huge green bucks. But Celeron M is actually a better buy at the price.

Turion M is based on the athlon core. battery life difference is not much between centrino and Turion. Many claim their centrino to do 4-5 hours and they hibernate within 3-3.5 hours. Turion does 2.5-3 hours with respect. The centrino cpu is old and outdated now. Turions are still in the business and earning AMD huge market share from intel. In our building we have 9 amd lappies (1 amd athlon 4000,2 semprons, 6 turions) compared to 5 pentiums(4 centrino tech and 1 only pentium M) The yonah duo has had many problems attached to it such a low battery life( probably due to USB power leakage).

one more additional advantage of The amd turion core is the use of Hypertransport for FSB compared to intel.


straight forward verdict:- If you need to buy a cheap notebook pc then now is the time. Turion notebooks are available at a steal. Turion X2 dual cores are debuting this may06 but are not recommended at the high prices they would carry.

If its not necessary to buy now then The new 60nm dual core architectures from both Intel(yonah is 60nm but old school architecture) and AMD are going to be more than 3 times better performance per watt and offer better battery life and the good news is they are coming this year. on top of that they are dual cores.


Hint of what they are capable of:- The new intel conroe architecture @2.67ghz beats the top of the line amd fx-60 @2.8ghz and maybe equal to the best cpu ever, the fx-57.

http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4843

[abhi182]

The difference between battery life of pentium M and celeron M comes to 20% if both are allowed to downclock. Otherwise on constant usage the difference is lessened.

Think practical, no one is using his lappy constantly at full load (read video editing/gamin/other processor intensive task) for normal browsing/spreadsheet/word editir sort of apps, the proccy will be running at down clocked speeds

Pentium M is a marketing gimmick that earned Intel huge green bucks. But Celeron M is actually a better buy at the price.

That's a subjective decision. though i do agree that the value vs price ratio between P-m/C-m is far better than their desktop counterparts

As for the Turion, its a decent performer alright, but for the same clockspeed, the P-m will give you better results in almost all benchmarks....e.g. a P-M 725 at 1.6 Gig will give you ~ 1:50 secs on superPi vs a Turion MT-30 at 1.6 Gig giving you ~2:20
However, a regular user would spot minimal difference in performance in regular usage...

As I said, the adv of the Turion lies in the 64 bit capabiltieis and teh fact that most mainstream Turion laptops have a the X200 gfx subsystem vs the cra&^y i915 on most mainstream Centrin/Celeron-M laptops

[devarshi84]

Originally Posted by abhi182

Think practical, no one is using his lappy constantly at full load (read video editing/gamin/other processor intensive task) for normal browsing/spreadsheet/word editir sort of apps, the proccy will be running at down clocked speeds

I do and so do most of the other people I know of. ot everybody needs a hi-tech cpu for their personal use. A personal laptop is basically used for internet, music and MS office and some other basic stuff. And celeron M performs all that very well.

Originally Posted by abhi182

That's a subjective decision. though i do agree that the value vs price ratio between P-m/C-m is far better than their desktop counterparts

As for the Turion, its a decent performer alright, but for the same clockspeed, the P-m will give you better results in almost all benchmarks....e.g. a P-M 725 at 1.6 Gig will give you ~ 1:50 secs on superPi vs a Turion MT-30 at 1.6 Gig giving you ~2:20
However, a regular user would spot minimal difference in performance in regular usage...

As I said, the adv of the Turion lies in the 64 bit capabiltieis and teh fact that most mainstream Turion laptops have a the X200 gfx subsystem vs the cra&^y i915 on most mainstream Centrin/Celeron-M laptops

Turion is a decent performer and it also beats pentium M in many benchmarks. But Pentium M get more wins. Not logical though for the higher price you pay.

and as you are talking about the Xpress 200m. That's what I use but intel doesnt only rely on i915. You name the gpu and I will show a pentium M notebook with that gfx.

to prove my performance comparison between the Pentium M and Turion have a look at this recent tests.


http://techreport.com/reviews/2006q1...4/index.x?pg=1
From a performance perspective, it's clear that the Turion 64 is the winner. By my count, the Pentium M was faster in only five of the tests, and one of those (the hardware OpenGL test in Cinebench) was probably due to graphics drivers. The rest were either a toss-up or a win for the Turion 64. The other thing that struck me about the results was that even in the tests the Pentium M did win, its margin of victory was fairly small. A number of the Turion 64 wins, however, were by an impressively large margin.

[abhi182]

I do and so do most of the other people I know of. ot everybody needs a hi-tech cpu for their personal use. A personal laptop is basically used for internet, music and MS office and some other basic stuff. And celeron M performs all that very well.

The celeron-M does perform very well in the scenario yiu've mentioned above....However, the point I was trying to make relates to this earlier quote:

The difference between battery life of pentium M and celeron M comes to 20% if both are allowed to downclock. Otherwise on constant usage the difference is lessened.

The idea being that P-M/Turion64 both run at underclocked speeds (say 0.8Ghz instead of 1.6ghz) under normal usage when the user is browsing/running office tasks....therefore in a normal battery full-empty cycle, the proccy (p-M/Turion64) would run at full speeds say 15% of the time while running underclocked 85% of the time....
The comparable Celeron-M 360 lacking sppedstep will run at 1.6ghz all the while..therefore everything else remaining the same, the celeron-M machine will give say 2:45 hrs tme vis-a-vis say 3 hrs on the Turion MT-30 (not ML) and say 3:15 hrs on the P-M....



Also, in the posted link,i wonder if you noticed that they have pitted a ML44 at a 2.4 Gig clock against a 2.0 Gig P-M760 which makes me think twiceabout the accuracy of the comparison test.....i mean Techreport is no Anandtech or Tomshardware after all

Also, Whatever I have stated above is about the 3 chips is out of my own personal experience with my old laptop (A Banias core celeronM at 1.6 Gig,) my owrk machine, a IBM R51 (p-M 725 @1.6gig) and my new baby , a Fujitsu s2110 (Turion MT30 again @1.6 gig)

I see absolutely no discernible performance difference between the three if viewed subjectively....
However,having said that, the P-M does do a faster job at tasks like encoding
DV videos to MPEG2, ripping DVDs to DivX etc.

Xpress 200m. That's what I use but intel doesnt only rely on i915. You name the gpu and I will show a pentium M notebook with that gfx.

sure they do...the xps gen2 comes with a Go7800 GTX, no less...but most mainstream centrino ship with the default Intel GMA 900 chipset and similarly most Turion lappys ship with the xpress 200m

[devarshi84]

Originally Posted by abhi182

The celeron-M does perform very well in the scenario yiu've mentioned above....However, the point I was trying to make relates to this earlier quote:

I have agreed to that already.

Originally Posted by abhi182

The idea being that P-M/Turion64 both run at underclocked speeds (say 0.8Ghz instead of 1.6ghz) under normal usage when the user is browsing/running office tasks....therefore in a normal battery full-empty cycle, the proccy (p-M/Turion64) would run at full speeds say 15% of the time while running underclocked 85% of the time....
The comparable Celeron-M 360 lacking sppedstep will run at 1.6ghz all the while..therefore everything else remaining the same, the celeron-M machine will give say 2:45 hrs tme vis-a-vis say 3 hrs on the Turion MT-30 (not ML) and say 3:15 hrs on the P-M....:

celeron wont run for more than 1-45 to 2-00 hours.

Originally Posted by abhi182

Also, in the posted link,i wonder if you noticed that they have pitted a ML44 at a 2.4 Gig clock against a 2.0 Gig P-M760 which makes me think twiceabout the accuracy of the comparison test.....i mean Techreport is no Anandtech or Tomshardware after all

Also, Whatever I have stated above is about the 3 chips is out of my own personal experience with my old laptop (A Banias core celeronM at 1.6 Gig,) my owrk machine, a IBM R51 (p-M 725 @1.6gig) and my new baby , a Fujitsu s2110 (Turion MT30 again @1.6 gig)
I see absolutely no discernible performance difference between the three if viewed subjectively....
However,having said that, the P-M does do a faster job at tasks like encoding
DV videos to MPEG2, ripping DVDs to DivX etc.

yes the centrino processor is pitched to a higher clocked turion. the reason is they are similarly priced.

Ours is not a perfect world, and we acknowledge that this is not a perfect match-up, at least not in terms of price. The problem is that AMD's Turion ML-44, priced at $354 by AMD, lands in the middle of a large gulf in Pentium M pricing. Our two closest options for comparison were the Pentium M 760 at 2.0GHz, with a price of $294, and the Pentium M 770 at 2.13GHz and a price of $423. The $60 price difference between the 760 and the ML-44 was slightly less than that the $69 separating the 770 from the ML-44, so we based our comparison on the former

you may want to read this article. I have not read any other equally detailed review yet. and they are comparing equal cpu's here.

http://www.mobilityguru.com/2005/09/...story_part_ii/

Originally Posted by abhi182

sure they do...the xps gen2 comes with a Go7800 GTX, no less...but most mainstream centrino ship with the default Intel GMA 900 chipset and similarly most Turion lappys ship with the xpress 200m

My points exactly. but most turion laptops not only ship with xpress 200m but sis mirage2 integrated graphics too which are not as good as 915. turion certainly are good cpu's but where they loose out on performance is lack of similarly good chipsets.

[hkanitkar]

After a lot of maska, finally i bought a Laptop.
Here's the configuration :

HP pavilion DV5118TX
Intel core duo T2300 (1.66 Ghz) processor
100 GB harddisk
1 GB DDR2 SDRAM
Nvidia GeForce GO 7400 - 256 MB graphics card
DVD writer
15.4" WXGA widescreen display
Inbuilt Wireless LAN, Bluetooth
Windows XP home edition

got this for 67250 /- thats with B/W

how is it people ?

[V-16]

hey just got an hp nx 6120 60gb + 512mb ram + dvd writer ++ for 69500/-
since we're car freaks just see what went on with bill gates and the GM co.... read on;

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way
computers have enhanced our lives, read on.

At a recent Computer Expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the
computer industry with the auto industry and stated, "If GM had kept up
with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving
$25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon."

In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release
stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be
driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this
part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have
to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason.
You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the
windows,shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before
you could
continue. For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause
your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would
have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable,
five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but would run on
only
Five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all
be
replaced by a single "This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation"
warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask "Are you sure?" before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out
and
refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door
handle,
turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn
how
to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate
in
the same manner as the old car.

10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine off.

[buzzin_hornets]

hey rpm.. have u heard abt the intel dual core processors.. dell gave a good deal for my friend.. dual core processor, 2gb ram, 80gb scsi i think.. dvd writer ..other usual stuff wifi bt, car reader etc 17" i think wide.... something arnd 72k

pm if u can get me a good deal for the dualcore similar or better config..
~cheers
-Ash