The power intake of my current one has melted (that's why I'm sitting on my stationary one right now, with linux) so I'll have to get a new one :hmm: luckily, my uncle has said he'd help out if he was happy enough with a web design project I'm doing for him - this means I'll be able to afford a good one this time :D

Here are my notes so far:

Don't need quality screen, the laptop screen will only house the tools in photoshop/dreamweaver/whatever, I'll have a proper screen for other stuff

Need lots of RAM, would like to be able to upgrade to 2 gigs

Need the computer to be well designed and solid buildt, not falling apart like my last one

Need a decent processor, like a fast Pentium M

Need a graphics card with VGA out and S-video

Firewire would be nice

Want small computer, preferably a 12", but with my other demands, I think I might have to settle for a 14.1 :(

It's not for gaming, I'll be switching to using a console for that

5 hour battery or more would be nice :drool:

Integrated wireless networking card would also be great

Loads of USB ports is always nice, but I can make do with two....

Don't need a beast of a harddrive. A fast one would be nice, but I have an external one sitting at home for all those mp3's and movies.

What is a fast harddrive, btw? Is 5,400rpm fast?


Been looking at the Dell latitude and Toshiba portégé series, also considering the apple powerbook, but I'm told this is a bad time to buy apple, and my external screen is for PC, so in a case of equals, a PC would be the choice.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

It's pretty hard to find one that small that has 2G of memory optional. If you were to settle for something bigger:

HP Pavillion ZV6000 (http://www.shopping.hp.com/webapp/shopping/computer_series.do?series_name=zv6000_series&catLevel=2&category=notebooks/hp_pavilion&storeName=computer_store)
Normally $699, but when I add all the goodies:

Athlon64 3500+
15.4" WXGA BrightView Widescreen (1280x800)
128MB ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M w/Hypermemory(TM)
Includes a 6-in-1 media card reader, ExpressCard54 card slot, IEEE 1394 digital video port. Has Svideo out.
2.0GB DDR SDRAM (2x1024MB)
54g(TM) Integ. Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN & Bluetooth
60 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
2x 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

At the HP online store it comes to $1618 before rebates

I'll have a looksie around today to see if I can find something smaller for you. Keep in mind, smaller also means less power. Most 12" notebooks are lower end Pentium M's or Transmeta CPU's. If you want something super small and powerful, you'll have to dish out some serious cash.

If you're after an ultraportable, C|Net has a feature on them: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3121_7-6230923-1.html?tag=prmo1

This feature on notebooks for photoshop may also be of interest: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3121_7-6210914-1.html?tag=promo2

I'm in a rather similar situation - looking to replace my current 15.4" machine with a desktop + a smaller laptop. For my purposes (word/acrobat/powerpoint/chemdraw), Intel's integrated quote-unquote Extreme gfx will be perfectly sufficient, but I'm not sure what sort of stress photoshop/macromedia put on the graphics subsystem; if it's severe, my recommendations are probably not going to be of much use to you. Likewise, for my purposes, it's probably going to be easiest to use email or a USB flash drive to transfer files from one machine to another, so I'm not all that bothered about having an internal CD/DVD drive. Your mileage may vary.

That said, I've been looking at the Dell Latitude X1 and the Acer Travelmate 3002WTCi.





The Dell (http://reviews.cnet.com/Dell_Latitude_X1/4505-3121_7-31320873-2.html?tag=top) (link to C|Net review):
Plus points:




Magnesium alloy case - should be reasonably resistant to rough treatment
12.1" 1280*800 widescreen - I know you said that the screen isn't a big priority, but I've become accustomed to the widescreen on my current laptop, and don't want to change
WiFi, bluetooth, and Gigabit ethernet
Negatives:

Battery life isn't that great - 3 hours with the standard battery (although you can buy a double-capacity battery as an extra)
Keyboard's supposed to be a bit crap
Hard drive maxes out at 60Gb/4200 rpm....should be sufficient space for my WinXP install, but probably not for linux as well.
Processor lacks punch - it's only a 1.1GHz (ultra?)-low voltage model. Again, should be sufficient for the lightweight stuff I'll be doing, but I can imagine that photoshop would get sloooooooooooow.
External drive is only DVD/CDRW - no DVD writing
Dude....it's a Dell :|
http://img.dell.com/images/global/products/latit/x1_front_314x314.jpg


















The Acer (http://reviews.cnet.com/Acer_TravelMate_TM3002WTCi/4505-3121_7-31343005-2.html?tag=glance) (again, link to C|Net review):
Positives:


12.1" 1280*800 widescreen display, like the Dell
1.73GHz Sonoma Pentium-M...niiiiiiiice, although I'm not sure I need the power on the laptop
Memory's upgradeable to 2Gb max, although that'd be a pricy upgrade at the moment: it uses DDRII modules, and the 1Gb sticks are ridiculously dear.
External drive is a DVD (re)-writer
80Gb hard drive...still only 4200 rpm, though
3xUSB2.0, 1x firewire ports
Integrated WiFi/Gigabit ethernet/Bluetooth
Almost 5 hours battery life
Negatives:


DDRII RAM - latency ain't great
Some people have said that their tech support is pretty poor. I can't comment on this - I've been using one of their laptops as my only computer for the last year, and it's behaved perfectly during that time, so I've had no need to try them.
http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/sc/31343005-2-300-overview-1.gif




Re: hard drives - 5400 rpm is reasonable for a notebook; the fastest drives you can get are 7200 rpm. I find my 4200 rpm drive to be ... tolerable. There's a noticeable difference between this and my old desktop (7200 rpm/8Mb cache) when loading large amounts of data into memory (e.g. when loading game levels), but it's not severe in day to day use.

15" Mac Powerbook.

You won't be sorry - although if you want something even more compact, there is a smaller version as well.

Oo, the acer seems good too. No s-video or the like, though :(

15" is what I had now, it's not really that portable, and only barely slips in to my shoulder bag. I've also heard this is a bad time to buy mac because of their "switch" to intel :hmm:

Also considered this: http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMTkz or rather, the S270 version.

Oo, the acer seems good too. No s-video or the like, though :(

15" is what I had now, it's not really that portable, and only barely slips in to my shoulder bag. I've also heard this is a bad time to buy mac because of their "switch" to intel :hmm:

Also considered this: http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMTkz or rather, the S270 version.

The 15" PB is very slim and fits easily into my backpack.

I went through the transition to the PowerPC chip in earlier generations of Macs - as well as through the System 7 ... OS X revisions. Apple does a very good job of supporting backward compatibility while making significant architecture changes.

12" ibook.

Sweet

Alright, I had a looksie around. Ever considered an Alienware laptop? A couple of my students have them, and they're pretty impressive.
Anyhoo, I was able to find a pretty small one with a Pentium-M 1.6(you can go higher if you can deal with a little less battery life), DVD/CDRW, Intel® PRO/Wireless 2200 Network Connection, 12.1" 1280x800 display, 2GB RAM, 7200 rpm 60GB drive, Creative soundblaster sound with 4 speakers, and XP pro installed.
Total comes to $2004,
$1604 after $400 rebate.

All in all, it's a bit pricey, but with the 7200rpm drive, the 2GB RAM, and Pentium-m, it's a bad mofo packed into a <4lb package. Alienware claims 4hr battery life. I'd hit it.

link (http://alienware.com/product_detail_pages/Sentia/sentia_features.aspx?SysCode=PC-LT-SENTIA-CP&SubCode=SKU-ENTRYLVL)

I checked, and yes, it's pricey - it's also not avaliable in Norway, so I'd have to import it, or smuggle it in - and I'm not that fond of that idea.

Anyone know anything about this one?:

MSI S270:

The good:



room for 2 gig ram
Seems affordable, but I don't know
3 USBs
Firewire
Good battery
Mobile AMD Turion™ 64 1.6GHz seems good, is it better or just as good as Pentium M?
DVD burner is nice, but I don't really need it...

The bad:



Mystery horse. It's an unknown brand (i.e. it might be badly buildt) and won't be avaliable in Norway until in a few weeks :hmm:
Seems no ultraportables have S-video....

The ugly:



Probably won't be imported in anything else than black.

http://www.msicomputer.com/NB/product_spec.asp?model=S270

MSI makes pretty decent motherboards and video cards, so I wouldn't be too worried about them. Not an ultra huge corporation like Dell, but they're established enough I think.

The Turions give better performance than a Pentium-m, but run slightly hotter. The big advantage is that the Turions are 64 bit compatible, while the Pentium-m's are only 32 bit. IF you should ever decide to install XP 64bit edition or the upcoming 64 bit Windows Longhorn, the Turion will be ready for it.

I'd go with the MSI.

^ Yeah, MSI's gear is supposed to be OK. From what I've read, the Turion's performance is more or less equal to that of the P-M on a clock-for-clock basis - see Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2374&p=2). Mind you, that's not the most conclusive write-up; I'd be interested in a review, if you do end up going for the MSI.

Re: S-video - while it seems that ultraportables with inbuilt S-video out are quite rare, most have docking stations/port replicators available with these ports and more. Here's Acer's version (http://www.acer.co.uk/acereuro/page13.do?dau59.oid=1002&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=17&ctx1=UK&crc=3534624084). Obviously, this adds to the total bulk of the package and would be inconvenient to cart around, but if you only need the output when working at your desk, it'd be OK, I guess.


Re: Apple's current notebook lineup - I'm very reluctant to consider them at the moment, for several reasons. The screens are decidedly meh - no widescreens on the smaller models/iBooks and no high-res screens on the larger models; the G4 is at best hopelessly weak c.f. P-M (although in all honesty, for light work, you'd struggle to buy an underpowered CPU these days); in terms of hardware, they're almost obscenely expensive; and the Intel transition is quite worrying. Depending on the value you place on OS X this may or may not be significant; for me, eye candy and expose aren't enough. OS X' superior scheduler is nice, but not enough to justify re-purchasing all my apps.

Re: the Intel transition - comparing it to the 68k -> PPC transition isn't really appropriate. The PPC could emulate the 68k extremely well, and while doing so was still considerably faster than a genuine 68k, so the transition was essentially devoid of major technical problems. In going from PPC -> x86, they don't have anything like such an easy job - x86 emulation of the G4/G5 is just... not good, which is why they're pushing Rosetta. However, Rosetta can't run Altivec'd code, or anything specific for G4/G5, so a lot of the optimisations for current mac programs will disappear on moving to x86.



Anyway, was wandering around town today, and stopped into on of the local computer emporia. Saw one of these things (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000350045408/) and was sorely tempted - true, it's 14" rather than 12", but it's also £300 cheaper than the 12-inchers I've been looking at, and is a lot less bulky than my current 15.4". Hmmmmm.

^ Gah. When I say the Intel transition, I am of course referring to Apple's impending PPC -> Intel transition.

And in the penultimate sentence of the final paragraph, for "on," read "one." >:

I checked the battery of the MSI, and it seems it's actually crap - except if you buy it with the optional extra battery.

^ Yeah, MSI's gear is supposed to be OK. From what I've read, the Turion's performance is more or less equal to that of the P-M on a clock-for-clock basis - see Anandtech (http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2374&p=2). Mind you, that's not the most conclusive write-up; I'd be interested in a review, if you do end up going for the MSI.- I googled and saw that AMD had actually fiddled with their official benchmark, testing the P-M on a poorer computer than the Turion :hmm:

Re: S-video - while it seems that ultraportables with inbuilt S-video out are quite rare, most have docking stations/port replicators available with these ports and more. Here's Acer's version (http://www.acer.co.uk/acereuro/page13.do?dau59.oid=1002&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=17&ctx1=UK&crc=3534624084). Obviously, this adds to the total bulk of the package and would be inconvenient to cart around, but if you only need the output when working at your desk, it'd be OK, I guess.- A docking station would do just fine - except that it costs extra.

Anyway, was wandering around town today, and stopped into on of the local computer emporia. Saw one of these things (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000350045408/) and was sorely tempted - true, it's 14" rather than 12", but it's also £300 cheaper than the 12-inchers I've been looking at, and is a lot less bulky than my current 15.4". Hmmmmm.- Didn't you just buy that laptop last year? :D What's your excuse?

Also, the link you provided seemed to me like an advertisement :p Also: is there room for my 2 gigs of RAM?

- Didn't you just buy that laptop last year? What's your excuse?
What, random hardware lust isn't reason enough any more? :(
This machine's been very good to me over the past year, but it's a bit of a compromise - not as powerful as a decent desktop or a gaming laptop like the XPS2, and not as portable as the ultraportables. I've found that the 15.4" format is a little too cumbersome to be really convenient to carry around; I'd like something I can just zip up in a neoprene skin and throw into a small backpack or briefcase when I need to go someplace and deliver a presentation.

I'd also like something that gets >100 fps in Half-Life 2 with all the eye-candy on at 1680*1050 or greater. :|

But yeah, since Big Pharma has, in its infinite munificence, decided to sling a few scraps my way to top up my studentship, I figure that I might as well splurge on electronic gear. It'd be nice to have one machine to keep at home and one for the lab/work. I think what I'll do is buy the new laptop in the next few months, as well as one of Dell's 20" widescreen monitors (http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=uk&l=en&s=dhs&cs=ukdhs1&sku=29082&category_id=4009) and some new software (it's about time I got ChemDraw 9.0) and then start putting together my desktop at some later point, maybe next year.



Oh, and yes, the gateway laptop can take up to 2 Gb (http://support.gateway.com/s/Mobile/Gateway/M250/2900783faq9.shtml).

Okay, so you are looking for a gaming laptop, while I'm not :hmm: Is the gateway laptop the only 14" laptop you've looked at, or have you been looking around at them too?

What's the big advantage of 64 bit over 32 bit, btw? All I remember of the 16 to 32 bit move was that it was a rather dramatic change in windows :l

You won't see much of a drastic difference in performance between a 64 and 32 bit laptop unless you're actually utilizing XP 64 bit edition and have 64 bit applications to run on it. I'd just prefer it since it's a little more "future proof".

I don't know a lot about computers, but I have a Gateway M275X... very small too.

I looked it up for you too... Gateway M275X (http://products.gateway.com/products/GConfig/proddetails.asp?system_id=m275x&seg=hm)

in fact that's exactly where I got mine. (well my mom got it for me)

-michele

"Future proof" is probably the most important thing for me with this laptop - unlike Jonny, I'm not granted donations from "big pharma" :p

Okay, so you are looking for a gaming laptop, while I'm not
No, I'm looking for a portable, low-power laptop to complement a workstation/gaming desktop. I don't really need (or even want) to play games while on the move. The 100fps @1680*1050 comment was in reference to the desktop I'm thinking of putting together. Mmmmm, Opterons. :|

I've sort of looked around at 14" laptops, although not in any great detail. At the risk of sounding like they're giving me a percentage on their sales, Acer have an interesting offering (http://www.acer.co.uk/acereuro/page4.do?dau22.oid=10413&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=17&ctx1=UK&crc=2575558851) with a (surprisingly powerful) dedicated graphics system, although neither reviews nor pricing are available at present. On the plus side, it can accomodate 2Gb RAM, and has integrated S-video out.

Re: future-proofing - there will be a 32-bit version of longhorn on release, and I can't imagine that 32-bit support will wither for a few years yet, if for no other reason than that the installed base is so vast. The obvious advantage of having a 64-bit CPU/OS is that it would enable individual processes to address > 2Gb of physical memory, which might or might not be relevant to your photoshop work in the future.

So if I have 2gigs or more, I may or may not have use of this 64 bit thing if I do work in Photoshop that I may or may not do :|

Seems my uncle is limited when it comes to suppliers, so I'll have to see. I'm set on the MSI right now, but, as I've pointed out before, they're not very big.

I ended up with an MSI 260 (http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/notebook/nb/pro_nb_detail.php?UID=607), with a 1,86ghz P-M, one stick of 1gb "Crucial DDR SO-DIMM PC2700 1024MB CL2,5 Non-parity, 2.5V, 128M x 64, 6ns, 200p" (I don't know what that means, so I post the whole thing.) and one RAM slot free for future upgrade. 40GB 5400RPM HD and an extra 8-cell battery.

Tablet PCs did come to mind, and I am a bit envious of Michele for having one - but they cost lots more and I already have a little tablet.

If there is interest in a review, I guess I can hammer one together when I get it.

^ Nice. Would certainly be interested in a review if/when you have time.