Suggest a laptop

[Matt_H]

Does anyone know of any good AMD-based laptop systems/vendors? Not interested in anything Intel-related, only AMD. AMD, AMD, AMD. Intel is not getting my money ;-)

It'd be fantastic if there was a retailer that sold systems without Windows, too... I've already got a copy kicking around.

[adolescent]

There's not that many brands that sell AMD equiped notebooks.  Off the top of my head Acer, and HP/Compaq are the only large companies (Sony had a few models, as did Toshiba but they've largely left the AMD behind).  

Intel has much better mobile offerings currently, this may change with Turion.

Edit: Fujitsu also has a single AMD XP-M model, the S2010.  (I have an older Lifebook S and they are great notebooks, not very fast, but great size and portability.

[6]

Matt, I highly recommend you look at emachines.com.  We bought an AMD tower and it has been a lot less stressful than our daughter's P4 Gateway.

They have the 64 bit processors too.

6

[Matt_H]

@ adolescent & 6

I'll scope these out. Thanks!

[Methuselas]

Stay away from Gateway....Stay away. That aside, if you want an AMD laptop, my suggestion is to look online for one that's an aftermarket from the far east. Sure, it's not going to be a US one, but it will definately be cheaper and you can order it without Windoze.


Hope that helps.

[the_leander]

I know you're going to hate me for saying this, but if you're after a laptop, I would strongly urge you to get an IBM laptop, yes its an intel cpu, but the reliability of these machines is all but legendary.

You can find many second hand also at very good prices.

At the end of the day, its all well and good saying, "I'm not going to buy such and such a laptop because of X cpu brand" but if at the end of it you're left with a lemon, how much better are you going to feel for not having bought a decent one in the first place?

Besides, if you buy second hand Intel don't get a cent from you!

[Floid]

As an AMD shareholder, I salute you! :-D

Matt_H wrote:
@ adolescent & 6

I'll scope these out. Thanks!

Keep in mind that emachines *is* owned by Gateway now; they're also essentially the biggest brand if you want something from the "far east" but can't be bothered to track it down in the proverbial back-of-the-Computer-Shopper yourself (meaning, y'know, cheap, national, and available at Best Buy, but check the reviews for specific models)...

I don't know what's currently available, other than seeing that decent XP-Ms are now practically commodity (with Staples and others carrying the never-heard-of import brands) ... I would assume that with Turion out, anything carrying the "Athlon 64 Mobile" label is going to be a good deal, for being effectively the same thing but brandname-obsolete.

TheInquirer's weekly hardware roundups are a good way to track down the usual ovarclockar-site reviews of all the import hardware from brands you've never heard of; you might catch blurbs or hands-on reports there.

[samanosuke]

I'd screw x86 altogether and go for a Powerbook personally.

[bloodline]

samanosuke wrote:
I'd screw x86 altogether and go for a Powerbook personally.

Maybe he doesn't want to spend £2000 for a pretty looking calculator.

[samanosuke]

Isn't every computer just a calculator when you think about it?

[bloodline]

samanosuke wrote:
Isn't every computer just a calculator when you think about it?

I know, I was just being facetious... When I was shopping around for a Laptop, I rather fancied a PowerBook G4... but After running the software (Logic Audio, Reason etc...) I needed to run on it and then the same software on an x86 laptop; the x86 gave me better performance for half the cost (with more memory and bigger hard drive, LCD wasn't as good though).

[samanosuke]

Heh, that's exactly what I use my Mac for! Strangely I found the CPU usage under Reason more effecient (even moreso under OS9) when compared to my friend's similarly spec'd x86 laptop. Don't know about Cubase though so I can't comment there. I can imagine that the G4 'books are becoming outdated now thoug - Apple really need to switch to G5 in their laptops as the G4 is showing its age.

[bloodline]

samanosuke wrote:
Heh, that's exactly what I use my Mac for! Strangely I found the CPU usage under Reason more effecient (even moreso under OS9) when compared to my friend's similarly spec'd x86 laptop. Don't know about Cubase though so I can't comment there. I can imagine that the G4 'books are becoming outdated now thoug - Apple really need to switch to G5 in their laptops as the G4 is showing its age.

I don't run Cubase either :-D

I was compararing a top of the Line PowerBook G4 with a 3.06Ghz PIV Laptop... To be really honest I'm not surprised the PIV was faster (and cheaper).

[darksun9210]

if you want a spanky AMD laptop, look to alienware.com or .co.uk or try voodoopc.com

personally, i'm looking at that Dell XPS gen2 / inspiron 9300 thing. its currently the only laptop with the 6800ultra GPU, and 1900 x 1200 17" screen yumminess.

[Noster]

Hi,

@bloodline

> To be really honest I'm not surprised the PIV was faster (and cheaper).

And louder, and with less akku runtime ;-)

Noster