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64-bit Laptops Reviewed
prostoalex writes "ExtremeTech reviews current mega-notebooks, which are powerful enough to become a desktop replacement. Among the laptops reviewed there's one with 64-bit AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3200+ (2.0GHz clock rate) - the Voodoo Envy m:855."
Yea, only missed that one by about a decade :)
64bit isn't new, affordable 64bit is.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
Hasn't almost every notebook that has come out in the last 10 years been touted as a "desktop replacement" ??
The Voodoo Envy laptop makes such promises as "3 + hours of battery life(when running real world apps like MS Office and the internet)". It also weighs in at 8 pounds.
No thanks, I'll pass on that.
My idea of a laptop is a good mix of power to get things done and portability. I doubt users will be carrying around their 8 pound Voodoo Envy for long.
Add that to the $3500 price tag and you have an expensive and unusable "laptop".
Come on, there are two reasons to prefer a desktop over a laptop. First, ergonomics: some people just prefer to have a big keyboard and a big monitor and being able to move the two independently of each other. Second, hardware capabilities-- you can fit more into a desktop, and you can upgrade it easily. (Oh, and you don't need to optimize for size or battery lifetime, so things can be cheaper and more powerful.) Neither of these is going to go away. Even if there are some really powerful laptops out there now, there'll be some even more powerful desktops coming up soon.
That said, there's no reason why laptops can't replace desktops for many kinds of people today. I haven't had a desktop in 3 1/2 years -- nothing new there.
Wow! Pretty impressive. This could be the next ultimate LAN gaming machine, but will I ever really be able to run it on batteries for more than 15 minutes? I know they claim 3+ hours, but.....
What about cooling? I thought my 12in Powerbook got pretty warm on occasion, but this might have to come with a warning.
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The PowerBooks are 1 inch thick. These 'laptops' are 1.7 to 2 inches thick. That's not really comparable.
while this is a pretty interesting article, the benchmarks are dubious at best. most, if not all of these apps, are 32bit apps. the OS seems to be win2k, which last time i checked is not a 64bit OS. altho i'd have to admit they are comparing the notebooks themselves and not the chips. in any event they both look like monster "laptops".
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Personally, I think these things are like road-biased SUVs - overpriced hybrids that by being adequate for two tasks are not very good at either. Gimme a real desktop machine, a thin-and-light (or, better still, an ultralight), and rsync and you've got a much better solution.
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Pros:
I don't know why people drop serious cash on these things. It's something like $700 for a low-end Dell laptop, which gives you everything you need except serious gaming potential. I'd never make a laptop my main system just because of the reliability factor alone.
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Useless graphs, over-emphasis on gaming, lots of flashy buzzwords and "benchmarks" that involve nothing more other then running the latest games... Did someone screw up the DNS records for extremetech.com and reroute all traffic to tomshardware.com? No? Damned!
Seriously, all of that is fun but laptops are usually sold for two reasons*, one being the size and the fact it's easy to hide then. ( really nice if you don't want a desktop case in the middle of your living room ) The second reason is that they are mobile ( really! ) and thus can be lugged around by business people who seem to value their email more then their own lives. What about important factors to people who want a laptop for those two reasons? What about size, weigth, heat during use, screen brightness, stability, etc etc? 98% of the people who buy a laptop care more about the damned thing being lightweigth instead of being able to cram out 0,2543 fps on Halo. If you're going to buy a laptop for gaming you're a bit dense to start with. You can buy a state-of-the-art laptop and before you left the story it's ancient already. Try upgrading the proc or graphics card of your shiny new laptop to run HL3 or Doom4. Try playing for more then six hours without the system stalling due to overheating. Try to install an extra HD or something.
There, simply put; laptops are nice but aren't made to be used for gaming. Hence why putting a bunch of laptops through a series of benchmarks, aimed at gaming and set up by some people who most likely consider this to be the most arousing thing on the internet, is very useless. At best.
* = Working in computer retail business, ( kill me please ) so I unfortunately know what I'm talking about here.
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In case you haven't noticed companies are working very hard to put out high end components for laptops. Seems to me they'd not be doing this if they did not see a market.
Let's see: Dell is currently willing to sell me a laptop that has a P4 3.2ghz processor (faster than my desktop by 2x), 2GB of ram (2x more than my desktop), a 1600x1200 monitor (higher rez than my deskop), a GeForce FX Go5200 64MB (less ram but more features than my desktop), a 60GB 7200rpm harddrive (less space but equal speed to my desktop), and all sorts of extras like a DVD burner and such.
So tell me how this system isn't designed for games, given that it is more powerful in most ways than my desktop, which is no slouch? It's not stopping either. nVidia already has a faster, more powerful mobile FX card, and ATi has a lineup to match.
Ya, a lot of people care about light weight laptops. Hence why Dell et al sell small laptops. They are happy to sell you one with a small screen, low power P4-M chip and few included periphals. However there clearly are those that want large, capable desktop replacements, and so they sell those too.
People who are saying there is no market for these things are people that take their extra space for granted. I live in a very small one bedroom apartment. I have no room to have multiple desktop machines. However, being a computer geek, having more than one computer is an absolute necessity. Given the choice between having 1 desktop or 4-5 laptops in the same amount of space, I'll take the 4-5 laptops.
A laptop like this is ideal for me - I can finally have a relatively high powered machine and actually play some of the newer games out there instead of having to find the games that are 3 years old because that's the most my laptops can handle...
... Steve Jobs is choking and fuming because he wasn't able to fit G5s in PowerBooks and sell the "first 64-bit laptops".
Somewhere in Cupertino Steve Jobs is cackling with glee because he is smart enough to realize that most people won't pay $3800 for a 10 pound leaf blower that only gets 2 hours of battery life. Really, what is the market for these things? Are they only selling them to foolish gamers that want to lug them to a LAN party and plug them in to a wall outlet?
Apple doesn't release half-assed products just because they can. Believe me, they could have stuffed a G5 into a laptop this summer if they wanted to, and it would have about the same weight, dimensions, and battery life that one of these suckers does. But would anyone buy it?
Me, I'll stick with my sleek 15" Powerbook that gets 4 hours of actual battery life, is only 1" thick, and has the same graphics chipset (ATI Radeon 9600) allowing me to play almost all of the same games (UT2003 anyone? Halo on Dec. 11th anyone?) I'd much rather show up at a LAN party with it and not have to visit the chiropractor the next day because I threw my back out trying to lift that behemoth off the table.
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Yes, but you do realize you're getting a system that runs real sparc based Solaris (not Solaris for Intel), has just as much horsepower as a SunFire V120 1U server, and has ECC memory and data paths.
I won't hold it against you. Most people that compare Sparc systems to Intel systems don't realize how much having ECC across all data paths can affect the price of a system. Basically, every bus that was 64-bits wide has to be 80-bits wide to get your error correction bits in there.
As an exercise for the EE majors, calculate the extra cost in R&D time + manufacturing for this high level of reliability.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon