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64 Bit Athlon Notebooks Hit the Market
Omega1045 writes "Our friends at News.com.com.com are reporting that one of the first notebooks powered by the 64 bit Athlon will be made by (drumroll, please) eMachines. Slashdot has mentioned eMachines venture into 64 bit Athlon technology before. You also might note from this past press release that eMachines claims to be the 3rd biggest PC maker in the US. Hopefully this will have the dual effect of pushing the new chip into the market, and keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me."
The heat from the laptop caused the market to catch fire, which at this time is still burning.
I dunno about you, but I'd prefer mine to not be broken.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop, but I welcome this because it will naturally drive down the prices of what I might actually buy. Way to go, eMachines.
it fell of a truck
Too bad. I have a working one.
thats how emachines got them
For the k8t800m chipset or ati mobility 9600 on said laptop???
I've got about $1500 and an urge to upgrade.
Quote:
"Hopefully this will have the dual effect of pushing the new chip into the market, and keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me."
This is the only part I can see as a plus to this. However I would take a guess that it will do little to the latter, in that most companies know E-Machines general reputation with the people who would be first in line to buy a 64 bit laptop, so I don't forsee that they will try to compete with E-Machines in the price category for some time.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
for 30 minutes of 64 bit computing
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
um, pretty sure they come in boxes anyway... you know, with styrofoam?
The only experience I've ever had with eMachines are two systems- one was my sisters' old P-166 machine- it lasted for 3 years without a hitch, till I blew it up by trying to put Win98 onto it (long time ago :)
The other one is one of those widescreen eMachines Athlon laptops- my friend bought it a while back- it's a really solidly made machine that has had no problems so far. YMMV
Okay; there are big advantages to a "desktop-replacement" laptop over an actual desktop; I now have my second desktop-replacement laptop and I doubt I will ever buy a desktop again.
First of all, a laptop doesn't take as much space as a desktop; just try to fit a desktop computer into a dining room or a living room, or even a bedroom, it's just damn unsightly and unweilding, let alone unportable, a laptop will fit into these with no trouble at all, and if you wish to you can unplug it in throw it into the drawer.
A laptop can easily become a portable DVD player. My Sony Vaio has TV out, so I can plug it into the scart to watch movies on the TV. Or, if I watch those foreign or independent movies that no one else wants to see, I switch off the lights, lie comfortable on my side or back, and either unfold the laptop and rest it on its side so it has an angle that'll keep it up, or rest it on my stomach with an empty A4 sized folder attached to it with a thick rubber band, amazingly they're exactly the same width, and the folder both gives it a good angle and sheild the heat from my stomach, and it weighs almost nothing. From this close distance, it feels so much like watching a movie in the cinema, sizewise!!! Now try watching a movie on a desktop... argh, it's an ordeal.
Then, you can take a laptop to work or with you to a hotel room.
As for ergonomics, the full-size screen of a sony vaio is immensely comfortable, and a 15" screen is quite generous.
Any modern laptop will have a processing power that'll last for years. I've upgraded my memory to 400mb. As for upgradeability, I have a Belkin 7-port USB hub, and i can daisy chain that to have 127 USB ports if i want to. I'm quite happy with this combo, the memory upgrade and the USB 7 port hub completely transformed my usage. I downloaded a virtual desktop utility from sourceforge, and now i keep my commonly used Apps running at startup, and my cybershot cam and clie handheld, and wireless gamepad, always plugged into the USB hub.
What more is there to ask for.
This is a good sign. I have to get a laptop for college next year, and i want to get a decent laptop for a good price. This will hopefully drive down the prices of the other notebooks. Anyone headed for college or forced to get a laptop for work will see this as a blessing.
I'm glad to see some OEMs going away from the relatively expensive, and in the case of the Celeron, weak Intel architecture. You can build a heck of a General-Purpose / Gaming / Development machine based on AMD CPUs for next to nothing. You can easily put together an AMD64 3000+ / Radeon 9600 / 19" monitor system for under a grand.
I hope to see more PC makers go this route. Diversity is good. Now, if they would start considering alternate OSes as well...
I dunno about you, but I'd prefer mine to not be broken.
It's an eMachine, you don't have much choice.
I would never buy an emachine. I love AMD and all, but back when I was in high school my school bought several hundred emachines and about 35% of them were DOA due to faulty power supplies. You would think with a percentage that high emachines would be aware of this problem, yet they were selling them anyway. Pretty bad business if you ask me.
eMachines: When 300 services battle over your network connection just isn't enough.
It has a "high-capacity 8-cell LiIon battery." Still, no mention of batter life in the specs. Hmm, I wonder why?
If you want to actually use 64 bit software on these processors, you currently need to run Linux. How are the Linux drivers for this flavor of ATI? Most new ATI hardware is not supported - never mind support via 64bit drivers. Need a AMD64/NVidia laptop.
you should see my Lego version!
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I've been working with 64-bit chips since 1998 (DEC ALPHA systems and now G5's) and there has always been problems with heat and power. What's the battery life going to be on one of these machine?
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
means it's hot, einstein.
Hurrah for burning trousers!
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
does anybody know the (typical blah blah blah) battery life of this laptop?
otherwise, it compares pretty favorably to my IBM R40e...
adam
I live in a Pentium 350 world and home and have been limping along, quite happily actually. I admin a Win2K network at work so keep one foot planted there, and have been learning and living on a steady diet of Linux the rest of the time. While eMachines don't thrill me, I am thinking more and more that I should postpone any upgrades until I can truly dive into the 64 bit world. I realize I will be stuck running plenty of 32 bit applications, but is my wait worthwhile? I am really getting the itch to get into serious gaming again but (obviously) my current system is not up to much more than the Ultima Online I played for 5 years. Perhaps this question fit better as an Ask Slashdot question, but I didn't feel it was worthy to stand on its own so I welcom your comments.
We win together or suffer without.
...on one of these and you have a REAL desktop replacement unit. I know there are some of these in the pipeline. Maybe my next home unit will be a laptop if that happens. 9600 is cool, but I want 9800+ class.
VoodooPC has been selling 64-bit laptops for 2-3 months now with decent battery life for what your getting. Check out the M:855.
http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/notebook.aspx
here it is.
~To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation. -Yann Martel
Yep, and my Tadpole is already 64bits for yeaaars (UltraSparc).
...
Oh, and btw, in Europe, you can buy Packard Bell Athlon 64 based laptops
#include "coucou.h"
A Danish company called Amitech has had an Athlon 64 powered notebook since August 13 2003.
It does however suffer from the 90W power drain that the regular Athlon 64 imposes, so don't move too far away from that power outlet.
Q: How does a Unix guru have sex? A: unzip;strip;touch;finger;mount;fsck;more;yes;umount;sleep
dumbasses.
t ml
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/34562.h
-- CSLib Menace rules in 2k4
Not everybody shopping for a 64 bit notebook would buy something cheesy like an eMachines laptop.
VoodooPC has been selling their high end m:855 for some time now. Based on the Athlon 64, it also has ATI Mobility 9600 Graphics Pro chipset.
Bah, I'm going to hold out for a dual 64 bit laptop. With a RAID array.
Now I know the big deal is to hate Emachines but do many of you have experience with them? I knew a lot of people in my area were buying them because the price was low (friends and students) because that was all they could afford. At first I had the same feeling of "eek, I have heard bad things", but once they got them setup and running they really had no issues with them. I mean they were using them for what they were designed for. Things like email, IM, web browsing and minor games. These things lasted for a while, usually until it was time to upgrade or what not. A lot of people I know still have them.
Based on what I saw they took the abuse of a home computer and ran fine with no problems outside or regular software issues. Why do they seem to get such a bum rap on here?
SuDZ
Ive been waiting for one, looking everywhere, I just got my AMD 64 ref manulas last week :)
Anyone wanna but a 2ghz P4 Toshiba cheap ?
here
Some highlights- 60GB hard drive, 512MB PC2700 RAM, Mobility Radeon 9600, 15" widescreen display
VoodooPC has been doing this for over three months already.
Check out the Aviator -AX6
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
hypersonic pc has been selling one for a while as well. They seem to be pretty decent machines, might by one with my tax refund. -siniset
Actually, take a look over at ATI's drivers' page
They're for the entire Radeon line from everything from the 8500-9800
But like you said, no 64bit drivers - I wonder if ATI and Emachines have soemthing worked out for this?
with the same experience as on an Alienware laptop, but comes in much cheaper, I will get one....
Alienware laptops are cool, but damn...I can not justify 3500 for a laptop.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I guess if this eMachines thing has a 1-year warranty you can get an "extended" warranty from Best Buy for a few hundred bucks more. I'd definitely advise doing that. But it means you have to figure it into the price of the machine.
Bethnal Green
When they were doing the testing, nobody had an egg-timer on hand
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
eMachines are just a crappy as Dells or Gateways but you avoid the brand tax with them. Unlike Dell and Gateway, eMachines doesn't pretend it's selling you some top of the line system but is honest about the fact that you're getting the house Chianti, as it were.
All's true that is mistrusted
you twat.
Speaking of Tadpole, I got an email from one of their sales guys (standard pricing email for Q1 2004), and they say they'll have a dual processor laptop called the "Bullfrog" out by June, 2004. They don't say what processor it'll have, but they claim it'll be available with up to 8GB RAM, have a 17" 1400x1050 display, and a "massive HDD."
Right on.
How can they call the notebook M6805? What a strange misleading name! Are everyone too young to remember the Motorola 6805 microprocessor? Are they sure the notebook uses a 64-bit microprocessor?
)9TSS
Why not just make it a desktop in laptop form? Save $$$ on hardware and you get the smaller form factor. Sure you can't take it with you, but that's what custom welded racks of battery backups on a large diesel-powered cart are for.
I'm sure myself and many other New Englanders welcome these smaller, yet powerful, space heaters given the subzero temperatures we're having to endure.
Coke (the drink) almost came out my nose because I laughed so hard when I read "eMachines."
...a free vasectomy! Just leave it on your lap...
The one thing I hate about my Powerbook is its 1280x854 LCD resolution. I want to squeeze as many lines as possible in my terminals, and these shallow "widescreen" displays suck at it.
With this eMachine, I lose another 54 pixels, ugh. I want my 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 like Dell's UXGAs.
Parsons Green
Big and powerful ol' processors are usually used for rendering purposes (aspect in which intel leads) or 3D gaming.
A laptop isn't suitable for any of that because of the depletion of batteries. I don't think the processor features downclocking of cpu speed when batteries are in use (and full speed when connected to a power jack).
The most noticable factor which affects laptop performance is the hard drive. They should find something for that rather than the usual megahertz.
Who in their right mind would use their laptop as a server. The smaller pc components inside probably wear out a lot quicker than desktops. Keeping a laptop on for such extended periods of time would lower its life considerably.
I like the fact that AMD is pioneering (albeit in the market, not research) the cpu demand for pc's. This gives me a warm feeling, like the one I had when I bought my 1ghz athlon. Anyway, Go AMD!
This Athalon 64 (especially CISC) laptop sounds like it will be a power hog among other things, making the laptop not portable enough to be worthwhile. It doesn't sound like one I want on my lap. Not only should it be small and light, but the battery has to last a few hours to be worth the trouble.
The Angel
IIRC, we've had cases of notebooks heating up in people's laps already. Do these new 64bit notebooks have any protection built in to balance the extra heat...
Free XBox, PS2
Shuttle already has an Athlon 64 Cube, which is cheaper, more rugged, and has a heatpipe...
...-.-
Well, anyone know if it works with FreeBSD?
And, does it come without the crappy Microsoft XP software?
When the first story about the 64 bit desktop machine from eMachines broke, I looked on their website and it was noticeably absent from the products section. It is still not there and neither is this new laptop. I'm guessing I'm just stupid and missed where it said that they're only selling these models through Best Buy or something like that. It just makes me wonder about the quality if they won't even show them on their website. I'm having trouble coming up with a similar occurrence anywhere else. For a company that does all sales through retail outlets such as Best Buy and Circuit City, it seems odd that they would not mention their flagship products on their own site. I don't think this is a conspiracy, I just can't understand the reasoning here. I have an email out to them seeking some sort of answer, but hopefully someone here will have some insight.
I am feeling fat and sassy
The ATI integrated drivers, which include the Mobility 9600, play very well with Linux. Certainly a switch from the past ATI driver issues.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
It was a Celeron 800 rig, and the PSU finally died. Unfortunately, the drop-in PSU replacement is this smallish form factor that costs $50+, so I just threw the guts into a full ATX case, which was cheaper.
I did a quick look and saw that Athlon has a 1 MB cache. Is this enough? Maybe cache is expensive, but I have a feeling performance of these chips could be greatly enchanced with more cache... I only say this because of the Centrino "chip/chipset/network card" thing that has come out. Apparently the centrino chip is a pentium running at about 600 MHz that performs as a 1.2 GHz chip because they have 1 MB cache.
So for a 64-bit, 2+ GHz processor, is 1 MB enough?
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
http://www.amdboard.com/athlon_64_notebook.html
MANY amd64 laptops have been around for a while now, some starting as low as $1099 (w/o anything).
For a major manufacturer to sell a laptop without the MS tax. I want a linux laptop, but refuse to pay a premium for it at a smaller manufacturer(I can't afford the premium) , especially since I should be saving money by not paying for windows. I also want fully compatable hardware in my laptop, no windows only wireless, no non-standard power features(or at least release the specs so linux drivers can be made), and a video chipset/card that has quality linux drivers(like nvidia). Whats so hard about not forcing me to buy certain software with my hardware? I can already find laptops with nvidia GFX and other linux compatible parts, but they always require the MS tax, and I can find laptops without the MS tax, but not with linux compatible parts, or you have to pay extra, it's a clearly abusive monopoly in the laptop market today. Until then I think my money will go towards a zaurus and desktop PC components.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
Looks like this laptop comes with XP Home installed. Now, I'm no expert, but does XP Home even support a 64-bit proc? I know it'll at least run in 32-bit mode, but what's the point? If your OS can't deal with the newer instructions, why not just get a 32-bit Athlon at a higher clock speed?
I looked on MS's XP Home system requirements page, and it makes no mention of 64-bit support - XP 64-bit version looks like a totally different product.
And I suppose I can take the Shuttle on an airplane, or to my favorite local coffee house? Laptops do have their advantages.
If you wanted to take advantage of the 64-bit CPU why would you be running windows anyways? I think to most people here it is a consideration for running linux.
I'll wait for somebody else to buy though, as I want to hear on the compatability of various components first.
Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...
My nutz are roasting under a 64bit AMD laptop...
Call the fire department!
Slashdot.. Land of nerds, trolls, and FlameBait..
www.evesham.com for a few days
True enough, but you don't need a 64 bit machine to surf the web and read your email, and given the power consumption of the Athlon 64, you probably want an outlet nearby.
The best cases for 64 bit computing are generally text string database operations, server side encryption, and error control codes, not to mention heavy floating point apps like finite element analysis -- none of which I do anywhere near Starcruds.
...-.-
I have it for over a month. ;-)
It is painted over Mitac 8355 and the paint job makes it a real head turner
It is little on a heavy side so I dont recommend lugging it around (I have Portege3480/Gentoo for that) but it is a great workstation that I can use both and work and home or carry it to the lab or meeting.
It is very fast: has 1.8GHz Athlon 64 - single channel memory,512KB L2 cache, 1GB of RAM, Radeon Mobility 9600/64MB, 60GB HDD, all format DVD burner. Battery life seems to be quite decent, it can last about 3 hours of web browsing, text editing and occasional compiles.
I dont know about Linux compatibility because I need to run Windows for work stuff on it. But on the bright side, because of this laptop, my desktop at home is being converted from dualboot to Gentoo only. Most components should be quite compatible though it has:
VIA chipset
MSI-6820 MiniPCI wifi card (broadcom BCM94306) so you will need ndiswrapper or linuxant driver loader
VIA VT3065 fast ethernet
VIA VT82C686 modem ac97 codec
VIA audio AC97 codec
VoodooPC sales people are very nice.
Amitech.dk has been selling 64bit laptops for a while now.. Isn't there a company called voodooPC too?
True, I am thinking that currently most (not all...) will purchase this laptop simply to have the "my dick is bigger than yours..." argument. However, one never knows when I might feel the urge to do some computational physics etc... ok... well it is nice to know that if I wanted to I could.
I bought an emachines laptop in december (what I'm typing on now). And I LOVE it. widescreen, verticlescrollbar touchpad.. 802.11g. DVD player 60 gig hd, and 512mb RAM.. all for $1000...
:)
So far the machine has been a dream.. far better than my last Dell (actually my last 3 dells
Emachines has done something right!
-=A
I have the current version of the laptop, the M5312 and have had no major problems. The screen is the best part, really nice.
Meh, I much prefer light and small notebooks.
On that topic: Has anyone seen a test of the new ASUS S5200? It's one of the few light (1,3kg, 3lbs) notebooks that are actually afordable, but I hesitate to buy without anyone telling me it's actually any good...
OK, I've burned my karma squawking aobut this relative to G5's and 32-bit OSX, but
let my try again anyway:
There's not much reason to go to a 64-bit chip unless either
1) You are going to use more than 4 GB of RAM in a single process (actually, more than
2 GB tends to be a pain on a typical 32-bit system, but let's say 4). I don't think you
can have that much in one of these.
2) You do a lot of stuff with files over 2 GB (yes, 32-bit OSes handle more than this all the
time, but it's more likely everything works on a 64-bit sys).
Really, (1) is the only reason these days, but I threw (2) in for fun.
64-bit doesn't make it faster; the chip might be, but it's not a direct result of 64 bitness.
Usually, if there's a 32-bit compatibility mode, it runs faster. 64 bit is just useful for memory.
These observations are based on 10 years of experience with MIPS, POWER, alpha, and now
opteron systems. I'd buy an opteron/athlon64, but not to use it with less than 4 GB of RAM.
After dealing with Dell for that particular machine I will *never* *ever* buy from them again.
I'll second that, from my previous post on dell:
I bought a Dell Dimensions 2350 (Pentium 4) came with integraded graphics.
I wanted to upgrade (add video card) to find out they ripped out the AGP port (like wtf??)
So really, I don't think Dell gives a damn about the future
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Oh, come on! Would it have killed you to type "M6805" in the SEARCH box?
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
Actually, any 6th generation CPU (NexGen 5x86, AMD K6/K7(Athlon/XP/Duron)/K8(A64/FX/Opteron), Pentium Pro/II/III/4/M/Celeron, Transmeta, etc., etc. is internally RISC. It translates the x86 code into RISC code (in the case of the AMD and NexGen CPUs, it's RISC86), and executes that.
We don't need 64-bit computers, every few years they come out and double the damn bits, and every year without a doubt computers get harder and harder to use. Sure, I have a CS degree but how will I ever figure out 64-bit Windows when I can't even understand 32-bit Windows. I say we go back to 16-bit, Windows 3.1 was the pinnacle of the series.
What search box?
I am feeling fat and sassy
More importantly, the one thing people don't seem to understand about ergonomics is that it's all about movement. The point of an adjustable chair isn't to find the One True Position that will prevent you from ever having repeat stress problems. The point of an adjustable chair is that, when you start feeling fatigued, you can adjust it, moving to a different position that will give your other muscle groups a rest. The more you can re-adjust your furniture, the better.
So what's more adjustable than a laptop? Instead of cramping yourself into a desk in the corner in the same position all day, every day, you can move your laptop around anywhere you want. Move to the other side of the room. Work at your kitchen table. Take it down to the coffee shop with you. Lie on the couch with a bunch of pillows behind you. Whatever feels good.
Breakfast served all day!
I am aware that his is true of high-performance CPUs stuck with CISC instruction sets. I guess the VAX CPUs that did that many (15, if memory serves me) years ago lead the 6th generation on that feature.
But I don't, in my limited understanding, believe that interpretation of CISC instructions with all the interdependencies, even if translated to RISC, is as efficient or power-efficient as RISC running RISC programs, which was why I said especially CISC. There are too many wasted interdependent side effects.
Perhaps I am wrong, but DEC and others have reached the point where they dumped such technology in favor of RISC running programs native to the instruction set.
Hey, its news.com.com, not news.com.com.com!
Yes the Mobile Athlon 64 has clock throttling. It will modify clock and power draw in respect to both heat and if the processor is idle or not.
PowerNow
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Sure it runs all the existing 32-bit apps and OSes, it's just that you *can* run the 64-bit ones too.
I think it's the M305 or something. It was the first one they offered. Bought it at Best Buy for about $1000. Had better graphics and more memory than the others in the price range, which is why I bought it in the first place.
So far, it's been a trooper. It's rock solid and reliable, battery life is good. It's also fairly thin and easy to handle. I like the widescreen a lot, as it makes the whole laptop less deep (every inch counts when you fly coach.)
I love it. If this one ever gives out, I'd buy the 64 bit one in a second.
I got an emachine PII-500 about 4 years ago. It was wonderful. It was actually cheaper then if I had built it myself, and had everything I wanted (along with the usual batch of extra useless software those things come with). To this day, it is still the primary computer at use at home. [my parents are its only users now, since I'm at college - so it's only in use about an hour a day or so] Only upgrade I've done to it was add more RAM before I upgraded to windows XP, and adding a CD-RW drive. Other then that, it's all original equipment and has not had any problems. Yes, I was a bit skeptical when I bought it. But I decided to take the risk and try it, since it would be cheaper even then building one myself (and I didn't have very much money around, and really needed an upgrade from the Packard Bell P100 which was dying in a very ugly way) Personally, I really like emachines.
The G5 should be ready later this year.
I see more and more systems with Opterons and Athlon 64s coming to the market. And all that while, Sun, who would have all the best interest to make some Opteron systems available ASAP, are dragging their feet.
Sun really needs to get these low and midrange Opteron servers out as soon as they possibly can, while HP is in the Itanium mess! HP was hoping for the Itanium to hit the mass-market and be real cheap to manufacture. Instead, they have by their hands a CPU that's even more expensive than the PA-RISC. If Sun had a shred of strategic insight, they'd be selling cheap 4 and 8 way Opteron servers with Solaris x86-64 right about now.
I am a huge Sun fan, actually, but some of their management moves seem to be ridicolous (Cobalt aquisition anyone?).
Sigged!
eMachines are just a crappy as Dells or Gateways but you avoid the brand tax with them.
With Dell you get a three year 24 hour warranty. While Dell has never serviced my laptop warranty claims within 24 hours, they often get them within 48. And they will replace parts until the machine works.
Well duh, no wonde it's cheaper: no battery, no TFT screen, no PCMCIA port...
Sigged!
My parser broke on the last sentence of the post:
keeping it afforable of laptop junkies like me
its compact disc
To everyone of you who bashes eMachines, let me tell you what you've been missing. Every component in an eMachine laptop is brand-name. The only thing that isn't, is the outer case and eMachine logos that emblazen it.
;). Windows XP 64-bit edition for Intel Itaniums has been available for more than a year, so it's not that far fetched to believe that an AMD 64-bit chip compatible edition would be available at this time as well. You get at Mobile AMD Athlon XP-M 2400+ Processor (with core clock speed of 1.8 GHz) [266 MHz Front Side Bus and 512K L2 Cache].
The M5312 has a 15.4" Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA panel, which is made by LG. It comes with Windows XP Home Edition, which finally gives you a real product activation code, instead of that one you'v ebeen using from the Blue Group's keygen
It comes with 512 MB DDR SODIMM (PC 2100) memory, 60 GB harddrive, and a DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive (24x10x24 CD-RW; 8x Max. DVD-ROM). The combo drive is made by Toshiba. The harddrive is probably a Maxtor (face it, they crank out a lot of drives these days). The RAM, I'm not sure about.
You get an ATI Mobility RADEON chip, that can use up to 64 MB of your 512 MB DDR system memory. I've given mine all the 64 MB it can handle, and I've never been happier. It's got a low-end sound chip, but it's a laptop. If you're serious about sound on a laptop, use a SoundBlaster Extigy for cryin' out loud! The 56K ITU V.92 Fax/Modem has a Connexant/Rockwell chip in it. The Integrated 802.11g Wireless LAN (up to 54Mbps); 10/100Mbps built-in Ethernet is hardware made by Broadcom, and works like a charm.
The Touchpad with Vertical Scroll Zone is made by Synaptics, which almost every laptop maker uses on their own models. The 8-cell Lithium-ion battery is made in China -- it hasn't blown up yet. It's only 1.36"h x 14.0"w x 10.0"d (which is damn thin for a non-Apple laptop) and weighs only 6.6 lbs.
You also get 3 USB 2.0 ports, 1 IEEE 1394, 1 VGA External Connector, 1 S-Video Out, 1 Parallel, Microphone In, Headphone/Audio Out, 1 PCMCIA Slot (Card Bus type I or type II), not to mention a load of crappy software which you can just use for coasters.
All of this for $1249.99. The S-Video out alone is enough to make you consider this laptop. USB 2.0 across all 3 ports? Slap a hub on one of those ports and you're golden.
All of those parts are bought by eMachines, who puts them in their laptop shell. Try one, you just might like it!
Just an idea...
but why not ship those 64-bit cpu machiens with Linux. They might even be able to lower their prices enough to put in some decent hardware in there... (and avoid their well earned reputation of being some incredibly crappy machines).
Though I gotta say, these recent threads impress me. They should have some impressive hardware for the $$$, not sure how long they would last though.
Alien.
I imagine they did it to cut costs. If you would have done a little research on it before you plunked down the money, you could've found out about the missing agp port.
:)
It does suck to get ahold of a machine with no agp port though, I feel your pain.
Except that these have been available for atleast a few months now: http://www.voodoopc.com/systems/m855.aspx
This is not one of the first Athlon64 laptops. I have had an Athlon64 laptop for almost two months, and they have been available since late October/early November 2003.
If the market doesn't catch fire, your desk or legs will...
This is not true at all. The laptop runs at 800MHz 95% of the time (whenever the full 2GHz is not needed). At that speed, the CPU has a peak heat dissipation of 35W, and a typical output of 28W. This is well below Pentium IV laptops, and is below the peak output of most Pentium-M chips at their full speed.
Even at 2GHz, it outputs at most around 85W (max theoretical heat output). Compare this to laptops with the Pentium IV Extreme Edition (available from many vendors), which has a typical heat output of over 100W--and that is at idle! Don't even ask about power usage when actually doing something.
I get a good 3 1/2 hours of battery life on a single charge. That is pretty damn good for a laptop which is more powerful than 95% of the full desktop processors out there, including my own. When it runs at full speed all night, the mouse pad and right side of the keyboard get fairly warm, but not to a point that it makes the machine uncomfortable to use. Warmth is comparable to the Dell Latitude D800, which uses a Pentium-M.
Unfortunately, it does not support dual batteries, and has no modular optical drive bay (the DVD drive is set when the machine is assembled), but these aren't major issues for most people. It also has a rather bulky power supply for the use of A/C power, complete with its own tiny cooling fan. This does not help the weight, which is already nearly 8lbs with battery. Ah well--it's more powerful than my desktop, reasonably light, and is MUCH smaller than certain 12-lb Pentium IV laptops. One often wonders if manufacturers have a different definition of "lap" than the rest of us.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
My biggest beef with laptop sound is the headphone jacks. I can somewhat understand the use of cheap opamps to drive the speakers and headphones (but better chips wouldn't cost more than a few dollars for each unit), but I cannot excuse the use of plastic jacks for the headphone output. For something that is going to be plugged into a great deal, a little bit higher quality would go a long way.
Packard Bell (now an NEC company) has been offering athlon 64 laptops for quite a while now. I've had my eyes on one for possibly a couple of months now.
a sp?partNumber=P900500201
http://www.packardbell.co.uk/products/node1601.
I bought one of these on Thursday at Best Buy. Haven't had much time to play with it, but it seems like a very solid machine with a nice screen. Moving windows and resizing them is less responsive than on my 17" PowerBook, which is not a good sign, given the much higher Athlon64 clock speed. For the moment, I'll blame Windows.
.11g base station, but the .11b mode is fine).
The machine has all the features I need, though I'd like Bluetooth. The 802.11 works great (I don't have a
I'm looking into 64-bit Linux distros to install to see how well that works...
No idea about battery life yet, but it gets pretty warm on my lap!
Try to find a faster RISC chip with lower power consumption than an Athlon64 or P4? I'll give you a hint, you aren't likely to find one. DEC's old Alpha chips were faster than anything around in their day, but they also consumed more power (over 100W in some Alphas, and that was a few years back). IBM's Power4 is also up in the 100W+ range. Intel's VLIW Itanium consumes up to 107W.
Heck, even the IBM PowerPC 970, that lots of people point to as being a cool-running chip in their Powermac G5s is in the same ballpark as AMD's Athlon64/Opteron. It's listed as 48W typical power consumption at 1.8GHz. Add about 10% to get the typical power consumption at 2.0GHz and another 20-40% to get maximum power consumption and it's right up there with the 60-80W maximum power of the P4 or the Athlon64.
Honestly there really isn't a difference betwen RISC and CISC these days. CISC chips look like RISC chips on the inside and the instruction set of RISC chips has mostly become more complicated. All of the chips read instructions from memory and execute different operations on the inside, just like how it's done on x86 chips. The biggest remaining difference is that x86 chips have only 8 visible general purpose registers (16 GPRs in the case of AMD64 chips) while most RISC chips have 32 GPRs and VLIW chips like Itanium have a whole lot. Of course, once you factor in rename registers, even that difference isn't all that huge.
I had a similar expirience to grandparent not two months back:
I bought four almost identical dell machines (for business use), two with floppy drives, two without. Some weeks after they shipped I noticed that those which were ordered without the drives had the smaller drive bay case part completely omitted! Now generally I could care less about the omission of a $1 piece of metal, the thing is that the chasis are not standard pick it up at frys replacable, there proprietary funny keyed ones which seem to take funny keyed floppy drives. Appearently Dell decided that tetris players who were not familiar with innovations such as the screwdriver were their target market.
In any case on the subject of laptops (and specifically my laptop, damnit), I have found Dell to be a nightmareish entity. My machine literally has racked up over a month of downtime in less then six months, has been replaced twice, has had motherboard changed out once, and has had various other parts replaced. Needless to say I am a bit less then satisfied with the machine and desired a full refund. After exhausting their corperate options I took the step of contacting the BBB as well as filing a complaint with California Dept of Consumer Affairs (BEAR, which handles computer repair complaints, is a department of the CDCA hence this complaint).
The most recent replacement machine arrived a week ago today, it was shipped ground about a week after they promised 24hr processing. This week they have contacted me twice by mail and once by phone requesting the status of the broken machine...its on my goddamn floor and thats where it will stay till I feel like shipping it
How do I keep track of people who are fingering
Here is an interesting FAQ about the new Mobile Athlon 64 processor.
Personally, I am waiting for some vendors other than emachines to release a notebook with this chip.
I am hoping for a configuration like this:
Athlon 64 3000 or 3200
Mobility Radeon 9600 128 MB
60-80 GB 7200 RPM HD
512 MB ram single stick or a full 1024 MB
1280x???? display
The unofficial
White City
man, i can't wait to find out what 64-bits is going to mean to my hash tables.
its fun to think that here we are today, about to get into 64-bit computing with massive memory architectures. 8gigs in a laptop? 64-bits?
this is going to make for some very fun software.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Well spoken. It's nice to see some clear examples instead of "AMD sucks".
But, being the AMD fan I am, I must say that perhaps your problems are more due to bad luck than anything, since RMA rates for motherboards are significantly higher than other components.
And so this brings me to a question... is there a site that gives statistics on RMA rates?
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P.S. - The following riposte is a cut and paste of a previous slashdot post:
Pentium Floating-point division bug [ku.edu] (it's close enough, isn't it?)
Invalid Operand Instruction crashes original Pentiums [iss.net] Pentium crash codes
Pentium Pro/II still having problems with floats [ddj.com] Unable to convert to int
Pentium III can't even start up [bbc.co.uk] You went faster with an 8088
SSE is great for when you want your PIII to crash [zdnet.co.uk] Pretty blue screens abound.
PIII Xeon, quality you can count on, except at high CPU usage [macworld.com] Watch the task manager, Phil.
Yay, PIII MTH crashes! [com.com] Does MTH stand for Meth?
Total Recall 2: PIII@1.13GHz [com.com] Fastest crashes ever.
Total Recall 3: PIII Xeons@800/900Mhz [com.com] More Xeon quality in a box.
Total Recall 4: CC820 [techweb.com] How many defects? Can't recall...
Pentium 4 overwriting data [zdnet.co.uk] Hope it wasn't something important.
Pentium 4 chipset bug [com.com] Fast video performance? Naaa.
P4 Oracle/Sun problems [indiana.edu] More workarounds than work
Itanium shipments halted [theinquirer.net] That's an expensive oops.
Just so nobody gets any ideas that Intel is perfect...
When Apple releases the Powerbook G5 it will be sold as "the first 64 bit personal laptop".
I hope their 64 bit cpu flops so the x86 can finally be put to rest.
I thought Steve Jobs and Apple were always first at everything!
After all, if you find a nugget of gold on the ground, and it's wrapped in dog shit, would you pick it up?
Tough call, isn't it?
You may find Linux installation reports for 64bit CPU laptops at TuxMobil - Linux On Mobile Computers.