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."

Comments

Upon hitting the market

[Anonymous Coward]

The heat from the laptop caused the market to catch fire, which at this time is still burning.

Re:Upon hitting the market

[ruiner5000]

Perhaps this would be funny if it was anyway true. G4 and P4 laptops generate far more heat than Athlon 64 laptops. And well, also Athlon 64 laptops have not just hit the market, they have been available for several months. This is only the first on available from a Tier 1 vendor, and also in Best Buy. Not to mention it was not CNet/ZDNet that broke this news. It was www.AMDZone.com.

good for everyone

[ArgumentBoy]

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.

Re:good for everyone

[hendridm]

> I don't have much need for a 64 bit laptop

I think I could find something to do with it. 64-bit, 802.11g, USB2 and Firewire, vertical scroller (essential!), and my favorite: a built-in 6-in-1 media reader. The price is right too. Mmmmm... I don't like AMD stuff, but this thing could quickly make me a convert.

Re:good for everyone

[cayenne8]

It comes with Win XP...can XP do anything 64 bit??

Re:good for everyone

[Eminence]

It comes with Win XP...can XP do anything 64 bit??

From their home page:

• eMachines recommends Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP

I guess it does. They wouldn't recommend it if it was a bunch of crap, wouldn't they?

Re:good for everyone

[addaon]

I think I could find something to do with it

From linked site: Weighs 7.5 lbs/1.5" thin

Me too. It would make a good foundation for a bird house.

If you house albatross.

price

[rogabean]

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.

Re:price

[garcia]

You know, for all the bad things that I hear about e-machines I can't find a single problem with the one I have been using since 11/2002. It has been up, without fail, running Linux since that day (only down for routine kernel upgrades).

Sure it was cheap, came with a bunch of crap I didn't really need, but it was a gift and it works fine.

The people who are going to be first in line to purchase a 64bit laptop are going to purchase an e-machine because that's who's offering it currently. I don't see Dell coming out saying they are, do you? In fact, I have better success with my e-machine than I did with my Dell laptop. After dealing with Dell for that particular machine I will *never* *ever* buy from them again.

I would go with the e-machine without a hesitation.

Re:price

[Bombcar]

Just like Chevy vs. Ford it all comes down to personal experience with a product.

Yup, and in both cases the right choice is neither.

MOPAR FOREVER, DOOD! and MACS RULE, d00d!

Mod me, I've karma to burn!

Hurray

[Sarojin]

for 30 minutes of 64 bit computing

Re:Hurray

[jo_ham]

and a toasty warm genital region.

Re:Hurray

[JonTurner]

>>and a toasty warm genital region.

"There's been some misunderstanding," said the man at the return counter. "I said I wanted a computer with a compact DISK burner."

ba-da ching! Thankyouverymuch.

I think eMachines gets a bad rap

[ilsie]

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

Re:I think eMachines gets a bad rap

[SacredNaCl]

I've had good experiences with them as far as reliability. I still have a 500is that runs fine, it's been abused in nearly every way possible and upgraded as much as it can possibly be upgraded without throwing in a powerleap kit. Many of the upgrades were listed as not possible in the service manual, but http://e4all.info/ has more information (on older ones) and the upgraders forum has a lot of people that have tried everything they can to make them still useable beyond their years. Most of the older ones can at least be upgraded to 512MB with very careful ram selection. That has kept the old 500is useable, even if it is slow. It's perfectly fine as another box to have up to surf the web and what-not. I have some even slower hardware taking care of other task as well.;-)

There are many things that were cheap in a lot of their older (and still in their present) models. (A lot of them are the typical things that the big makers skimp on. Severely under rated power supplies, proprietary power supplies, POS modems that have no excuse for existing in any machine, if they come with a network card replace it with something else, ram modules that may or may not be worth keeping [though they seem to be getting away from the awful ram they were putting in a few years ago]... These are not severe issues in most of them, but the proprietary power supplies in them are a pain to work around if you are going to cram a mess of drives in them. Don't expect Emachines to give you a pin out for the power supply either.) I've not known anyone who had one of their laptops though.
The biggest disppointment with Emachines is *support*. The one thing that you may have trouble with is getting support for new OS's that comes out down the road. Emachines is somewhat unreliable about supporting their hardware beyond the OS it was shipped with. This can be very bad news in a laptop, and it can be awful news if you ever have to have your laptop worked on for warranty work.

I haven't heard the kind of horror stories I've heard about Compaq laptops in terms of getting them worked on, but based on my experiences with them ...it's still a gamble on future OS's.

It's very hard to top Compaq for the worst possible hardware, worst possible support, worst ownership experience, worst batch of proprietary hardware...in "consumer grade" products. Emachines is well above that fold for the price range they are in. Even with the corners they cut, it's never going to be as unpleasant as that to own one. For the price range they are in, they are decent enough.

Good.

[cK-Gunslinger]

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...

Battery

[Mieckowski]

It has a "high-capacity 8-cell LiIon battery." Still, no mention of batter life in the specs. Hmm, I wonder why?

Heat and power?

[ducomputergeek]

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?

Great, but should I wait before going 64 bit?

[Wingit]

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.

eMachines laptop? gross!

[Monkey]

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.

Not impressive

[Mieckowski]

Bah, I'm going to hold out for a dual 64 bit laptop. With a RAID array.

Re:Regarding "desktop-replacement"

[cK-Gunslinger]

Yet for all those "advantages" there are just as many disadvantages. Ever try typing a *lot* of information on a laptop? They are just not typically ergonomic enough for extended typing use. At least not compared to a "natural-type" keyboard. Then there is screen size. Call me insane, but I happen to like my 21" of crisp CRT goodness. No 15" LCD is going to quite match it. The list can go on.

The point being, yes, for some a laptop can replace a desktop, but not so for others. Almost all the reasons you gave could be an argument for *both* a desktop and a laptop (with wireless card.)

I've said it before, I'll say it again

[Theatetus]

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.