Slashdot Mirror
The FragBook
Petaris writes "For all of you hard core gamers out there a new choice is availiable for gaming notebooks. Introducing the Falcon Northwest FragBook. This notebook will be in direct competition with gaming notebooks from several competetors including Alienware and VooDoo. Falcon-nw, VooDoo, and more recently Alienware are the place to look for insanely high end and usually fairly expensive gaming systems. The gaming notebook, a more recent arrival in the industry, promises more recent processors than are commonly available for notebooks. Just make sure you stock up on batteries or settle in next to an outlet. :)"
If I want to play an FPS, I want my 21" monitor, my 6 channel surround sound with booming bass and a nice mouse to move around - I just don't think the experience could translate so well to an LCD screen, tinny laptop speaker, and a pressure pad to move about. And it'd probably cost a hell of a lot more too.
I guess I'll just stick to using my laptop for pr0n when I'm away on business trips...
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
That's crazy. a first post that is relevant to the article AND more than five words long!
Quite frankly I agree. laptops are just not ideal for gaming, unless it's some slow moving turn based strategy thing or somesuch.
--
I call it the DeFragBook.
Gaming a while ago on my Inspiron 8200 which has well better specs than my normal destop and it came nowhere near the performance on my desktop. The sceen refresh seemed to be struggling badly to keep up with the game. Crappy sound takes a lot away from enjoyment of the game as well.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
...if you're staying in one place. If you're going to gatherings, LAN with friends or otherwise move the machine round alot (e.g. because you need to put it away to make room), all the cables and weight is a hassle.
If I was about 15-18 somewhere again I might have gotten one of these (translation: I may have suckered my parents into buying me one). Would be perfect for the kind of computer use I had back then. Newer LCDs work very good at games, just add an USB mouse and some good headphones. It's a gaming system in a backpack.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I just built a system using some of the high end hardware on their System Configuration Page. The cost? Over $8700 using a 19" CRT instead of their ~$1500 21" LCD.
Of course, if I wanted to park something that costs as much as a compact car on my desk I'd let Billy Joel do it.
Data redundency of course.
If you're traveling 500 miles each way for a weekend long fragfest that you've already spent hundreds of dollars to attend you don't want to miss the whole thing because a drive crapped out.
KFG
The first time I saw a gaming labtop was during a meeting. Discussing CAD or visual simulation works fairly well on such machines!
It is great to see all you gamers drive the market, so I can work better.
Hark!
Hear the cry of a thousand geeks who gamed too long with a laptop on their lap. May their manhood rest in piece.
its a notebook tho...its supposed to be light and compact. What happens when your not connected to power and you have to use your notebook on battery? Thats twice the drain for a that singular amount of storage (unless they are running it in a striped array).
We played dungeons and dragons for 3 hours.....then i was slain by an elf
"The computer you want always costs $5000".
I can't remember who said it but it remains true. Fully tricked out this baby is a 5G+ machine.
I specked it with RAID 0 (yes, on a laptop), DVDRW (With a RAID 0 your Documents must go elsware), TV Card, Bluetooth, 1 GB RAM, 3 year warranty and little else. Now if they could offer an unpainted version and pass on the savings from that...
I care about how my PC runs, not how it looks.
PS: I chose XP Home (-$70) because I know I don't need pro to play games. I have herd that XPHome functions better under gamming loads than Pro. Is this true?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Whats with the 1400x900 screen res? How good is the lcd going to perform when it has to scale to another resolution? At least on the dell you have true HDTV resolution on a smaller screen. I love the custom paint jobs offerred, but how much? Their "american flag" job costs almost $250.
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
The benefactors of the boom economy and the tech era have lost touch with reality. A 3000 dollar game machine? Get some perspective! Where can your head be if you would actually buy something like this. I mean, sure, you are rich compared to the rest of the world, but, thats not the issue, its that you choose to spend your supposedly valuable time playing video games on a hyper expensive yet inferior machine.
Looking on how the other 99% live maybe we should realize that our prosperity is an aberation, and use our money and time more wisely.
I couldn't find a Linux installation report about a FragBook yet. But since the FragBook TL is based on Intel's Centrino technology here is some generic information about Linux on Centrino laptops. The FragBook DR comes with a 17" display. Here is some generic information about Linux on laptops with 17" display.
No, you don't use it for striping in a gaming system. It's purely a hardware failsafe. Level 1 mirroring. Pure redundency.
You only need to spin the drive when you write to it, which in a gaming system is a very occasional occurance. We're not talking "Enterprise" order processing database here. We're talking writing back to the config file after a gaming session is over and the ability to switch to that drive if the primary drive fails while actually gaming.
So it's a drain on the battery, but nowhere near twice the drain.
And I certainly never said that using a laptop for a LAN party makes a lot of sense anyway.
KFG
A 17" PowerBook for unixy needs (i.e. Mac OS X and Linux). That 1.5ghz is roughly equivalent to a P4 running at 2.5 ghz
In many applications it really is, but unfortunately, gaming is not one of them. In games, 1 GHz of a G4 is actually quite like 1 GHz of a P4 (there's no noticeable difference to the player, that is). No, I made no scientific research on this topic, but I played a lot on Macs and PCs since many years. There's also circumstantial evidence to my claim - system requirements of Mac game ports usually state the same CPU clock as their Windows equivalents. Being as much a Mac addict as I am, I wouldn't recommend powerbook as a "fragbook", even if the recent models should be quite capable with the 128 VRAM Radeon 9700 Mobility cards. But even if you put the lack of some titles aside (what if the LAN party you are invited to plays "Counterstrike"?), the 1.5 GHz CPU is exactly what it is, a 1.5 GHz CPU.
I am a Mac user. I am even a Mac gamer. I am even a Mac LAN gamer (as a geek parent, I play strategy games with my kids on iBooks/iMacs connected via Airport). I agree that Macs have interesting advantages in this case, like the incredible ease of the wireless LAN creation. But I wouldn't qualify any of the current Apple machines as a "fragbook" - and they certainly don't need that kind of publicity.
I didn't spec out a laptop as it's difficult to compare that to another company's offering but I did spec out a desktop model. Came to $3175.00 (before shipping/tax) Specced it out with almost exact system at newegg.com and it came out to $2195.17 with shipping included (couldn't find exact psu or hsf) Ahhh but wait! You ask.. where does my extra $1000 go? If you read the fine print on FNW's website it says this: You get FOR FREE: Falcon T-Shirt, Custom Mousing Surface and a 3.5" Floppy drive That $333 T-Shirt better be 100% cotton!!@)&@%#
you could go here and save about 7000 bucks ;)
Puget Systems
First "TheTechLounge" writes about an article on... thetechlounge.com! Not that I'm complaining about the content, it's a good article, but why couldn't you have just posted it on Slashdot directly?
Then this article, does anyone else think that this was written by the guy that makes these laptops? I suppose it still has some interest to nerds (and people who care about what matters), but it doesn't seem right to allow free advertising like this...
Karma: pi (Mostly due to circular reasoning in posts).
Just cause it says 9700 pro doesn't mean that it is... the mobile cards go a good bit slower than the equivalently rated desktop parts...
;) ) constraints, they're not gonna be as cool as the upper end desktops... but then again, that has always and will always remain true. On the plus side, they're easy to carry and the wifi is nice.
techbargains.com + dell OR powernotebooks.com will save you a good bit over your voodoos and alienwares...
also busses/ram/hard drives tend to be slower in laptops as well, just a few things to remember. Laptops have come a long way, and now they'll even play the newest games at good res without freezing, but due to heat and size (and therefore monetary
Ahhhhhhhhh, I see. The problem here is your lack of an "UBER-1337" backpack. :)
KFG
It seems this laptop is just rebranded Clevo. Compare with clevo pictures. Nothing new here. Clevo is a Taiwan manufacturer and have a lot of rebranded resellers in US and Europe.
Almost all of these "gaming laptops" are Sagers with a slick paint job and a huge markup. The Fragbook DR is actually a Sager NP8790 which you can get at places like Discount Laptops and Power Notebooks with the same specs and much, much cheaper.
Get yourself a Sager Notebook from PC Torque and save yourself a couple thousand dollars.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Now, granted, this is a box that was meant to be more portable than powerful, with limited upgradability, but I sent it back. Since then, I've purchased parts for a fairly decent Athlon 64 system which should wipe the floor with the Fragbox for a few hundred more. It's one of those "If you want it right, build it yourself" things.
It is just you. 6.5 is really fucking light for a laptop. It weighs less than a 2 liter bottle of soda, for chrissakes.
If 6.5 lbs is too heavy for you, methinks you need to bust your ass to the gym.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
You can get a gaming laptop that's of equal or better quality at JS Custom PCs for less money. You get a 3-year warranty in some cases. You get the no-dead-pixel guarantee. JS Custom PCs was actually ranking higher on Google searches for custom gaming laptops until Alienware bought a higher rank.
Why would you pay $500 more for a laptop to get a little green guy or a threatening-looking face sticker? You can get a damn good laptop from the place I mentioned and stick your own threatening-looking sticker on it for $2. *shakes head in disbelief*
Look here for the already-configured laptops. You can click on the "customize" link and trick it out even more.
It's a shame to see a great company like this go unnoticed. I love my JS systems and recommend them to everyone.