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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.
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
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.
"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 ?
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.
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
Get yourself a Sager Notebook from PC Torque and save yourself a couple thousand dollars.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM