Intel Sonoma UK Launch Party

Benny writes "Intel held it's UK Sonoma lauch party last night and TrustedReviews have some pictures up of the machines on display including new models from HP, Dell, Samsung, Sony and Asus to mention a few."

Comments

That's Great But...

[X43B]

Does it run Linux?

This time it is actually appropriate. :)

Re:I love this quote....

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously know nothing about the laptop market. There's many different kinds of laptop categories, ranging from ultraportables to desktop replacements. There is no "standard" size as laptops are concerned. It all depends on your needs.

Great, but what is it?

[edisk1353]

This is all well and good, but fundamentally, what is the difference between Sonoma and older versions of the Centrino chipset? It seems to me that Sonoma hasn't had much of a buzz up to now, and all this article says about it is that it's a"new Centrino platform". If this is just more of the same, I'm not interested . . . but if there's a real difference, could someone point to what that might be?

Re:Great, but what is it?

[cheezedawg]

Sonoma is based on the 915 chipset (Alviso/ICH6). The biggest difference is, of course, PCI Express. There is support for a x16 PCI Express graphics on Alviso, and support for a couple of x1 PCI Express devices on the ICH. This is a major architectural overhaul that more than doubles the bandwidth between the MCH and the ICH. New to Sonoma, the chipset also includes support for:
- 533MHz FSB
- SATA
- DDR2 memory
- Next generation integrated graphics that doesn't suck
- Hi-def audio (Azalia)
- New power management features

Sonoma = California Wine Country

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Sonoma = California Wine Country

I guess it's a step up from the "Mad Dog" release of 2002. (Or the "Weasel Dust" release of 1999.)

How PC mfgrs design equipment

[Anonymous Coward]

1. take the basic case form from 1993, be it laptop or desktop
2. add many small pieces of another shade of grey plastic
3. add many buttons and ports in places that scream "well, the motherboard guys told us that it was *impossible* to put them anywhere else!"
4. complicate simple design features with additional plastic bezels and bezel-bezels.
5. Add LEDs to describe various pieces of information that are either unnecessary or made redundant by the OS.
6. add obligatory windows, intel and graphics card stickers in a conspicous place
7. poke speaker and vent holes everywhere, and call it a day.

Ugly, ugly, ugly

[Eminence]

How is it so that manufacturers of Intel based notebooks can't come up with a design that would be beautiful? Why can't they produce something that would be not only useful but also nice to look at and touch? I read the article (RTFA) and it is full of pictures of ugly designs. They all look either dumb and boring, yet another set of black-greyish boxen or there is some effort to make them look "cool" but in the style of cheap boomboxes for 15 year olds. By my tastes only the new Samsungs X50 & X25 show at least some genuine effort towards design, though I won't call them beautiful.

This is amazing. All these are products of different companies, bigger and smaller, from different countries and yet none of them really stands out from the crowd. Doesn't HP or Acer or anything have a design department? Or maybe it's a mindset of these companies that doesn't value the aesthetic perception?

Lack of scroll wheels?

[jettoblack]

Anyone else notice that NONE of these laptops had visible scroll wheels or 3rd mouse buttons? I consider those to be absolutely essential, and it boggles my mind that so few laptops include them, even when you pretty much can't buy a new mouse without one.

The spelling! It hurts!

[oberondarksoul]

"Intel held it's UK..."

How many times? It's means it is, its is possessive. Unless you meant "Intel held it is UK...", you've used the wrong one.

New models?

[caluml]

new models

Not the kind of models I was hoping to see... Just some boring laptops....