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Dual-core Athlon 64 X2 Laptop Reviewed
Steve from Hexus writes "Dual core finds its way inside a laptop (albeit a not-so-portable DTR) in the form of Rockdirect's Xtreme64. The DTR features an Athlon 64 X2 4800+, two 7200rpm hard drives and a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra GPU. HEXUS.net has a review of the laptop, one of the most powerful we've seen hit the market to date." From the article: "Rather than change a formula that works, Rockdirect has opted to stick with the Clevo D900-based chassis that its other performance-based laptops use. The obvious downsides are bulkiness and weight, with the laptop sitting almost 5cm high and weighing in at 5.7kg. It's a desktop replacement in the truest sense of the words, and with an 8kg travel weight (including charger and supplied carrying case) and relatively poor battery life, it's about as portable as a concrete slab."
Fortunately, most newer software uses USB for dongles. Much better. Fewer compatibility issues, you can easily use multiple dongles at the same time. Just buy a cheap USB hub if you run out of ports. Note that you can rather easily buy USB to parallel/serial thingies. So most of the time there should not be any problems even if the parallel port is left out. All that said, I've got no personal experience with these kind of things (thank god), so if anyone has I'll be glad to know.
Yeah, the system has two cores in it, but the term dual-core really means a single chip with two processor cores on it, connected via something (the cache, the on-chip arbiter or whatever) and then attaching to the rest of the system via a single interface.
AMD's processors are dual-core as they connect via an on-chip arbiter, the SRQ. They then connect to the rest of the system via a HyperTransport link. AMD's next core revision, the F-Step, will have 4 core connections from the SRQ, allowing for future quad-core processors.
Intel's current 'dual-core' processors aren't really dual-core as they connect to the FSB independently. Indeed Intel's latest Presler processors have separate dies on the processor packaging. In practice however it doesn't really matter that much, so they get away with calling it 'dual-core' when it is technically SMP on a chip. Yonah will be Intel's first true dual-core processor because the cores are connected at the L2 cache level, which they share.
So now people defined the number of cores a processor has by the number of cores per socket in the system. In your system you have one core per socket, so the processors are single core, the system is dual-processor. In the reviewed laptop there are two cores in one socket, for the system is single-processor, but the processor is dual-core. Quite simple really.
These are "desktop replacements" and sold as "gaming laptops". They aren't meant for your traditional laptop use, but for those people who need lots of computing power, and have less space, this is nice. Think of this as a powerful version of a Mac mini, including monitor and keyboard.
Some of us have access to electric power while travelling[1], but porting along a desktop is much harder.
[1] AC power supply in a train. This might not make sense to most Americans who drive or fly.
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Tadpole Bullfrog Dual Processor http://www.tadpolecomputer.com/html/products/mobil e/bullfrog-dual/:
- Dual 1.2 GHz UltraSPARC® IIIi processors
- Up to 16GB DRAM
- Large 17.1" SXGA TFT LCD Display
- Full Length, 66 MHz, 64 -bit PCI Expansion Slot
- Dual 2.5" High Performance Disk Drives
- Integrated DVD/CD-RW Drive
I'd change the operating system for a GPL one though.
Pupeno
Whine some more for me about how there's no support for Macs! Plenty of Mac parallel convertor support here.
Why? This is common, and saves a lot of money on larger purchases. The company does not benefit - it's an employee perk.
In the past I've saved thousands this way.
No, *you* are a fool - or at least ignorant of the scheme the OP is talking about.
The laptop is his, bought through a scheme which means that he effectively gets it cheaper than retail by the rate he pays income tax at. Thus if he pays income tax at 25%, he gets a £2000 laptop for £1500.
The idea is that the company benefits because having a PC at home helps to increase the PC-literateness of its employees, and the government benefits because having a (more) PC-literate population potentially gives the economy a boost as more people move into (currently) higher-paid "knowledge economy" jobs. The guy's benefit is obvious - he gets a cheaper laptop.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
You can't expect anybody to take you seriously. Parallel was the high-speed interface of the past, before USB came along.
If you'd been in the industry 20 years, you aught to know what a great deal HP printers are. I bought an HP laserjet 4P at the thrift store for $10 a few months back, they have the drum inside the toner cartridge, so a new toner cartridge is essentially a brand new printer, and I can buy them for $25, among the cheapest in the industry. I expect this printer will go on working for another 10 or 20 years, producing fine quality black and white laser prints. Parallel is the only way to connect to it. CUPS setup is a breeze. Sometimes the old hardware is still the best, like the 3com 10/100 network cards, I buy them by the dozen on ebay.
The city where I live has offered this perquisite to its employees (my uncle being one of them). Granted its not a provincial or federal government, but I don't believe that doing so is illegal in any way. For reference, I am Canadian.