Dual core laptops

[Dos_Box]

Does anyone have any recommendations? I'm in the market for 20 well specced laptops and would like either AMD or Intel Core processors. I don't want hyperthreading, but genuine dual processors on one die type. I want to make these last as long as our current laptops, 20x HP Ominbook 6000 with PIII 650s. These as you can imagine are at end of life anf are upgraded as far as they will go and just about run Windows XP.

[Michael]

To be honest Dual Core processors have little benefit unless applications are written specifically to support Dual CPUs. I'm sure you're well aware of that - however I'd say buying maybe a standard P4 3GHz laptop with 512MB+ memory should be just fine.

Mr brother has a Sony 3GHz laptop and although it's nice, it sure churns out a lot of heat. The only other thing that comes to mind is buy PCI-Express laptops. The extra PCI bandwidth will make a difference in the longterm as users demand more from their laptops.

[mac_shinobi]

I hear the voices in my head saying "macs, apple macs, ibooks, maybe a power book and at a big push and a very slim chance of possibly a mac book pro ? "

 

ok ok maybe im just a little excited about my ibook tsk tsk sheesh lol.

[Dos_Box]

To be honest Dual Core processors have little benefit unless applications are written specifically to support Dual CPUs. I'm sure you're well aware of that - however I'd say buying maybe a standard P4 3GHz laptop with 512MB+ memory should be just fine.

Mr brother has a Sony 3GHz laptop and although it's nice, it sure churns out a lot of heat. The only other thing that comes to mind is buy PCI-Express laptops. The extra PCI bandwidth will make a difference in the longterm as users demand more from their laptops.

 

You have to remember that these machines will be running Vista (very hardware hungry) and virtual machines. I want to get a good life span from them and always look towards the future. I don't care about what they can't do now but I am concerned about what they can do in 2 years time, lest I be resonsable for buying £20k worth of turkys.

[Ric_]

the only branded ones I could find are from Samsung http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mobilecomputing/dualcore/index.asp

 

some of the lesser manufacturers like evesham have also released models but those Samsung ones llok cool and it's a proper make

 

i'd wait a couple of months for HP to release something

[Norphy]

I'm sure you're well aware of that - however I'd say buying maybe a standard P4 3GHz laptop with 512MB+ memory should be just fine.

 

P4 + Laptop = BAD! Lots of heat, bugger all battery life, burnt knees and relatively crappy performance. Only buy a P4 laptop if you're buying one on the cheap and even then get one with a Celeron M if you can. Additionally, dual core CPUs don't just benefit programs that are multithreaded. They also help considerably when running multiple applications as they can be run on seperate CPUs.

 

On topic, I'd suggest a Dell Latitude myself. We have some D610s at work which I think are fantastic. You can get them with P-Ms up to 1.83GHZ and with either on-board Intel GMA graphics or a Radeon X300. The latter should handle Vista's eye candy well enough and overall should be able to handle Vista very well. However you'd have to stick with P-Ms for the time being as it looks like the only Core Duo laptop they do is the Inspiron 9400. I'm sure the 9400 is a fine DTR machine I'm sure but it's not one I'd want to lug about with me all day

 

The Latitudes that we've got over the past three years on the LfT scheme have been very good. I'd take a serious look at them.

[Ric_]

@Norphy: Check out the Samsung ones! They are super skinny and use the Core Duo.

[Norphy]

If I was going to to buy a laptop for myself I might. However considering we have a shedload of Latitudes at work and they all use standard parts (AC adaptors, removable drives, batteries etc) I think I'll stick with those.

 

Plus EuroPC frequently have specials on D610s. We just bought six for £649 each with at least 1.73GHz P-Ms, 1GB RAM, DVD/CDRW combos, wireless and 60GB HDDs. That is some £300 cheaper than buying from Dell direct and the cheapest Froogle can find an R65 for is £1000!

[Ric_]

@Norphy: DB has lots of money to spend and reasonably competant lusers to give the laptops too.

[kingswood]

Sony are taking orders for their Intel Duo Core laptops- around £1200 (ex VAT) each though! Wouldn't a decent 1.6-2.xGHz Pentium M give you some fair life and with Vista compatibility? If so, I agree that Dell offer some fairly fast and decent priced machines.

 

Paul

[mac_shinobi]

When are they planning to bring out / release vista ?

 

Just a thought but maybe wait until then and see what some ppl say about recomended specs for vista and they might of even brought out decent specs for laptops etc by then that will last longer ( hopefully ) Also not sure if its possible but I think if you get a laptop that has PCI E then you can upgrade the graphics cards on the laptops which may help to a certain degree especially with vistas visual effects etc.

[Michael]

@Dos_Box - You didn't specify in your original post these laptops were to run Vista (eventually). To be honest thinking about it wouldn't you be better off holding on until Vista gets released? You'll then be buying laptops with better specs than today and Vista will be pre-loaded. Makes more logical sense to me.

 

@Norphy - I agree a P4 on a laptop wouldn't be my personal choice and I did mention also it churns out a lot of heat, but some people do require such power in a portable form. Pentium M's are very good, but high end Pentium 4's still perform better. As a rough guide a 1.6GHz Pentium M equals that of a Pentium 4 2.4GHz so as for Pentium 4's offering poor performance, I disagree. Pentium M's architecture is far superior to a P4 (technically) but Pentium 4 is still Intel's flagship processor, for the time being. Conroe will be the beast to watch out for

[mac_shinobi]

hhmmm Must be an echo in here lol

[Ric_]

@Micheal: Don't the Pentium 4 chips that get bunged into laptops end up getting throttled to try to conserve battery-life and reduce the ridiculous amounts of heat that they emit?

 

I think that at the moment Dos_Box was just thinking out loud and he doesn't always consider the important things like portability of laptops - I've seen his current beast (I wouldn't like it on my lap for too long!)

[mac_shinobi]

You mean speed step technology ?

 

Still looking forward to saturday and getting my ibook

[john]

is Dos Box's by any chance either a Tosh with a 17" screen, a 21" powerbook or a HP Pavillion ZD7000 / 8000 range with a 17" screen? I personally have the ZD7000, very very nice machine, big screen but very nice

[Dos_Box]

the only branded ones I could find are from Samsung http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mobilecomputing/dualcore/index.asp

 

some of the lesser manufacturers like evesham have also released models but those Samsung ones llok cool and it's a proper make

 

i'd wait a couple of months for HP to release something

 

We don't have a couple of months. All of our computers have been stolen remember.

[Norphy]

How about an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad? They're absolutely bulletproof and they keyboards on them are as good as you can get for a laptop. They do have some dual core models on sale. The T series looks like it might suit you. One of these perhaps?

[Michael]

@Ric_ - According to Intel's website they have five products for laptops:

 

Intel Core Duo Processor

Intel Core Solo Processor

Intel Pentium M Processor

Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor

Intel Celeron M Processor

 

Looking at the Mobile Intel Pentium 4 Processor on Intel's site reveals they do support SpeedStep, however they all have 1MB L2 cache. My brother's Mobile Pentium 4 Processor has 512K L2 cache and this doesn't support SpeedStep. It will run at 3GHz constantly and that's why he runs it from the mains most of the time!

[projector1]

a key thing you may want to look out for is the battery life, the longer you can use them off the battery the better, staff hate having to pull out the chargers.

[Dos_Box]

It's like waiting for a bus this. My desk is now littered with new Intel chip based laptops. I have the only one of a certain tier one vendors new laptop in europe (lucky me) and a prototype from Dell. Just to give you an idea of the speed of the new Intel chips, my current laptop, a 3 year old Evesham Voyager with a desktop Athlon 64 3200 processor and 1GB of DDR RAM has been left standing using PC Mark 2005 by the new Intel chips running at half the clock speed with 512 MB DDR II RAM. Shocking!!!

[john]

I wish I was as lucky with you for all these laptops for testing Care to share them with me