Notebook buyers Guide – Draft 1

[munka]

Ok this was started with the intention of it becoming a sticky. I know it answers directly a “what/where should I buy” style question but people are going to come here often for questions like it. See page two for a Mac buyers guide by Kharn though most of this is still relevant to macs

I guess the first thing you need to sort out is what purpose this notebook is going to serve. The way I see it there are 5 “types” of notebooks people ask for;
Desktop Replacement – Often without a battery, big and clunky but good power for money.
Portable – Thin notebook, 14”-15” screen, good battery life.
Ultra Portable – Very thin, often without internal CDrom, 12” screen.
Gaming – Either of the top 2 classes with a decent graphics card thrown in.
Value – Cheaper than the above.

I personally think desktop replacement is a bit of a crazy idea. I often get people coming to my shop saying “I am going to buy a notebook because I need a PC at home and at work”. It doesn’t usually take long for them to get the picture that they could buy 2PCs of similar power for the same price. As we all know a desktop PC is more customizable, can be overclocked, upgraded and when things go wrong you can use common off the shelf components to fix it. However people still buy them and it’s a market that cant be overlooked. The Acer Desknote is a good place to start looking, ECS also have a range.

Portable, typically Centrino or Athlon 64, good battery life is expected but not always delivered. Check the height and weight, it should be less than 40mm (32-33 is good) and 2.7Kg seems to be typical. Good brands here are Acer, IBM, Toshiba and Fujitsu.

Ultraportable will have either a Centrino or Transmeta chip. As stated above these often do not have a cdrom. A tablet PC would fall in this class. Expect good battery life but don’t expect huge amounts of power or a good graphics card. Fujitsu and Sony both have good offerings in this type of notebook.

Usually I wouldn’t class Gaming by its own but I expect OCAU will see a lot of questions on notebooks geared to gaming so I have separated it. This bracket can contain a P4, Centrino, Athlon XP or Athlon 64. The best of its class would arguably be the Acer Ferrari 3200 which is athlon 64 with a Radeon 9700 Mobility Graphics card unfortunately it isn’t available in Australia but there is an Acer Aspire with a centrino and a 9700. Dell’s 8600 model has a 9600Pro graphics card and is also a good place to start looking. Update: Although I have never seen one myself there is also now a ATI Radeon 9800 Mobility, it is based on X800 technology and contains double the pixel pipelines and double the memory bus width taking it to 8Pixel Pipelines (yes still half of top of the line desktop systems) and 256Bit memory. Note: Do not expect equal performance from a notebook Graphics as you would its desktop equivelant. Sometimes this can be the case but usually these are cut back to save power. Desktop cards are using up to and often above 100W of power now, these cards are unlikely to use much over 30W, 50W at absolute tops.

With value notebooks I see two options, the TPG notebook, or a Celeron. The TPG is obviously my preference, it has a Radeon 9200Gfx, Athlon XP-M 2500+ 512DDR, DVD Burner etc etc for less than the price of your typical featureless Celeron notebook. Go to http://www.tpg.com.au/online I think its the best notebook you will find for under $2200. Did I mention it was less than 1500?

[munka]

Ok with type sorted out lets get down to the details. Typically you get what you pay for, but what exactly are you paying for? Here is a list of things people often overlook when considering a notebook.

Screen – This is the biggest concern to me, many people are happy with a dull grainy screen just because the rest of the notebook fits the spec. If a 17” LCD for a desktop can vary between $500-$900 in cost and quality expect notebooks screens can too.

Build Quality – Don’t forget this one, chances are even if you don’t drop it, it will take the odd knock from time to time, IBM seem the most Solid to me, Acer are also good, good brands actually test their notebooks can sustain a small drop. A few cases are made from a magnesium alloy that is very light and strong (yes IBM are one of them) these are probably your best bet. Living up to its name the Panasonic Toughbook also gets a strong recomendation from Slatye.

Connector Layout – Sounds silly but with a notebook you plug things in and out a lot more. Don’t wait until you get it home to find out you need a serial port or the USB ports are inconveniently placed.

Brand – Unlike a desktop you probably can’t service this machine yourself, get a brand that you know can support you well. The all offer different warranties. A good brand will be able to turn your notebook around within a few days, others you might be waiting weeks, that’s if the company still exists. I can vouch for the following brands as “reasonable” brands: Acer, Ibm, Apple, Dell, HP, Toshiba, Asus, NEC/Packard Bell, Sony, Fujitsu.

Battery Life – “Has it got a battery?” “Check!” well they all do, but obviously they aren’t all the same, check you get a battery life that suites your needs. For portable PCs expect 5 hours. The come in cell sizes, 4, 6, 8 and 9, sometimes more. If it maters to you at all get one with at least 8.

[munka]

Well its getting confusing as to what processors to get. A mobile CPU often doesn’t perform as well as its desktop counterpart, this is often due to slow bus speeds or ram but also can be because of technologies like Intel speed step and AMD Power now. I actually find Power Now to be more responsive than speed step. Speed step was particularly bad on some P4 models ive seen where the system seems to feel like it is constantly at 200Mhz. Some original P4 Desktop based notebooks would thermal throttle themselves also due to bad heat dissipation designs, this mostly seems to be a thing of the past.

Most people will be choosing an AMD/Intel setup, so I will limit myself to those. As I have hinted earlier, I really do not like Celerons, they get worse when in notebooks, and with the TPG athlon XP notebook there is no reason to buy one. So I will discuss the 4 main processors I would recommend.

Centrino- Centrino is actually a package, the basic understanding of Centrino is that it has an Intel Pentium M, an Intel mainboard chipset and an Intel wireless card. In my experience any Pentium M based notebook can offer similar quality if designed correctly, so dont be affraid if a PentiumM based notebook doesnt say Centrino. If it doesnt say Centrino, double and tripple check if it has a wireless card and what type it is. Many companies dont use Centrino because there are better wireless solutions out(centrino used to not support 802.11g and still doesnt support 802.11a). There are also standards to backup the centrino name with regard to thickness and weight, I have never seen a Centrino over 2.8Kg or 37mm thick so it would be a safe guess the limit is around there.

So to explain the Pentium-M(please note it is different from the P4-M). Most of the market is here, and rightly so, it’s a very nice chip. It is a bit of a dinosaur in the fact that its design is an extension of the Pentium 3 (which in turn was really just a hyped up Pentium Pro), but for mobile purposes its great. Over its P3 brother it has lower power use, extra cache, SSE2, faster bus speeds and hides its age very well. Consider a centrino 1.8Ghz equivelant to a P4 3Ghz or Athlon 64 2-2.2Ghz as a rough guideline.

Athlon 64- Ok I admit it, I am a bit of a fanboy. However this Processor is a nice chip that is relatively low power and offers a lot of grunt. Often notebooks with this processor are enthusiast orientated so there have been some good models made with this chip. Very few make it to Aus unfortunately. Don’t forget the added performance you will get when 64bit Windows finally makes it out.

Pentium 4 – Has two forms, Pentium 4 Desktop and Pentium 4 Mobile(P4-M). In either case it’s a tad warm and power hungry these days, at its price point I really question its use in any notebook other than a desktop replacement.

Athlon XP – Budget chip with a bit of grunt to boot. You wont find many models but if you have the option of the Athlon XP over Celeron or P4 I would take this any day.

[munka]

Ok I think we have pretty much covered what to look for, now how to go about it. Most of us are probably used to throwing a few hundred dollars at our desktop every few months/years to keep it up to scratch, you wont be able to do this with your notebook I am affraid. You are going to have to start off with an investment large enough to last the expected life of the notebook. For this reason most people will spend over $3000 on a notebook, for a uni student like myself thats a lot of money, so here are a few tips to soften the blow.

1 Take a holiday, its sounds silly I know, I am suggesting you spend money on an air flight and accomodation to save money? Well actually no I'm not, but lets say you can pay for a holiday to singapore for $1000 you will typically save that on most notebooks over $4000, as a result you get a holiday and a notebook for the same price, overall it makes the cost feel a lot more justified to you. Dont forget you can also claim back the tax as you leave singapore, that would be 10% extra GST if you bought it here. Most notebooks have international warenties, make sure of this before you take this option.

2 Do your best to avoid paying Tax. While i am no accountant it is my understanding that currently any company can offer notebooks to their employees as a full salery sacrifise. Most employees will do this for you, anyone on the full tax bracket then effectively gets this notebook for half the price. Currently you are entitled to one notebook a year by this method, and there is no formal justification to show it is used for work purposes required. To take this further, without any legal issues I believe you could say get a friend on the full tax bracket to salery sacrifise a notebook for you, use it at work for a few weeks just to keep it legit then sell it to you second hand for a nicely reduced price(but now im moving into the grey areas of legality so be careful). A further extension on this, if the company could justify it as a cost related to a project they could possibly avoid GST and may even help contribute some of the cost. All I am suggesting is speak to your accountant, speak to your employer and see what can be done, it isnt uncommon for people to pay $1000 for a $2700 notebook after all the tax savings are offset and the company has contributed a little.

Conclusion (ok isn’t much of one yet, give me time)
Everything else, ram size and hdd you can choose, I am sure you can work out how much you need. As a suggestion though, if you find a notebook you really like with a hdd too small, its often similarly priced to get the drive separate from your local store and use the drive in the notebook in an external case for backup.

Comments?

[Zzapped]

One thing I would like to clear up here is the common misconception about the term Centrino.

It is not a chip , but a chipset.

In order for a laptop to carry the centrino brand it must contain the following

P4m Processor
Intel i855 chipset
Intel Pro 820.11b/820.11g wireless

These 3 components make up the centrino chipset

Cheers

[PogiPinoy]

Originally posted by Zzapped
One thing I would like to clear up here is the common misconception about the term Centrino.

It is not a chip , but a chipset.

In order for a laptop to carry the centrino brand it must contain the following

P4m Processor
Intel i855 chipset
Intel Pro 820.11b/820.11g wireless

These 3 components make up the centrino chipset

Cheers

actually centrinos must contain a Pentium M CPU..not a Pentium 4 Mobile as you stated

oh and the intel chipset can also be a 745, 715, 725

[Zzapped]

Yeah........I now see what I posted, LOL, It is a Pentium mobile and although those other chipsets are included, the i855 is the primary chipset nowdays

[SLATYE]

You might just want to put a little note in there about the Radeon Mobility 9800, because that really is a big step up in performance over the 9700 (the 9700 is 4 pipelines and 128-bit RAM. The 9800 is an X800-based design, with 8 pipelines and 256-bit RAM).

A few minor points:
(1) If build quality is what really matters, Panasonic's Toughbook is the way to go. They're specifically designed for strength, and while expensive should take more of a beating than almost any other notebook.
(2) In relation to the battery specifically, brand is very important in that you can actually get replacement batteries for common brands (Dell, Toshiba, and IBM are easy to get replacements for).

[Zzapped]

We have been testing those Panasonic toughbooks at work and being a mining company, they get a bit of a pounding every day and those toughbooks have stood up to it all so far, the downside is that the screen is smaller and not as good color wise as the ones we have are touchscreen models so the resolution is a bit poorer than normal.

Cheers

Z

[Onyx]

Good guide munka.

Also more on the Centrino specification - on top of what's already mentioned, a notebook must adhere to maximum weight, thickness, and minimum battery life standards to rightfully be labelled 'Centrino'. Full terms of the specs can be found on Intel's site.

[munka]

Lol u dont know how many times a week i have to explain to people what centrino means, yet i still manage to root it up in my own guide!

[munka]

Ok guys, ive made most of the changes. If people want me to mention their name near the change i will but i am sure people can scroll down a bit to see who made the comment.

[Kharn]

Maybe i should start writing up an apple notebooks guide.

[munka]

go for it, we can merge it as one if you want. I am happy to have both in this thread. I will admit that all i really know about them is that I want one

[Kharn]

Originally posted by munka
go for it, we can merge it as one if you want. I am happy to have both in this thread. I will admit that all i really know about them is that I want one

yup thats cool with me, i have almost finished the first half. Also if there are any ibook owners out there they might be able to help me with the ibook parts