Laptops, modern ones: drop knowledge :)

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:21 am

OK, the Acer Note Light 350PCX I got myself for a collosal Â£40 eighteen months ago is still going as strong as ever, and the battery (mainly what i bought it for!) is still good (got 2h 40 today), BUT I'm getting a twinge to go for something new. Not so much for CPU power or multimedia, just for RAM space/HDD speed and, more importantly, compatibility issues - i.e. it has no USB ports, as it was sold before USB was invented...

I really would like one as utterly portable as the old dear, or more so, without being kaiboshed by a crappy keyboard (it's got a pretty good one) or a machine that's more crippled by Windows/Office XP's demands on its cheap hardware than the current typing-mule is by Win95 & Office v4.

So, if there's a portable computing guru who can drop some phat knowledges on me, please let rip

Details:
Current hardware is very obsolete, but it covers what i need to do with it admirably - in fact i've just finished printing a 20-page project (with diagrams etc) that I wrote up almost exclusively on it.

The gory truth, in smalltext
* CPU: original Pentium, 60mhz (u/c from 120), unknown motherboard.
* Memory: 16mb of honest-to-goodness EDO RAM
* HDD: 810mb whopper (about 60% used), 3600rpm, chronic access time, connected by "somekinda" bus.
* Graphics - integrated Chips & Tech rubbish, 1mb VRAM (truecolour capable!), with a 640x480 pixel, 10.4" TFT.
* Unbelievably, the battery is a Duracell... NiMH 3.5Ah, 10.8V
* Also has floppy, 2 old type PCMCIAs, and standard printer-serial-VGA-keyboard hookups.
* Keyboard: normal 89-key type with good long travel. Mousing via a poorly designed touchpad (buttons on front of case, keep catching on stuff when cramped).
* No optical drive at all, no USB, and I can't find any add-ons that don't need Cardbus or Win98. Data transfer is handled via floppy, or parallel Smartmedia reader, a couple 16mb cards, and a USB based adaptor.

However, it is very compact, at a nicely backpack-fitting 285x208mm, just smaller than an A4 pad. Though it looks chunky, at 48mm high it's only 1cm taller than a modern "multimedia" lappy - overall its like an A4 sized hardback book. Weight: 2.7kg (surprised at that, thought it was lighter!) without AC adaptor etc. Battery tends to last 2h00 to 2h30 and needs similar time to recharge.
Also, it has no fans in it whatsoever, just a f**k-off heatsink that extends under the whole keyboard. Meaning it always runs very, very quietly - and silently when the hard disc spins down. This is a godsend for concentrating on work that you just don't realise until it happens.

I want to keep things a similar size, I know that limits me a bit, laptops don't seem to be made to standards of portability like they were in the mid to late 90s any more. Mum's works laptop is a "modest" 14 inch screener, but it's like mother and child when I put the two together (it's as deep as mine is wide!), and it's still 100g heavier.

Thankfully some 12" and 13" widescreen models are about, which fit the case size and shape i'm after a lot better (1280x800 class of resolution). I've investigated the teeny "ultraportable" jobs, and they're best left to techno nerds and japanese professors - the 11" and below Vaio / etc look really slick, but the keyboard's atrocious (like typing on a ZX81 but with even less space for each letter) and it's too much resolution in not enough space.

A tablet PC would be supersweet too, but they're all compromised in certain areas - performance, weight, size, or ergnomic features (such as, once again, putting the trackpad/point buttons in a dumb place), and of course price

What therefore can you recommend to me with:
* 12" normal/WS or 13" WS LCD, 1024 thru 1400 width
* Good battery life, and i mean stonking if possible. The machine's raison d'etre is to allow me to type where there isn't easily available mains electricity...
* Compact shape - if it can resemble a sheet of A4, that's pretty good (and probably good enough). Doesn't have to be super thin or super light, so long as it's no thicker or heavier than the current one - though of course, such things WILL count in it's favour.
* Any old CPU, so long as it can cope with running "basic" stuff in win XP home (or tablet...), such as Word documents with 20 pages and a few line-art diagrams, like it ain't no thang**... and isn't a power hog
* Particularly, any CPU / etc that's either fanless, or can run without the fan always needing to be on - so long as performance isn't drastically reduced (like in those Crusoe chips).
* At least 512mb RAM. XP with 256 is NOT pretty (despite it being 16x what w95 needs to run nicely)
* A decent hard drive, speed very much preferred over space, so it boots, runs programs, loads/saves files and hibernates/awakens super quickly. (If room becomes an issue I can always get a cheap external USB backup disc and shuffle things from time to time. Its very most likely that the extensive gigabytage will be taken up by mp3s and videos anyway, no matter how hard i resist.)
* Plenty of connectivity - USB, firewire, wifi, bluetooth, IR, wired network, 56k, give it to me baby (though i'll likely only use no's 1, 3 and 5 from that list)
* Optical drive would be nice, particularly a DL DVD+-R, but not absolutely essential.
* Some kind of mousing control - touchpad preferably, or trackpoint, trackball, touchscreen, etc. Buttons that tuck INSIDE when the lid's shut very much preferred, as is it being internally connected by PS/2 rather than USB*** should you have ANY way of knowing.
* Brand is unimportant... i'm even game for stuff from Aldi and Dell, if it's not going to ming.
* Heck, platform and OS are unimportant, if Apple happen to be selling something spot-on, that's going to offer me the same functionality i currently enjoy and proper file interchangability, it's all good.
* Price range - i'm undecided at the moment. Willing to dip into savings a little, if the absolutely "right" machine turns out to be a bit pricier than the average (as i recognise "you get what you pay for"), but on the whole less is very much more!

Cheers

** unfortunately i DO have to make this note, as some of the Dell desktops at work, none of which are more than 2 years old, should have more powerful chips than my own PC, and be similar to or more powerful than the type of laptop I'm looking at, but sometimes have terrible trouble just keeping up with the task of typing... and seem to be stifled in some other areas too. I can only assume they're being choked by the OS somehow, unless they're really, really wimpy!
*** ditto, their USB mice are utter crap, and as they're a well recongised brand that i've never had trouble with before, i can only blame the interface for being wholly unsuited to mousing

Si_GTi · Post by **Si_GTi** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 1:34 pm

Wow, that Acer is a bit of a relic! If you can keep the l'il bugger in good working order it could be worth something more than Â£40 one day for kitsch (sp?) value alone - its tiny too, which these days you pay a lot of money for

I think you might struggle to find a laptop with a PS/2 connection being offered as the vast majority have now gone down the USB route for compatibility/multi-tasking/space-saving reasons. Still, will have a look about at what is on offer... how do you fancy spending ~Â£1700 on a Sony Vaio T2

Just having a quick look at Insight's website, most of the cheaper laptops with "small" screens are based around the 14.1" screen. But there is one laptop they do for a reasonable price with a 12" widescreen display...

The Acer TravelMate 3000, with Intel Pentium M 1.73GHz processor/512MB RAM/WinXP Pro/12.1" 1280x800 WXGA display/80GB hard disk/DVDÂ±RW has a 1-year warranty, all the usual connectivity features (bluetooth, ethernet, wireless, 56k modem) and only weights 1.5kg. No PS/2 port though

but yours for Â£790.00 plus VAT and shipping. That looks to be the kind of ballpark figure to expect with these downsized notebooks.

Too much moolah?

Babe RuthLess · Post by **Babe RuthLess** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 7:18 pm

I would recommend a Toshiba PortÃ©gÃ© 2000 if you're looking for ultimate portability without spending too much.

It's a very slim and lightweight notebook, P3 750MHz, and usually comes with 256MB of RAM (expandable to 512) and a 20GB hard disk. Plus USB ports, LAN etc. Thing is, it only has external (USB) optical drives, and that pretty much means you'll have to carry the CD player along should you need it.

If that's not a problem (if you're going to use it mostly for writing/openoffice stuff, listening to MP3s and as a "client" to your desktop PC) then the PortÃ©gÃ© is an excellent notebook. It's VERY portable, sturdy, well-built (it's got an aluminium or titanium shell, something expensive like that) and was one of the range-toppers back in its day. Designed to prove a point, you could say.

They go for about $300 U.S. on eBay, more if it's got the optical drive.

So that's the cheap used option. You could always try and get a three-year old PowerBook. Or you could buy a car (in Brazil at least, but Apple machines seems to be overproced everywhere)

.

Anyways let us know your price range and there'll always be something to recommend. I've been looking at notebook PCs myself recently but I tend to always end up at some obscure Taiwan-based manufacturer's website that's got exactly what I need but looks, well, of suspicious quality.

If you're looking for a brand-new notebook, LG makes some nice ones if you can get them in the UK.

Tahrey1043 · Post by **Tahrey1043** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 9:00 pm

Si_GTi wrote:Wow, that Acer is a bit of a relic! If you can keep the l'il bugger in good working order it could be worth something more than Â£40 one day for kitsch (sp?) value alone - its tiny too, which these days you pay a lot of money for

Hehe, I got it off someone who works in an office a floor above me at the hospital, who was bascially advertising it as a last chance before chucking it in the bin! It's funny though - it would have seemed incredibly powerful (in non-underclocked form) when we first splashed out more than a grand on our first desktop PC about the same time... suggesting someone in the purchasing department probably spent over Â£2000 waybackwhen!

How things change, eh!
(and it never left the desk or power socket it first got plugged into, why didnt they just get a desktopper?! not that i'm complaining mind)

I think you might struggle to find a laptop with a PS/2 connection being offered as the vast majority have now gone down the USB route for compatibility/multi-tasking/space-saving reasons.

Hm, well, not too bothered about an external one, just so long as the built-in keyboard and mouse still have their own interrupts rather than being slaved through the universal serial bus - the results don't seem to be too pretty so far. The only thing i've ever used it for on the current one is to power the printer socket card reader

... and for a brief period when i first got it where the touchpad was playing up.

Still, will have a look about at what is on offer... how do you fancy spending ~Â£1700 on a Sony Vaio T2

If I had such money to throw around and didn't think it an enormous waste..! I'll probably be wanting to keep the machine running til the mid 2010's as it is

Which one's that, anyway? (goes off to look)
(these days i'm coming to the depressing conclusion that the only thing Sony can do right for a decent price is car audio)

Just having a quick look at Insight's website, most of the cheaper laptops with "small" screens are based around the 14.1" screen.

I STILL can't get my head around a display larger than a sheet of A4 writing paper being considered "small" on a portable device.... WTF people?! 14.1 inches of viewable space used to be a first-level upgrade option on your desktop's tube monitor...

But there is one laptop they do for a reasonable price with a 12" widescreen display...
The Acer TravelMate 3000.. yours for Â£790.00 plus VAT and shipping. That looks to be the kind of ballpark figure to expect with these downsized notebooks. Too much moolah?

Oh aye - i was actually looking at that one on Acer's website. They offer it for Â£849 there, but I don't know if it's with tax etc or not. Your figure comes out to Â£928 with VAT, probably Â£949 all in. If factory-direct is actually without tax, then it rises itself to Â£997.50...

I think I could stretch to that, I'd be umming an ahhhing ... but it does look like a fairly nice machine. I would have to ask them what the typical noise and heat output was though, and how likely it is to achieve that 4.5 hour battery life...

Suppose it'd help if I'd personally looked any further afield than the Acer (as i already have one, and it's first in the manufacturer alphabet) and Novatech websites already... it just takes so much time!

As regards the external drives - no big fuss really. I'd intend to plug in the drive to install any necessary low-level software or watch DVDs, but everything else can then go by Wifi or pen-drive.

Second hand is all good as well, so long as it works and the battery is in good nick (or i could just splash the extra Â£70 or so for a brand new battery....... or even refurb it myself from cheap off-the-shelf NiMH's, which are almost certainly what are inside the notelite's duracell unit)... I'll have a scout on the net for the Protege's actual specs later and see if it's any good - cheers

EDIT --- a funny thought last night related the computers to cars... like if you're just going shopping or commuting across town a fiat 500 will still see you right

but if you want to hum down the autobahn you really should start looking at beemers with 3 or more litres under the bonnet... heheh
And also it shows how we've come on and maybe how we reached a nice plateau / breakpoint of power and usability, in that there haven't really been any significant leaps of late. A 10 year old PC will do you nicely for a lot of tasks these days (I reckon it could probably handle a lot of the internet alright to), but 10 years ago, one from 1986 would have been something of a joke (the Amiga, ST, colour Mac and Amstrad word processor had all only just been introduced, and PCs that gave performance comparable even to them still cost the same as a decently spec'd hatchback)