On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 03:53:19AM -0500, Linux Rocks! wrote: > : I have a hard time accepting that there is no extra charge given that the > : choice then would be DVD+-RW, just as it would be for a desktop. (The > : drives are getting cheaper on the desktop - cheaper enough that that IS > : the standard choice for a new machine anymore.) > > dell didnt have much details in the dropdown menu list... but I think the > DVDR(w?) was a very low end one, if you chose dvd/cdrw, it was fairly decent > (like 8xDVD, 24x cdrw), and the plain cd was 48 or 52x). > > I wasnt really looking for DVD+-RW for the laptop... but that doesnt > mean they arent out there, I was primarily looking at new laptops > w/warrently under $1k. with a laptop that price, a USB DVD burner would > be a decent option. For the same cost of the mac laptop (non-student > price), Im sure you can find them with the burner built in, but havnt > looked.
Well, I can say that I've only used it twice, and have been near enough my G5 since getting it that I haven't been willing to wait (the G5's burner is a faster for writing and a lot faster for verifying), but if I need to write one in a pinch, it's nice to have. I guess the real reason for any mac was having the desktop apps for school without having to put up with windows to get them. The choice between a 12" iBook with combo drive and the (normally far more expensive) Powerbook came down to having the money for the Powerbook in one place at exactly the same moment as a limited supply of maxed out models became available at a price still unmatched elsewhere four months later, even though the model I bought is now obsolete (updated in September/October but anticipated in June when I bought the machine..) > I used an older IBM last summer, and even though it wasnt a fast computer, I > did like the keyboard and display on it... it was arpox 300mhz, so its > probably a few years old. nice key size, and action on the keys. the mousepad > was decent too, but ive used better. I prefer the stick on the even older IBMs. Back about 96 or so, IBM made a greyscale notebook - might have been a 486 or early Pentium designed for students. It was about the size of the average 12" notebook today, but it is 7 year old technology, so it's thick and heavy by modern standards. It had one thing going for it, though. I have only seen one notebook with a screen as sharp and crisp. The grayscale was very nicely lit and the lack of color allowed the screen to be very black when black or very white when white. Even some of the best three dot color screens today aren't that good, though the four dot color models may be. The problem is that the fourth dot is a white LED, so the things use a lot of power. Not many of them are likely to make it into notebooks until OLED becomes cheaper and replaces the white silicon LED dot. FWIW, the Samsung LCDs are some of the best for desktops - used both by Apple and a couple of other flat panel makers. They are the makers of the four dot LCDs, though that's what I have here. (I just have one serious backlight and a very dark black. As with all color LCDs though, black is only black when viewed from straight on. It tends to look more reddish and greenish from one side and more bluish and greenish from the other. Unless you use a black background, you don't notice. > I did find an averatec at staples, and like they key size, placement and > action (except the puny space bar and hard to reach backspace). I found the > mousepad way too far from the keyboard though... hard to use w/out completely > taking your hands off the keys (ie using your thumb.) I'd be interested in seeing one of these at some point, especially if they have a decent battery life. I was disappointed because the first serious-looking notebooks at that price point (the ones that you could get with Lindows on them) were using C3 processors (which are not exactly good performers, but are great on battery life) but still only had 2-3 hours battery life. The point of these machines is to be small and available when you don't have your desktop in front of you. It's reasonable to assume then that you should optimize for battery life and not for performance. Even if that means using embedded applications in place of full-featured ones, it'd be worth it. About the best you get on a single battery with most notebooks is 4 hours. (Note, with two battery slots, 7 hours seems more the average..) The goal though is to get 7 hours out of one battery and keep the weight below the 5lb mark. I was discussing Thursday night the prospect of a hypothetical subnotebook/PDA hybrid which would be about 3/8" thick and still have about 7 hours of battery life. Basically I've imagined the guts of a higher-end PDA in the form factor of a 12" notebook trimmed down too thin for the usual notebook ports (like ethernet..) May never actually get formally designed and less likely to get even a prototype built, but it has proven a fun thought experiment: Using a large but flat battery, you'd basically have enough power to keep it running for awhile. Upgrades would not generally be possible, but it'd be designed as a sub-$500 device anyway. As envisioned, it would have 64 meg battery-backed RAM and ship with a 128 meg CF card. It would have CF and SD slots, but no other media slots at all. Case would be tougher than the average notebook of its general size because it's target would be students, or tucked into a corner of a server room or tossed into a bag with probably insufficient padding for a notebook, etc. Features, as sketched: - 802.11b (one of the low power chipsets, 802.11g requires too much) - 64 meg onboard memory, battery backed, shared w/ OS - CF+ slot - SD slot - USB2 host - USB2 client (for syncing with PC/Mac/UNIX/whatever (XML)) - 10/100 ethernet/56k modem with Xjack-type connectors (Xjack itself wouldn't work unless the ports were on the screen half, but the way they work could be adapted to suit) - Enough video RAM for 2D graphics, no support for 3D planned - OS designed somewhere between PalmOS and the mac interface May require more memory than this since the apps, while intended to be simple, may still take up space. The goal is for CF and SD to be used > but other than that it was pretty nice, real light and thin, decent display. > its kind of a small display, but then, its a small computer! The thing I'm considering in my head would seem like it was rather large in terms of display because it would be targetted toward apps that currently run on PDA screens. I've even designed the app launcher (which acts much like the Palm launcher but has better categorization. Of course, I intend for a trackpad rather than a stylus (to keep it cheap) but I think that these things would take off and people would be asking for the touchscreen instead of the trackpad ... OS design would accomodate this. I've designed only bits of it, and as I said I can't promise I'd ever seriously try to get them built. A small display isn't bad if what you're running on it is designed to work on such a screen. Most X desktops and window managers are out, in that case, unfortunately. =/ _______________________________________________ EuG-LUG mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.efn.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/eug-lug
