I just happened to go in Best Buy and Costco here in Charleston, SC
today, looking at laptops. I found a large Sony (I7 CPU) for about
$1200 at Costco that has a Firewire port (the same model at Best Buy for
$1350). At Best Buy, there was a smaller Sony (with I5CPU I think) for
about $800 that has a Firewire port. No other laptops (other than
Apples) had Firewire in either store. I'm checking the Dell website
next. I prefer Sony, Toshiba, or Dell laptops, as I've had good success
with (only) those three brands.
A few laptops has ExpressCard slots, but not a lot of them did. They
almost all had HDMI ports. Everyone has several USB ports.
It looks like IEEE 1394 is going away pretty quickly. I hope Flex has
an alternative plan in the works, with Firewire going bye-bye. It seems
like USB (booooo), or Enet (yeeaah) is the long-term solution. I'm
planning for any of my future designs to use Enet.
I'm wondering about my Sony camcorders with Firewire... at least my
newest HD camera has USB instead of Firewire. But two older cameras
have Firewire, and I still use them at times.... Oh well.
Terry, WB4JFI
On 9/5/2010 5:48 PM, Neal Campbell wrote:
Sad to say but its not the case in the market most of our Flex users are in!
As with most Flex users, the laptop market seems to exist in the 500-1000
USD price range. One way to reduce cost (or increase margin depending on
your perspective) is to not include any extras like cardbus, 1394 ports,
etc. I think the sub-1K market is aimed towards students so connectivity
issues outside of wifi and wired lan and some USB stuff is not really in
demand. Oddly enough though, they all include a HDMI jack (which I guess is
for watching movies on the monitor in the dorm)!
If you look (and I do almost daily) for a sub-800 dollar laptop with
expresscard slots or firewire ports and fine one, please let me know!
73
Neal Campbell
Abroham Neal Software
www.abrohamnealsoftware.com
(540) 645 5394 NEW PHONE NUMBER
Amateur Radio: K3NC
Blog: http://www.abrohamnealsoftware.com/blog/
DXBase bug reports: email to [email protected]
Abroham Neal forums: http:/www.abrohamnealsoftware.com/community/
On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 5:04 PM, Alan NV8A<[email protected]> wrote:
On 09/05/10 03:33 pm, Ted Leonard wrote:
I am thinking of a new laptop for my Flex 1500 with the idea that the
1500 may someday have a big brother Flex.
What laptops have the necessary port to plug in a firewire adapter in
case a big brother does arrive?
I would expect that all reasonably recent laptops would have a CardBus slot
into which a TI-chipset FireWire adapter (US$30 or so) could be plugged.
Some laptops may even come with FireWire built in, but it may not be up to
the task of running a Flex.
73
Alan NV8A
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