Should we wait for the next X series?

Message

jamesdin · #1 Post by **jamesdin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 2:23 pm

Any suggestions/opinions on the next X series model and if it's worth the wait?

Requirements for my next laptop -- hopefully we'll see this in the next X series Thinkpad:

-- ultraportable and hopefully thinner and smaller than X31.
-- longer battery life (8 hours+ with WiFi)
-- flash based hard disk (a must have for Vista users)
-- I like the X31 full sized keyboard. I don't know why they messed up a good thing in X60.
-- DX9 PS2.0 GPU with 128MB of NON-SHARED video memory. This is another must have for Vista users.
-- Core Duo, or even better, the new Core 2 Duo CPU

asiafish · #2 Post by **asiafish** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:15 pm

You won't get discreet graphics of any real quality on an X-series primarily because of heat, and also because of the drain on battery power. I like Sony's solution with twin GPUs, allowing a traveler to disable the discreet card when battery life matters more than high framerates.

The keyboard won't likely change either. Lenovo made the switch to keyboards with a Windows key, meaning other keys had to be replaced or downsized to fit in in. I prefer the keyboard layout of the older models, but it won't be a deal-breaker on a new one.

Flash drives just aren't ready yet and won't be for some time, while 8 hours with WiFi is also not going to happen with current battery, screen and processor technology.

The X40 can run 7 hours, but its a much slower machine, spinning a smaller hard drive, using integrated graphics and a slower system bus. The X41 with its faster bus and processors and likely other things at work as well only runs 5 hours on the exact same battery. The X60 series is getting reports of good battery life, but again we are talking about integrated graphics.

What would get me into a new X series is a version of the X60s with a lower voltage processor, perhaps even a CoreSolo if it saves battery life. An X60s that could run a full 5 hours on a 4 cell or 10 hours on the 8 cell would easily open my wallet.

Until then, I'm very happy with the X41 in every way except battery life. The hard disk is slow, but using hibernation it really isn't all that intrusive. In every other way performance is more than adequate (I'd even trade down the 1.6GHz processor for a 1.2GHz ULV) and I just love the NMB Thai keyboard (with Korean keycaps).

Actually, the fact that I ordered and installed a Korean keyboard on my X41 alone makes it a keeper, unless I swap later for a longer-running X40 that can take the same board.

bigtiger · #3 Post by **bigtiger** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 3:25 pm

I would really like a Dual-HD laptop. Rather than a Duo Core.

The Flash drive will house the OS while the HD store the data or when the flash drive is not enough to handle large amount of data. I think a flash drive of 10G would hit the market as a mainstream store media soon (meaning low cost and reliable).

Grey Area · #4 Post by **Grey Area** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:46 pm

Speaking of flash drives, does anyone know if this one would fit into an X40/41? 1.8" form factor, and the connector seems to be on the correct side. Pricey, though, for 8GB.

Björn

bigtiger · #5 Post by **bigtiger** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 4:53 pm

Grey Area wrote:Speaking of flash drives, does anyone know if this one would fit into an X40/41? 1.8" form factor, and the connector seems to be on the correct side. Pricey, though, for 8GB.

Co-asking. I was wondering the same thing.

A CF card is about 1/8 of the size of a 1.8" HD. So I think a 1.8" form factor HD should be that expensive. It is easiery to get a 2G card for around $50 at market price. So a 8G drive shouldnot be that pricey, I think.

jamesdin · #6 Post by **jamesdin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 6:07 pm

I hope that the next X series Thinkpad will use flash based disk (hybrid, SSD+HD combo). Laptops that have hybrid drives will offer amazing energy savings and performance gains which makes them more appealing to end-users and to the marketing people.

Technology is not new and HP, Sony, Samsung and many others have shown laptops with this technology at the last CBiT. Solid flash drives might be a year or two away due to prohibiting prices, but hybrids are already here.

christopher_wolf · #7 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:07 pm

jamesdin wrote:I hope that the next X series Thinkpad will use flash based disk (hybrid, SSD+HD combo). Laptops that have hybrid drives will offer amazing energy savings and performance gains which makes them more appealing to end-users and to the marketing people.

Technology is not new and HP, Sony, Samsung and many others have shown laptops with this technology at the last CBiT. Solid flash drives might be a year or two away due to prohibiting prices, but hybrids are already here.

Not to everybody; that is a good 10 years off until it actually becomes useful enough, in a market setting, to even touch HDDs. As it stands, unless you have a special need for a SSD (no moving parts, shock tolerance, heat, access times, no requirement for *huge* amounts of on-board storage), they don't offer themselves as a great alternative to standard HDDs. Same goes for Hybrid HDDs in addition to them requiring a song-and-dance with their firmware to even take advantage of it.

Maybe they will be a standard option in the X70s or X80s as shipped; yet, right now, they simply don't stand as a cost-efficient option in and of themselves as compared to HDDs, *unless* one has a specific need for them. In which case, it can be purchased seperately and operator-installed.

bigtiger · #8 Post by **bigtiger** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:27 pm

christopher_wolf wrote:Not to everybody; that is a good 10 years off until it actually becomes useful enough, in a market setting, to even touch HDDs.

I do not think 10 years. I would say within 2 or 3 years.

I always compare PDA to normal laptops. The PDA I use (dell x5) has 3 + years of life on it. It has been dropped to the floor many times, even into pieces. but it still functions very well.

I can imagine the price will come down soon. and forsee a hybrid within 3 years.

sugo · #9 Post by **sugo** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 8:53 pm

I have also used an ipaq for 2.5 years. No fan. No heat. No moving parts. Instant on and instant off. Isn't that much more user friendly?

#10 Post by **archer6** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 9:20 pm

asiafish wrote:The keyboard won't likely change either. Lenovo made the switch to keyboards with a Windows key, meaning other keys had to be replaced or downsized to fit in in. I prefer the keyboard layout of the older models, but it won't be a deal-breaker on a new one.

When I first viewed a picture of the new keyboard with the windows key, and it's impact on the size of some of the other keys it was quite a concern for me as I have large hands. Plus like so many of us, I was a die hard ThinkPad user that didn't need the windows key. Everything else about the X60s was very appealing to me. So I reminded myself that I had 30 days to try it out. So I ordered one. I can say now after 2 months of ownership and usage that I'm really happy with it. Adjusting to the key resizing was easy. That said, I still do not use the windows key, I just type around it.....

jamesdin · #11 Post by **jamesdin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:13 pm

christopher_wolf wrote: Not to everybody; that is a good 10 years off until it actually becomes useful enough, in a market setting, to even touch HDDs.

10 years you say?

Sony Vaio U has flash based hard disk. This model is already on the market. (see links below)

Needles to say, both Sony and HP, are after ThinkPad-X-series market share of ultra portables business machines. I don't see how Lenovo plans to keep the market lead unless the next X series has some of the technology that others offer.

Flash based drives are coming big time, and Vista will definitely favor those computers as booting times and energy savings are simply phenomenal.

Sony ditches hard disk in latest laptop
http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/i ... e=samechan

jamesdin · #12 Post by **jamesdin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:30 pm

Edit:

By the way, intel is showing off Merom next week. Next X series better have this CPU or Lenovo will be left behind -- not just in performance, but also in battery life.

Merom crashing Intel's Core 2 Duo launch event
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6097315.html

Intel to reunite notebook, desktop chip architectures
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9584_22-5181256.html

christopher_wolf · #13 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:45 pm

jamesdin wrote:
christopher_wolf wrote: Not to everybody; that is a good 10 years off until it actually becomes useful enough, in a market setting, to even touch HDDs.
10 years you say?

Sony Vaio U has flash based hard disk. This model is already on the market. (see links below)

Needles to say, both Sony and HP, are after ThinkPad-X-series market share of ultra portables business machines. I don't see how Lenovo plans to keep the market lead unless the next X series has some of the technology that others offer.

Flash based drives are coming big time, and Vista will definitely favor those computers as booting times and energy savings are simply phenomenal.

Sony ditches hard disk in latest laptop
http://www.techworld.com/storage/news/i ... e=samechan

Yes, yes I do know there are SSDs and hybrid HDDs out, no need for the links. This is nothing entirely new, IBM Storage Division experimented with these types of drives back in the mid-90's; nothing much came out of it then.

Read my post again, carefully; I said until it becomes *really useful* to the average end-user. As it stands now, they are too expensive to replace a HDD as they have a very high GB/dollar ratio and not many companies make them (as opposed to buying from somebody else and rebranding). You also have to consider just how long it will take the rest of the industry, including most HDD makers, to get their own SSD production up. If, say, Hitachi were to make a new line of Hybrid HDD, they would have to buy the flash from either Toshiba or Samsung; their competitors. Whenever you are pinning the success of a future line of products on parts supplied to you from your competitor, you are going to run into some serious issues.

There have been several analyst reports on the market for SSD and they have, as expected, projected a real "take" to be out to 10 years in the future. It isn't as if they are going to magically solve every single problem with HDDs including latency; in the end, they are still going to be capped at whatever the controller and associated bus could run at. Hence, a system with its memory maxed out, paging to the HDD turned off, and a good HDD will be able to outdo a system with less memory, pagefile in use, and a SSD drive even though the SSD may be significantly faster than the HDD.

Hype is one thing, actual usefulness and market viability are completely different ballgames.

jamesdin · #14 Post by **jamesdin** » Fri Jul 21, 2006 11:57 pm

Well, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive didn't exist at that time. Windows Vista will promote the concept of flash based storage in PCs, and PC's that use it will be faster and more energy efficient.

christopher_wolf · #15 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 12:28 am

jamesdin wrote:Well, ReadyBoost and ReadyDrive didn't exist at that time. Windows Vista will promote the concept of flash based storage in PCs, and PC's that use it will be faster and more energy efficient.

It isn't a matter of what exists on Windows Vista or not; it is a matter of how useful the devices will be to the average user per unit cost alone, not with an OS. There is a significant portion of the market that isn't exactly going to move to Windows Vista and are currently running on OSes besides Windows. In addition, Hybrid HDDs require extra controller logic to handle fast boot abilities including but not limited to the pre-caching and pre-fetching of files to and from the flash portion of the HDD during boot; there are two options as far as that goes, either they spend more time and money (and spend even $1 more per each HDD on thounsands upon thousands of HDDs is a very serious proposition to any storage technology firm) working on the firmware or providing an API so the OS can negotiate use of the feature. In any event, it is questionable how much faster the system will boot with Vista + a Hybrid HDD as compared to some cleanup and optimization routines to decrease boot times; many of which most people don't run or don't know about. Power-saving comes into play, again, in a specialized role as most people either use their HDDs constantly (in which case it is making the most of the power it requires at any given moment as well as the system) or very rarely (hence, the HDD will spin-down and enter lower and lower power states). In the non-optimized case where the HDD is being accessed intermittently but cannot effectively power down because of the frequency of I/O ops, the SSDs will have a marginal advantage in that they require less power for continued operation over a longer period of time; again, most users right now aren't generally concerned about that special-case scenario. In the best case, such a situation is improved to some extent by putting more memory in the system and reducing the number of trivial swap/pagefile I/O ops to the HDD to minimize any contentious states that cause inefficient power usage.

For all but very specialized applications, standard HDDs hold the market, competitive, and efficient edges over SSDs. This may change 10 years down the line, but we aren't going to see a major push right now to get them out in standard laptop confgurations. Vista can't do that in a major way at all right now and depending on Vista to gain a product market acceptance is not something most storage firms are going to be willing to do. At first, they will go along with Vista as an entry, but it is in their best interest to diversify and maximize their consumer base independent of the end-user's OS.

jamesdin · #16 Post by **jamesdin** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:47 pm

First, X series isn't for made for an average user. It's not even priced for an average user. It's niche market was always enthusiasts and business users.

Second, significant portion of the X series market runs Windows, with some Linux user base. Both of these would benefit significantly from flash based drives.

Third, I doubt that most people run HDD's constantly on their X series laptops as you claim.

You mention putting more memory in to the system. I agree that is a good upgrade, but from my personal experience -- and I have 1.3GB of RAM in my X31 -- the single upgrade that gave me the most visible performance boost was exactly HDD. I replaced 4200 stock HDD with a faster, quieter, and more energy efficient drive and things started to fly. My battery lasts longer too.

Fourth, all the test, reviews, and articles out there contradict your statement that standard HDDs are better than solid flash drives.

Fifth, I think you are also wrong about Vista not pushing hardware sales. If you're planning to upgrade an office for the next year, and you are spending say $100,000 for the licensing and hardware, you will want to make sure it can run full blow Vista. I personaly use Debian, but I don't know what I would say to my boss when he calls and asks me how comes these new laptops that he speng all that money on won't run all of Vista's visual effects.

Puppy · #17 Post by **Puppy** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 4:56 pm

-- optional model with internal DVD drive. Sony Vaio TX2XP made it (1.25 kg), ThinkPad can do it as well

sugo · #18 Post by **sugo** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 5:09 pm

Puppy wrote:-- optional model with internal DVD drive. Sony Vaio TX2XP made it (1.25 kg), ThinkPad can do it as well

For a laptop as small and light as Sony TX, there are hidden drawbacks. Physical strength is greatly sacrificed - more plastic is used; the LCD housing is thin and weak.

christopher_wolf · #19 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 6:24 pm

jamesdin wrote:First, X series isn't for made for an average user. It's not even priced for an average user. It's niche market was always enthusiasts and business users.

Nope; the X Series was meant to be an Ultraportable and whatever markets that happened to fit, fit it. That's the whole point of the X Series.

jamesdin wrote: Second, significant portion of the X series market runs Windows, with some Linux user base. Both of these would benefit significantly from flash based drives.

How so? They *would*? You are forgetting what is gained as a benefit here. The things you gain are gained at cost of other, at times, more practical things. You gain speed (to a point), you gain slight powersaving ability (again, depending on your HDD usage behaviour pattern), no moving parts (important only if moving parts pose a problem to shock tolerance, not an average concern for most people), and a reduction in heat production (this is a small reduction). The drawbacks are several; you have to make sure that the makers get good yields, always an issueswith NAND based flash memory. In addition, there aren't that many manufacturers capable of producing a large variety of flawless SSDs in huge quantities; one reason is the fact that they have lower profit margins for the company making them. Another reason being that another company can simply buy a bunch of flash memory, adapt it to SSD form, then undercut the price of the original maker. The market inertia is currently in favor of HDDs for that reason; cost, even a tiny increase such as $0.50 , has a massive impact on the production of such HDDs. This hits hybrid HDDs particularly hard since you have to spend time re-designing the microcontrollers and firmware for them to support such features as flash-based boots.

Pure SSDs also have a very large dollar/GB ratio when compared to HDDs. This is probably the biggest hurdle they need to overcome as it limits their general use and the types of customers that the storage technology company could even hope to sell them too. This also goes back to the point of the X Series being a "niche" system; not quite as the "niche" veneer on it disappears once you realize that a very large number of people use it for the "basics", such as email, word processing, browsing, as well as for the ultra-mobile professional/business traveller. Sharply defined product targets (i.e. T4X Thinkpads with integrated graphics aren't gaming platforms) shouldn't be confused with "niches" in which a given prodcut may have more than one niche that it excels at; i.e. an ultraportable that is great for a mobile professional whilst also being an excellent "home range" system to be used in the kitchen, living room, bedroom, and so forth. Which is a good part of the X Series market.

jamesdin wrote: Third, I doubt that most people run HDD's constantly on their X series laptops as you claim.

Really? Do me a favor and download DiskMon from Sysinternals and run it during your everyday usage of your system, then note how many I/O operations are going on. Better yet, just do that whilst browsing; is that a small number of HDD read/writes? No, no it isn't. Just a moderate increase in workload can constantly be sending I/O ops to and from the HDD without being "heavy duty." I have done and noted such on all my systems thus far including various X40s and X41s.

jamesdin wrote: You mention putting more memory in to the system. I agree that is a good upgrade, but from my personal experience -- and I have 1.3GB of RAM in my X31 -- the single upgrade that gave me the most visible performance boost was exactly HDD. I replaced 4200 stock HDD with a faster, quieter, and more energy efficient drive and things started to fly. My battery lasts longer too.

This is perhaps one of the biggest upgrades that can be performed on any laptop, especially the X Series. Taking a look at how computer architectures are put together, you have a split between primary storage as RAM, very fast and volatile but expensive per unit capacity, and secondary storage as HDDs, enormous capacity and inexpensive per unit storage but not as fast as RAM. Programs are, ideally, utilized when they load up into memory from the HDD and perform all their internal jobs, batches, process, and threads from there; swapping is only when you need to save as much memory as you can with a large amount of programs but it *does* affect performance. Now let's look at how an SSD can be improperly used. Say you have a system that is lower on RAM than most and you try to run a large Photoshop edit job on it. The OS will start swapping to the HDD *alot*, there is no question about that unless swapping is turned off. Now, with an SSD that is acting like a normal HDD, you would be swapping to an from it with increased data transfer rates. A good point, yes...but it would still not perform as good as a system with a HDD and a far larger amount of memory with swapping turned *off* as all the program instructions and data are stored in memory with no need to bottleneck anything with HDD read/write ops. So, as such, an SSD is about a good of an upgrade as a faster HDD when you have a system that isn't maxed out in terms of memory.

jamesdin wrote: Fourth, all the test, reviews, and articles out there contradict your statement that standard HDDs are better than solid flash drives.

Really? I think not; here is a good example and you call this "Vista pushing the hardware?". Also see this. That isn't Vista pushing anything but itself to even get out the door, much less help along new hardware. Manufacturers aren't going to wait for that. The SSD forecasts are also assuming that the manufacturers are, indeed, "perfect" in that they can immediately ramp up production with little to no added per-unit cost and no "switchover" costs associated with building and re-vamping factories to make such devices. Now, the maufacturers *are* getting around those problems, but in the same way as many companies have done thus far. Namely, they buy the flash from a flash maker, such as Toshiba or Samsung, and then they either put it in their Hybrid HDDs or their branded SSDs. That is the imperfection that currently lies in the way; either the limited number of companies can't increase their yields enough to satisfactorily meet demand *or* other comapnies will force themselves to come up with flash memory production lines, thereby taking up even more time, because they don't want to buy from their competitors, Toshiba and Samsung in this case and they could very well make their own SSDs since they already make their own flash memory.

jamesdin wrote: Fifth, I think you are also wrong about Vista not pushing hardware sales. If you're planning to upgrade an office for the next year, and you are spending say $100,000 for the licensing and hardware, you will want to make sure it can run full blow Vista. I personaly use Debian, but I don't know what I would say to my boss when he calls and asks me how comes these new laptops that he speng all that money on won't run all of Vista's visual effects.

OK, have you tried out the latest build of the Vista? Does it seem that much of a revolutionary step towards SSDs and faster boot times? Didn't seem like it to me at the time. I can get Windows, or any OS I want for that matter, to boot in under 30 seconds with all the functionality I want without having to resort to newer hardware. Nobody thus far is planning to immediately "updgrade" to Vista; heck, there was major difficulty in getting a *huge* number of companies, even IBM, to move from Windows 2000 to XP. A move which happened only recently in terms of the market timescale. With the new Office, it gets even worse as there is no clear incentive to upgrade; therefore, no clear-cut case can be made to the IT departments at many companies as why they should suck up Vista, go through the hassle of installing it on everything, then troubleshooting all the bugs and flaws, only to end up with something that is just marginally better than Windows XP and may take up more resources doing it.

bigtiger · #20 Post by **bigtiger** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 6:42 pm

Mod Chris,

As you mentioned constant I/O and you look like very knowledgible, have you compared the I/O access of Windows to that of Linux?

I wonder why it needs to constant read the HD, rather then the memory. What is the memory for?

asiafish · #21 Post by **asiafish** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 6:51 pm

The original title of this thread "Should we wait for the next X series?" is a quesiton, and I believe the answer is that the "next" X series is the one they are selling right now. The X60 series are as significant a change from the X2x, X3x and X4x as any of the older series were on arrival, and they've only been on the market a few months.

Anyone planning a purchase who decides to wait for the next series is spending time at this point. Yes, the next one will be faster and cheaper, computers always are, but one must also think about the lost time.

If you own a recent X series and are happy with its performance then the answer about buying a new one is clearly no. If the old model is no longer up to your needs or wants, then it becomes a question of degree and of wealth.

christopher_wolf · #22 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:11 pm

bigtiger wrote:Mod Chris,

As you mentioned constant I/O and you look like very knowledgible, have you compared the I/O access of Windows to that of Linux?

I wonder why it needs to constant read the HD, rather then the memory. What is the memory for?

I/O ops on Windows as compared to read/writes on Linux? That is kinda like comparing Apples and Oranges. Depends on which FS you choose for the Linux distro, the most popular for the average distro is ext2/ext3 support. Ext3 adds journaling as the biggest benefit over ext2, but still doesn't have quite all the things that most of the newer FSes do; things like dynamic allocation of inodes and practically anything else with the word "dynamic"

That said, ext3 does a good job of keep fragmentation to a low and very manageable level; although only one defragmenter for it requires that you must convert it back to ext2 first. So, generally, most ext2 systems aren't defraggerd. It does, however, do a better job at file allocation than, say, FAT would.

NTFS is a fairly modern and able FS, it does have some quirks but they aren't really anything that can't be handled. There are quite a few FSes you can choose to use for BSD and Linux; each one is designed to do a specific job.

Windows and Linux will both swap things to and from the HDD from memory, if you let them, by default. It certain cases, it is bst to simply turn off swapping and go with the maximum amount of memory you can get in the system; this goes for both Windows and Linux. Linux will operate with a minimal or no swap partition as will Windows although you also run the risk of the system getting *very* unstable should you run out of memory at a crucial time; say, when you open up too many jobs too fast. That is slightly more visible on a bare linux system then it is on a windows system but only to the extent of a few process and, after that, it relaly only depends on how much your hardware can support. Windows will, no matter what, always use a tiny amount of VM; note that VM is not the same thing as a pagefile or swap space.

There are quite a few filesystems out there which do their job well; the best thing to do in all cases is to pick the best FS for the job and not necssarily which is the latest, largest, and/or whizziest.

bigtiger · #23 Post by **bigtiger** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 7:25 pm

Wow, you type so fast. This article should go sticky, I think. I now seem to understand more, although I have some Linux experience already.

So now you mean the question really narrows down to what FS is? I think OS really matters. While I do not know the guts of any OS, I have a feeling that a good OS ought to be able to maintain a good accouting of all threads while keep the I/O accesses at a minimum level.

christopher_wolf · #24 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jul 22, 2006 8:06 pm

Exactly; no matter what OS you have, it *should* be able to handle resource allocation optimally. I have tried various OSes on my Thinkpads (BSD, Plan 9, Linux, etc) and that is a key point in all of them.I might also add that a properly configured X40 with BSD, Plan 9, or a slim linux install is a real pleasure.

Certain FSes make jobs such as large amounts of data handling far easier than others, with some tradeoffs of course. It is the job of the OS to make sure that data allocation occurs in such a way as to reduce access times, and hence process start-to-end time. Part of that is knowing what to write to the HDD as swap and what to keep primarily in memory.

I don't know about a sticky for this, one could be made for "tips and techniques"; after all, there is a *huge* amount of information available for optimization of data I/O and their direct effect on system performance, as measured by time to completion of a given number of task, most OSes, including Windows.

bigtiger · #25 Post by **bigtiger** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 7:11 am

Good to know. I may try Linux on my X40 someday. Currently XP serves me pretty well. One only reason to run a Linux might be to run a server for testing purposes. But I run lighttpd server XP version and it serves me pretty well.

Saml01 · #26 Post by **Saml01** » Sun Jul 23, 2006 10:31 pm

jamesdin wrote: -- DX9 PS2.0 GPU with 128MB of NON-SHARED video memory. This is another must have for Vista users.
-- Core Duo, or even better, the new Core 2 Duo CPU

This is not nessecarry. Vista will run on the intel 950 with shared memory no problem. On the other hand dedicated memory will be useful in this machine if you ever plan to plug it into a monitor and use it to game. Since this is a business machine and an ultra portable that will never happen.

Core Duo 2, depends again what you plan to do with the machine. I just ordered one with a Core Duo because the price was extremely good. So if the Duo 2 comes out within my return policy period and the price/options is similar or better I may return and re order. But you should also consider again what you plan to use the comp for. A core duo 2 or even core duo is overkill for what I plan to use it for.

hishamh · #27 Post by **hishamh** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 12:43 am

jamesdin wrote: Sony Vaio U has flash based hard disk. This model is already on the market. (see links below)

I'm sorry to say that you are mistaken - and the link gives wrong information as well. The UX90 (and the UX180, UX50, and UX17GP variants) is the HDD version (the article got that wrong), and that has already been released. The flash based version (UX90PS) has not been released as yet, and most likely we'll only see it next quarter.

#28 Post by **archer6** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:36 am

Saml01 wrote:But you should also consider again what you plan to use the comp for. A core duo 2 or even core duo is overkill for what I plan to use it for.

I could not agree more. I feel than in far too many cases people get so caught up in the "latest & fastest" that they lose sight of the capability of the current processors & computers. In addition, as you so aptly stated "even core duo is overkill for what I plan to use it for". This statement says it all for so many people. They could save so much time & money by not getting caught up in the "marketing push" intended to sell us what in many cases is simply too much computer.

The latest technology certainly is beneficial and has it's place, however that is not neccessarily on everyones desk...

asiafish · #29 Post by **asiafish** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 9:44 am

archer6 wrote:
Saml01 wrote:But you should also consider again what you plan to use the comp for. A core duo 2 or even core duo is overkill for what I plan to use it for.
I could not agree more. I feel than in far too many cases people get so caught up in the "latest & fastest" that they lose sight of the capability of the current processors & computers. In addition, as you so aptly stated "even core duo is overkill for what I plan to use it for". This statement says it all for so many people. They could save so much time & money by not getting caught up in the "marketing push" intended to sell us what in many cases is simply too much computer.

The latest technology certainly is beneficial and has it's place, however that is not neccessarily on everyones desk...:D

In my case even Pentium-M is overkill.

hishamh · #30 Post by **hishamh** » Mon Jul 24, 2006 10:26 am

Same here - for my use, I crank down the processor as far as it will go, and it barely affects any of my daily tasks.

Should we wait for the next X series?

Should we wait for the next X series?

Re: Should we wait for the next X series?

Re: Should we wait for the next X series?

Re: Should we wait for the next X series?

Who is online