netbook

[murdock]

i want to buy a netbook...any ideas

must have at least 5 hour battery life ie... 6 cell battery

run graphic programs

built in 3 G hsdpa

be small 11"

card readers

must be really extremely fast

bluetooth

must have xp pro in the unit not as a extra

must have built in cameras for skype etc

must be able to run hd yo tube.

which one would suit my application and why would you recomend the unit.

if you sell netbooks pm me a price for cod...dont want to spend more than R6000 on a netbook.

[twinscythe12332]

http://www.zones.co.za/

take a look. I saw a few matches in your criteria (not sure on the intel atom processor)
I'm sure you could also ask for pro instead of home.

[desA]

Those are some pretty amazing prices.

Do all SA products still include VAT ie, is that the final price paid at purchase?

[twinscythe12332]

yep yep ^^
the thing to look out for with PC Zone is there cash/card price. those prices are cash prices. card prices are 100 to 200 bucks more expensive, depending on item.

EDIT:
also with the main PCs... doesn't come with an operating system. you can purchase one either at the same price or slightly cheaper though.

[desA]

the thing to look out for with PC Zone is there cash/card price. those prices are cash prices. card prices are 100 to 200 bucks more expensive, depending on item.

Super. Thanks for the information.

EDIT:
also with the main PCs... doesn't come with an operating system. you can purchase one either at the same price or slightly cheaper though.

That's fine, I use Linux OS as the backbone, when required. WinBlow$ is awfully unstable.

[twinscythe12332]

That's fine, I use Linux OS as the backbone, when required. WinBlow$ is awfully unstable.

Hehe, that's probably why they offer windows as an optional extra.

[SilverNodashi]

Netbooks are generally small in size, price & punch

You may not necessarily find a 10" / 11" netbook with a Core2Dou CPU or strong Nvidia graphics card. But, if you can, look for a dualcore Atom CPU and 4GB RAM, it does help a lot on those small machines.

[irneb]

There's a few things you're going to have difficulty in finding:

1. Extremely fast? CPU / GPU / Both?
2. XP? Sorry, you won't find that pre-installed anymore, not on new PC's anyway. It's either Vista or Win7, or even some form of Linux.
3. 11" ... definitely not if you want it fast as well. And with all the additives.
4. HD on a 11" screen . Good luck! Full HD is 1920x1080 which you have difficulty finding in anything smaller than 20". There are some smaller, but I've never seen a 11" with that type of res.

I know of the Sony Vaio Z series, which is pretty fast for a notebook, although they only come in 13":

http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=16154#filterVar=initFilter&actionVar=thumbClick3

Don't know if they're available in this 3rd world country yet. We usually only get the models which are not sold overseas anymore. Just checked on SA's Sony site, they only show the Centrinos

Sony's even talking about upgrading the Z series as from the US site. That one's using a Core 2 Duo, they're looking at installing a Core i7 with 4 SSD's in RAID:

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2010/01/19/sony_vaio_z/

Now that's going to be a scorcher of a notebook! Even for desktops the i7 CPU is rated amoungst the fastest there is (I think only the Xeon's are slightly outperforming them - but then that's for servers) with its quad core and Turbo technology which ups it's GHz to around 3-3.3 when possible - rated at about 2.4-2.7. Reasonable RAM at DDR3-1066. But those 4 RAID0 SSD's are going to kill the competition. And not to mention, those chicken teeth 13" Full HD res!

Of course you'll be looking at around R20k to R30k+ for that notebook. In which case you're at similar prices as for the truly high-end laptops such as Boxx Mobile Workstation or the Rock Xtreme.

[SilverNodashi]

with that kind if horsepower, it's probably not going to give the end user 6 hours of battery life anymore, unless they put in a 9-cell or maybe even 12-cell battery I suppose.

P.S. The Corei7's run very nicely on servers as well

[irneb]

with that kind if horsepower, it's probably not going to give the end user 6 hours of battery life anymore, unless they put in a 9-cell or maybe even 12-cell battery I suppose.

P.S. The Corei7's run very nicely on servers as well

True, I think they're talking about 3 hours (pretty good considering). It seems to depend on just "how" fast you wanna get . Obviously something using a lot of power's going to use up a small battery quite fast, or you need a large battery - which means it's not a notebook. I don't know how that i7 M series compares consumption wise, but it probably would use a lot more than an Atom! The SSD's would probably use a lot less than a normal HDD though

And yes, I know the i7's are pretty good in servers as well. My point's just that the Xeons are almost exclusive to servers. I've only seen one other use for them: Graphics Workstations. I've not seen them in laptops, never mind notebooks. And putting a Xeon in a notebook's probably going to take your battery life down to 30min

BTW, the HP Envy's also come with i7's, but then I don't think that thing should be called a notebook! 15.6" sounds more like a laptop to me.

[irneb]

BTW, anyone know of a laptop/notebook with a Quaddro / FireGL card? The GForce / Radeon gaming cards just don't cut it when doing 3D modeling / animation. At present I'm only doing this work on my Desktop and using a PPT / AVI to play the final product on the Laptop when presenting to the client. It would be nice to do some tweaking while on the plane.

I know of the 2 from Boxx & Rock, but I don't want to break the bank! Scratch that, even those 2 come with GeForce ... ughh!

[SilverNodashi]

true, you won't get a XEON in a notebook - but this is due to the architecture of the XEON's, i.e. it will be too costly for Intel to manufacture a motherboard that can fit into a 10 chassis & hold a XEON. I also think the cooling requirements will be "outrageous" for laptops, so it's probably more a practical problem than en exclusivity problem.

CoreiX (i.e Corei3, Corei5 & Corei7) address the problem with XEON uses lower wattage CPU's, and therefore need less cooling and smaller power supplies.

I saw a notebook the other day with 24GB RAM, cause it was using the Corei7 model