Legit Reviews

In terms of notebooks they have advanced greatly over the past couple years. They have gone from bulky black suit cases to small wireless workstations that can easily weigh under five pounds and batteries last for nearly a full work day. If you say "Centrino" everyone knows what you are talking about, but are notebooks worthy enough to be considered by enthusiasts?

I recently spoke with one of our readers who wanted to know why we have been doing notebook articles and giving away mobile parts on our forums. He was upset that a site like Legit Reviews was covering any mobile devices at all because he said that the enthusiast community is currently not interested in laptops. I rebutted his statements by informing him that notebook sales have out sold desktop sales in the retail channel for more than three months now and that many consumers don’t need a bulky desktop computer. While the conversation dragged on he told me that I was no longer focusing on the needs of enthusiasts and that it was a shame. The conversation ended with both sides disputed on the subject. Instead of getting upset and close minded it made me really think about where we as enthusiasts are headed. Read on as I examine whether or not enthusiasts should be interested in notebooks or not.

Article Title: Is Mobile Processing For Enthusiasts?

So, what do our forum members think?

if I had a lappy with the balls to game with, I would. lets see haul big bulky CRT and tower, or a light lappy that fits in a book bag.

dont get me wrong there is just some stuff that is better suited to be done on a desktop if for nothing else comfert, but a lappy would be very nice to have.

I think that mobile will become more and more popular. I think they will start making things more interchangable, more available, and more choices in the future. some day soon i see people going to a LAN all carring laptops. (atleast i hope that will happen)

It's the way of the future, Intel and AMD are now pushing lower power but still high performance...What we will also see more of is mobile chips used in desktops and SFF pc's etc. The PC market is only openning up now...The big OEM's should be scared too...Thanks to Nate, we know that a laptop is easy to build and customise yourself...The average Joe is starting to realalise that he can build his own pc...It won't be long before he learns laptops are easy too!
Ever since the 9700 from ATI, Laptops have had good performance in gaming, now with Intel's mobile chips, gaming can be on-par with full desktops....This is only what Nate has already said but it's so true...

Kudos Nate, very nice.... after average Joe makes his first pc...there will be only one site for him to goto for his next adventure!

I can kind of see where the other guy is coming from. the truth is that up to now laptops were hard or impossible to upgrade and still pretty impossible to modify (and this what the enthusiast community was/is all about: modifications and upgrades to squize as much out of the hardware as possible). with the upgrading it seems change is coming and it is going in a right direction. modifications are still very limited to changing the thermal compound on the CPU/VGA/RAM or ... well not much there - simply because of lack of space and this part is not likely to change because of the sheer nature of laptops (they not going to get bigger, rather smaller). on the other hand with getting more and more choices for upgrade or just simply able to chose the parts we put in such a laptop it's possible to build nowadays a laptop that can satisfy even the most demanding player. I guess it comes down to a question of who do we call an enthusiast. in one thing the other guy is certainly not right: threads discussing issues about laptops are only a fragment of the forums and it doesn't seem like they are about to take over and become the only topics and because of the positive changes concerning laptops, I feel they should get there fair share in discussions and can't be ignored.

You know, the day I bought my Inspiron 9100, I stopped using my Desktop PC right there. I only turn it on to share files that I don't have or to print, that's it. Having 2GB of PC3200 RAM and a 2.8GHz P4 w/ HT, it performs just as well ask my desktop. Plus the crispness of my laptops screen compared to my Viewsonic CRT...

I plan on building another powerhouse laptop in the future, but also plan on building a powerhouse desktop PC too.

The big thing I hate about this laptop is the battery life. ~90 minutes doing light tasks and ~50 minutes doing heavy tasks.

thank God you have the balls to respond in a truly dignified and very informative manner, Nate. Personally, notebook gaming is becoming popular in its own right......now, given you have a good setup, right after you do your term paper or that long, boring-ass Bio or HTML project, you can kick back, pop in some Doom 3, and act like the demons were the teachers you hate, lol. God bless ya man

killswitch83 wrote:thank God you have the balls to respond in a truly dignified and very informative manner, Nate. Personally, notebook gaming is becoming popular in its own right......now, given you have a good setup, right after you do your term paper or that long, boring-ass Bio or HTML project, you can kick back, pop in some Doom 3, and act like the demons were the teachers you hate, lol. God bless ya man

The crazy thing, to me atleast, that you can go play online games in the middle of the park!!!

NAiLs wrote:You know, the day I bought my Inspiron 9100, I stopped using my Desktop PC right there. I only turn it on to share files that I don't have or to print, that's it. Having 2GB of PC3200 RAM and a 2.8GHz P4 w/ HT, it performs just as well ask my desktop. Plus the crispness of my laptops screen compared to my Viewsonic CRT...

I plan on building another powerhouse laptop in the future, but also plan on building a powerhouse desktop PC too.

The big thing I hate about this laptop is the battery life. ~90 minutes doing light tasks and ~50 minutes doing heavy tasks.

If you really plan out your build you can get a killer laptop and decent battery life.

take the W3 its the same chassie as my Z63A but with better graphics. I get around 9hrs of battery life with the second battery and when set to max batt life. But when i need the power its there. 2.27ghz PM really gets some stuff done quick. For example i had a video project due for class weds, it was only about 6min long but still render times for that sort of thing can be murder. Well i edited the thing during the lecture and then rendered at work and authored the dvd. It only took 7:04m to render the video and then another 17m to render and burn the DVD. thast really fast for a single core CPU. The great thing... i did this all on a laptop, thats right no need for huge dual G5's or other dual xeon systems from capture to editing, rendering and mastering all were done using a laptop that weighs under 5lbs and gets up to 9hrs of battery life.

Simply put, with the effort Intel is making in the mobile market you can or will be able soon to do anything that you would have tradionaly been forced to do on a desktop pc.

I still plan to hold on to my desktop, as it offers lots of other things that my laptop does not, but when it comes to productivity and multimedia my laptop does everything i need and lets me do it where ever i am. Thats something very important as i have almost no free time right now.

exactly, it's a welcome reprieve from whatever work you're doing just to frag some demons

infinitevalence wrote: If you really plan out your build you can get a killer laptop and decent battery life.

take the W3 its the same chassie as my Z63A but with better graphics. I get around 9hrs of battery life with the second battery and when set to max batt life. But when i need the power its there. 2.27ghz PM really gets some stuff done quick. For example i had a video project due for class weds, it was only about 6min long but still render times for that sort of thing can be murder. Well i edited the thing during the lecture and then rendered at work and authored the dvd. It only took 7:04m to render the video and then another 17m to render and burn the DVD. thast really fast for a single core CPU. The great thing... i did this all on a laptop, thats right no need for huge dual G5's or other dual xeon systems from capture to editing, rendering and mastering all were done using a laptop that weighs under 5lbs and gets up to 9hrs of battery life.

Simply put, with the effort Intel is making in the mobile market you can or will be able soon to do anything that you would have tradionaly been forced to do on a desktop pc.

I still plan to hold on to my desktop, as it offers lots of other things that my laptop does not, but when it comes to productivity and multimedia my laptop does everything i need and lets me do it where ever i am. Thats something very important as i have almost no free time right now.

digital freedom is key, I tell you. to be able to burn a graphically-demanding project, and then turn around and play around with Doom or WoW or BF:2, etc, etc, it's an amazing thing. It's going to be my next venture, not to mention I need a portable unit to console in to Cisco routers (as that is going to be my profession: net admin/net security, not sure which yet, but would like to administrate a major enterprise network over Cisco hardware) whenever password recovery or debugging is needed. So yeah, it'll be a Godsend, lol

I have to make 1 last comment!

Yonah.....

good "last" comment, lol. I plan on going with Yonah (hell, gotta match dual-core for dual-core eh, lol). It's a sweet processor, that's for sure

bigblockmatt wrote:I think that mobile will become more and more popular. I think they will start making things more interchangable, more available, and more choices in the future. some day soon i see people going to a LAN all carring laptops. (atleast i hope that will happen)

^^^That's about what I think too
Laptops definately have good potential to become very popular among enthusiasts and the "DIY" crowd, but right now, I just don't think there is enough "Do it Yourself-ness" involved with building a laptop to entice as many people. Plus the price differentials between desktop and laptop are still pretty big.

true.....one must pay for convenience in this day and age, however.....it's just one of those things, but you also have to consider the amount of flexibility options.....wireless or wired access, power-saving and powerful components, modular options on some boards where you can upgrade graphic chips, and of course the advent of chassis and DIY components, making the price of a powerful notebook just that much lower than if you tried to buy one comparable. Mobility is well worth the price IMO

killswitch83 wrote:Mobility is well worth the price IMO

Well, that's essentially what you are paying for. It all really depends on the end user's needs. If mobility can benefit them, then (like you Paul) they will be willing to pay the extra dough for the mobility. But for others (like me) mobility is really not an issue and therefor we would not be willing to pay the price premium. It's still a more specialized, unique market niche, but I definately think it is growing in popularity though.

yep, and actually though I think it's worth what you pay for it, the thing is that I can say that, but I'm living as a college student, so desktop solutions are more geared toward me right now. Just wait though, after all this is over, it's on!! and I will have my powerhouse notebook.

killswitch83 wrote:yep, and actually though I think it's worth what you pay for it, the thing is that I can say that, but I'm living as a college student, so desktop solutions are more geared toward me right now. Just wait though, after all this is over, it's on!! and I will have my powerhouse notebook.

Amen!