Why is 'laptop' lingo so different to PC's

gus

I was being swooned by a Toshiba M40 & M60 the other day in a local computer shop as it had a Qosmio screen that had a screen resolution of about 1600x2000 (give or take a bit)

I have been searching reviews on the net for most of the day & there is no mention of that high of a resolution on that laptop. I know it exists as i saw it myself.

Can you get these newer centrino's with a screen as good as that ...im yet to find one.

Gus...forever lost in the binary world.

marlof

Gus, according to the Toshiba website, the M60 is 1680x1050 (you can see it in this pdf file). Notebooks are often displayed with terms of XGA, WXGA, WSXGA+ etc. These acronyms stand for the resolution. From a Dell webstite:

XGA 1024 x 768
Wide XGA (WXGA) 1280 x 720
SXGA+ 1400 x 1050
Wide SXGA+ (WSXGA+) 1680 x 1050
UXGA 1600 x 1200
Wide UXGA (WUXGA) 1920 x 1200

You would be able to find a Centrino based notebook with that screen, just by typing in the WSXGA+ and the type of processor you're looking for (with a brand you like if you please) in Google.

Next to the resolution also the type of screen is important. I noticed the Toshiba comes with a TruBrite screen. I guess this is the same as the thing Sony calls X-Black in their Vaio series: a highly reflective screen that gives very good colors and saturation when it's turned on. In my experience, different notebook builders call these screen differently.

gus

Ahhh...the haze is starting to lift.

Tks marlof...i will use all that to keep searching.

us

gus

Just some more questions on laptops

Yep there is a loose rumor doing the rounds that someone is buying me a laptop & if it happens then i want to be prepared & get the right one...for my hobby of course.

What would you choose atm with centrino around 1.7-2 gig processor...dvd burner..128 vid card..gig or 2 of Ram...and the best photo editing screen currently avail.

I am so lost in their diff names as marlof pointed out. To me it is sort of between the Sony Vairo FS680 ... Toshiba M45 with a Qosmio screen or the Dell 9300. Im sort of staying with a 15" screen because i dont think a 17" will fit in my brians hot tub pack.

Just googled that question & it will take a 17"...so 17" it can be.

Tell me what you would buy for a photo editing laptop atm.

marlof

Personally, I wouldn't go for a Dell, but that's probably just me. To me they seem to be a little bit too much "plastic fantastic". I have had excellent experience with my Sony Vaio's. My first is still in the running after about 6 years, doing its tour of duty at my mom's. And I've heard tons of good stuff on the Toshiba's. I don't think you could go wrong with either of those, since they both should have brilliant screen (important when it comes to photo editing), have similar processors and if you add enough RAM to either, these will be good enough for Photoshop tasks.

gus

Thanks again marlof...huge help to me knowing that i can bring the choice down to 2.

Would you really bother with 2 gig ram over 1 gig for CS2 photo editing ?

Gus

marlof

Currently I'm limited to 512mb (my aging WinXP desktop doesn't support more) and 640mb (my iBook maxes out at that), so both sound huge to me. Let's hope someone chimes in who has experience with both 1gb and 2gb, and can tell you if the difference is worth the extra expense.

gus

Thanks mate. Seriously i didnt notice a huge diff when i went from 256 to 1gig on my pc. But i may be doing something wrong.

Anyone out there up on this 64 bit Turion ?

marlof

The iBook came with 640, but when I went from 256 to 512 on the desktop, there was a real difference esp. in the time needed to apply filters etc. No more making and drinking coffee before the calculations were done.

gus

Just spent 2 hours in a huge laptop shop & a dvd of my own shots.

Really i think its much ado about nothing. Any of the higher end laptops looked great.

Gus

marlof

That's basically what I meant: go for the reliable brands, and you'll find they all have similar specs. When you go 15" or 17", they even look more the same. It's only with the diminuitive smaller ones that certain brands stand out.

gus

You are always helpfull to the needy mate..tks for your time here.

Gus

luke_church

Humungus wrote:

What would you choose atm with centrino around 1.7-2 gig processor...

Sounds good. The Pentium M series are nice processors... (For what it's worth, Intel has now decided to kill its P4 line and go forward with the Pentium M series...)

dvd burner..128 vid card..gig or 2 of Ram...

I use 1024Mb on my Toshiba M200, 2048 on my Dell Precision and 4096 on a computation analysis system when I can get it. CS2 strains the M200 (when run along with Visual Studio, Office and Acrobat, so if you're only running CS2 it might be OK), the Precision is not memory limited when doing photo editting, even when running other applications at the same time. I don't find much memory effect on CS between the Precision and Computation machine, though I don't much photo editting on it.

Go for 2048 if you can afford it, I wouldn't bother paying to go higher, esp. on a laptop. Do not buy less than 1024.

and the best photo editing screen currently avail.

The Toshiba has a nice screen, but the requirement for it to be a tablet PC introduces conpromises (a hard glass layer over the top, adds reflectivity). Some Toshiba's I've seen have been good as well. I've seen nice screens on Dell and Sony, probably in terms of screens Sony are superior, though overall I prefer the Dell laptops.

I am so lost in their diff names as marlof pointed out. To me it is sort of between the Sony Vairo FS680 ... Toshiba M45 with a Qosmio screen or the Dell 9300. Im sort of staying with a 15" screen because i dont think a 17" will fit in my brians hot tub pack.

Errrmmm... That's not exactly portable!?! Do you really need a laptop if you're buying something that large?

Ahh well, sorry can't comment on photo editting screens, esp. not at that size...

If you've got any other questions give me a yell,

Cheers,

Luke

gus

Thanks luke It was only yesterday that i discovered that some of these 17" models like the Toshiba Qosmio are really designed for desk use much like a normal PC.

I think i would choose either the Vairo or the Qosmio range. I saw that reflective screen you mentioned on the Toshibas & would rather have it than a non-reflective one as when it is in a darkish area...it really gives some punch. That non reflective is a bit ordinary.

Thanks again for your advice.

Gus

Michiel de Brieder

Gus,

I use a Dell Latitude 800 for post processing (laptop from work ) with 1GB of memory and a Centrino processor, lower end. If I'd buy a laptop right now I'd be going for the fastest Centrino I could get, 2 GB memory and a FAST HD. The HD is very important when using photoshop. Get yourself a fast one, preferrably 7200 rpm. (the photoshop cache is written to the HD and read from it, that means a lot of HD 'traffic' and speed will help it to keep up with that)

Using RSE is a charm on my 'worklaptop' though. Much better than using my own P4 1.7 Ghz with 4200 rpm HD.

The outside brand (Dell, Sony or whatever) doesn't really matter, it's the processor, HD and memory that matters Laptop screens ARE quite tricky for photos. I'm getting signals from people that my pictures sometimes look kinda flat, even though they sparkle on my screen....

Cheers mate!

gus

Tks for the heads up on the hard drive mick...i was wondering about that.

So all this leaves just one more question guys.

Why should i look at a centrino ?

Im told you can be looking at about 3 hours in reality for a sony 1.7 gig , 1 gig ram vairo centrino battery life when i can get the non centrino sony vairo 3.2 gig 2 gig ram for less money & still get maybe 2 hours battery life.

That seems a lot to pay for to get an hour or maybe 2 extra from a battery.

Weight is not an issue ..hey its just a gym visit.

Gus

ChrisJ

Humungus wrote:

Why should i look at a centrino ?
Gus

If you ever actually put the laptop on your lap, you'll be happier with the Centrino! It generates much less heat.

The Centrino also has some stability advantages, due to the common set of drivers with the chipset... but that's probably negligible at this point, especially with a major manufacturer like Sony.

But if your goal is speed/processing power, then the faster CPU might be better for you.

luke_church

Humungus wrote:

Why should i look at a centrino ?

Just a comment: You shouldn't compare performance by comparing CPU frequencies. Centrino's tend to get a fair bit more done per CPU cycle than P4s. My 1.8Ghz Centrino behaves fairly similarly to my 2.8Ghz P4, maybe a tad slower...

So the speed difference will be much less than it sounds...

Just worth noting :-) If you aren't bothered by the battery life or the heat, then P4s are also fine...

Luke

gus

All read & digested gents.

Last last question.

Why do the have video cards that are 128 & 256 meg but they are called 'shared memory' ?

Why isnt the video card separate like the 128 meg card in my PC ?

Is this just a term or does the system work different to the PC in this area ?

luke_church

Humungus wrote:

Why isnt the video card separate like the 128 meg card in my PC ?

Is this just a term or does the system work different to the PC in this area ?

Your PC has a lump of memory on the graphics card. This is used for storing textures and triangles during 3D rendering and for storing copies of the screen in buffers, and storing ordering information associated with triangles in 3D worlds etc etc.

It's on the graphics card because that gives a higher bandwidth and higher performance than having to go through the AGP port and the memory handling infrastructure of the PC. It's dedicated soley to the graphics card, it doesn't have to care about the speed of the system bus etc...

Memory lookups are expensive in time.

Why do the have video cards that are 128 & 256 meg but they are called 'shared memory' ?

Laptops can be a bit different. Like cheapo graphics cards for PCs, they save money and space by using the system's main memory for holding texture buffers etc.

It's slower, but its cheaper and smaller.

Think of it as the computer marking an area of the memory as for the graphics card to play with, it may or may not only use the ammount it needs (but one would hope so).

If you're playing 3D games, shared memory is going to do nasty things to the performance, otherwise, you probably don't care.

So as with most things, its not just a term, its a money saving trick, that harms the performance in certain cases.

Luke

marlof

Some video cards in notebooks use a bit of your system RAM for their memory, other cards have proprietary RAM. It depends on the card that is used. If you have a choice, having non shared RAM would generally be a bit faster.

Andy

apple powerbooks check the store tues/wed they're due for a small announcement, so the rumor sites say.

gus, you *can* use an apple! no translation required

luke_church

andy wrote:

gus, you *can* use an apple! no translation required

Andy,

Just out of interest, how many 'excessive' adjectives do Apple actually use? 1 minute tootling around their website found:

Super
Express
Extreme
Amazing
Impossibly
Ingenious
marvel

I hate to imagine what the Apple 'ordinary' would be like

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Luke

Andy

luke_church wrote:

Andy,

Just out of interest, how many 'excessive' adjectives do Apple actually use? 1 minute tootling around their website found:

Super
Express
Extreme
Amazing
Impossibly
Ingenious
marvel

I hate to imagine what the Apple 'ordinary' would be like

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Luke

if the superlative fits....

DavidTO

luke_church wrote:

Andy,

Just out of interest, how many 'excessive' adjectives do Apple actually use? 1 minute tootling around their website found:

Super
Express
Extreme
Amazing
Impossibly
Ingenious
marvel

I hate to imagine what the Apple 'ordinary' would be like

Sorry, couldn't resist...

Luke

Apple ordinary is a step above Windows, for your reference...

And BTW, none of those adjectives are excessive, they are merely true...

gus

andy wrote:

apple powerbooks check the store tues/wed they're due for a small announcement, so the rumor sites say.

gus, you *can* use an apple! no translation required

But i would have to buy CS2 again wouldnt i ?

Or run it as a virtual PC which is slower than waxy.

Gus

gus

Thanks luke & marlof for the explanation. I was wondering.

So today i got a quote from the mob (just down the road) that used to build the Dells here. Apparently it is all able to be upgraded.

* ITC Millennia 8000-B
* 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) super bright .. (same as the Qosmio uses)
* Centrino 2 Ghz sonoma
* 2 gig DDr ram
* 60 GB 7200 ATA Hard drive (i dont want big just fast)
* DVD burner Dual layer & CD burner
* 56K & Wireless LAN
* 256 GeForce 6800 vid card dedicated not shared
* 5.1 audio
* yada yada yada

Hows that look guys ?

Thank god im not paying for it :uhoh

marlof

Gus, it sounds like a swell device. The only thing I can't judge from here is build quality. For a notebook, this is extremely important as with the smaller size and the usage pattern (much movement involved), reliabilty can be an issue. If you send it my way, I'll testdrive it. After a year or so, when I'm sure it's ok, I'll send it to you.

As for the Mac: yeah, Adobe is stupid enough to force WinXP users to rebuy (at the full price, there's no "cross-grade" option!) their software for the Mac OS. Although I love my iBook, the $600 fine on switching to Macs only is bit too steep for me as well. Running Photoshop CS2 on Virtual PC 7 is not really advised.

gus

They are really jumping to the front around here mate. Best bit is that its from a store just down the road from me.

I will take a 3 year warranty anyway. Ive seen too many laptops goes toes up after the 1st years warranty is up.

Still have not the go ahead to buy it but am now ready when the green light goes.

Thanks for your help marlof & luke.

marlof

Sounds good, mate. Let's hope you get a green light soon!

Michiel de Brieder

Humungus wrote:

Thanks luke & marlof for the explanation. I was wondering.

So today i got a quote from the mob (just down the road) that used to build the Dells here. Apparently it is all able to be upgraded.

* ITC Millennia 8000-B
* 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) super bright .. (same as the Qosmio uses)
* Centrino 2 Ghz sonoma
* 2 gig DDr ram
* 60 GB 7200 ATA Hard drive (i dont want big just fast)
* DVD burner Dual layer & CD burner
* 56K & Wireless LAN
* 256 GeForce 6800 vid card dedicated not shared
* 5.1 audio
* yada yada yada

Hows that look guys ?

Thank god im not paying for it :uhoh

[DROOOOOOOOOOL]