Pretty amazing what can be done now in such a small space. Thinking about it now maybe I should have waited for the 7800 when I was looking for my laptop. But my Inspiron 9300 with 6800 Ultra runs most stuff well enough for me. I was also sceptical about the stretching screen issue, but on my dell's WUXGA I havn't really noticed it at lower ressies.
I've been researching laptops nonstop for the past three months and I say to anyone looking to buy a gaming lappy to wait untill January. I'm waiting for the dual core Pentium/Yonah processor. Take a look
It'd be throwin' ends away to buy a 650-750$ pentium M 780 when you'll "probably" be paying the same for a chip twice as G. The pentium M is by far the best mobile gaming processor, so two of em' should really help with encoding, media, applications etc...
Is the Rock laptop the same as the Evesham laptop or what? The eversham one has a tad little more processing power, so what's the difference other than that?
Originally Posted by Pookeyhead How come you can get a high res panel on a laptop, but if you want to buy a 19 inch panel, the best you can get is crappy 1280x1024???
I've been wondering that for a while now, a friend's laptop has his res at 1600x1200 and I couldn't figure out why lcds can't have them at their native. (If a laptop can have 1920000 number of pixels why can't a tft screen?)
Extras
Rock bundle in a 3-year warranty as standard, which is good value considering the cost of the components (below). However, possibly more useful is the recovery software included as standard. A few gigs of the Rock notebook hard disk are set aside in a separate partition, and this partition houses a clean install of Windows XP, pre-configured with factory default settings (plus the added extras such as DVD software and all the correct device drivers for the sytem). If you find you need to wipe your machine, you can reboot, hit F10, and the proprietory recovery software loads. Within 5 minutes, the clean install is copied over and you can boot back into a shiny new installation of Windows. It's sort of like Norton Ghost on steriods. For enthusiasts who are overclocking, constantly installing new stuff and find that Windows slows to a crawl pretty quickly, it's an absolutely awesome timesaver, since all the drivers and such for the notebook are pre-loaded too. Genius.
Indeed. What's the software behind that and why can't I do it on my desktop?
Yeah, agree with the annoying lack of resolutions on desktop tfts.
It seems the reason is you sit closer to laptop tfts.... so they can justify the higher resolutions. 'They' think no one wants a higher res desktop tft, 'cos you sit so far away.
I will be getting a laptop this *********, and this one looks like the best laptop for that sort of price.
Has anyone had any experiences with the Vodafone 3G cards, and have any idea of the transfer rates?
Originally Posted by blunty I will be getting a laptop this *********, and this one looks like the best laptop for that sort of price.
Has anyone had any experiences with the Vodafone 3G cards, and have any idea of the transfer rates?
They are expensive to run, I don't have one myself my I have a friend who does. You do get good coverage, but speed can vary greatly. You can get I think you can get 700kbps with a good signal, but this can drop to 100kbps if you have a poor signal.
You are charged per MB, if you are rich then I don't see why you can't get it!
Originally Posted by MrWillyWonka They are expensive to run, I don't have one myself my I have a friend who does. You do get good coverage, but speed can vary greatly. You can get I think you can get 700kbps with a good signal, but this can drop to 100kbps if you have a poor signal.
You are charged per MB, if you are rich then I don't see why you can't get it!
Hmm, i just checked and it's £2/MB!!!!
I dont think ill use it too much, but it will be handy to have incase emergency access is needed, and its worth quite a bit i think.
Originally Posted by MrWillyWonka Is the Rock laptop the same as the Evesham laptop or what? The eversham one has a tad little more processing power, so what's the difference other than that?
A few things to check if you are considering purchasing a competitor's notebook:
- All rock notebooks all have 3 years insurance backed warranty as standard, if we vanish the warranty is looked after by a 3rd party
- The basic prices for the Xtreme CT all include 7200rpm HD, 1GB RAM and the WSXGA+ screen as standard
- We put Bluetooth and WiFi in as standard becase we don't think you should have to pay more for the basics on a top end notebook
If you've got any questions, we're a friendly bunch so feel free to mail or call us (all the details are at http://www.rockdirect.com). We also have a forum which lots of current Rock owners post to, they're the best people to tell you about us! that's at http://www.rockforum.co.uk if anyone's interested.
Originally Posted by blunty I will be getting a laptop this *********, and this one looks like the best laptop for that sort of price.
Has anyone had any experiences with the Vodafone 3G cards, and have any idea of the transfer rates?
I use the Vodafone card quite a lot. It is expensive per MB but for a business user it will quickly pay for itself especially on the £45/month unlimited tariff. Depends what line of business you're in but for our top bods here, for them to be able to check email and keep an eye on our systems while out of the office saves us more than £45 every month anyway.
transfer rates are usually perfectly good for web browsing and email etc. Internet gaming wouldn't work becasue latencies are too high but for everything else it's about the same speed in practice as that 250Kb/sec entry level broadband that NTL used to do in my experience.
The card is a freebie with all our Centrino notebooks anyway and you get 10MB to play with before you pay for anything.
christmas falls on 25th december <- does it work yet?
Originally Posted by Alasdair @ Rock We also have a forum which lots of current Rock owners post to, they're the best people to tell you about us! that's at http://www.rockforum.co.uk if anyone's interested.
I'll soon be a rock notebook owner B)
Can't wait for it to come!
Got one of those cool Pakuma Akara K3 bags with it.
Is there much room in the bag for books etc, or just the notebook?
we're covered with NDAs for a lot of things so I can't comment on this particular release.
However, looking back at previous chipset releases, the chipset for discrete graphics (notebooks that have a 7800 GTX for example) has come around 2/3 months after that for integrated graphics.
+ we could just about get you one of these in time for chrimbo if you ordered monday
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http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2366
It'd be throwin' ends away to buy a 650-750$ pentium M 780 when you'll "probably" be paying the same for a chip twice as G. The pentium M is by far the best mobile gaming processor, so two of em' should really help with encoding, media, applications etc...
Late ********* for me :)
I'll try again *********
They both use the same shell.
Aye, So which is best? :D
How come you can get a high res panel on a laptop, but if you want to buy a 19 inch panel, the best you can get is crappy 1280x1024???
I've been wondering that for a while now, a friend's laptop has his res at 1600x1200 and I couldn't figure out why lcds can't have them at their native. (If a laptop can have 1920000 number of pixels why can't a tft screen?)
Some explanation?
Indeed. What's the software behind that and why can't I do it on my desktop?
It seems the reason is you sit closer to laptop tfts.... so they can justify the higher resolutions. 'They' think no one wants a higher res desktop tft, 'cos you sit so far away.
Has anyone had any experiences with the Vodafone 3G cards, and have any idea of the transfer rates?
They are expensive to run, I don't have one myself my I have a friend who does. You do get good coverage, but speed can vary greatly. You can get I think you can get 700kbps with a good signal, but this can drop to 100kbps if you have a poor signal.
You are charged per MB, if you are rich then I don't see why you can't get it!
I dont think ill use it too much, but it will be handy to have incase emergency access is needed, and its worth quite a bit i think.
A few things to check if you are considering purchasing a competitor's notebook:
- All rock notebooks all have 3 years insurance backed warranty as standard, if we vanish the warranty is looked after by a 3rd party
- The basic prices for the Xtreme CT all include 7200rpm HD, 1GB RAM and the WSXGA+ screen as standard
- We put Bluetooth and WiFi in as standard becase we don't think you should have to pay more for the basics on a top end notebook
If you've got any questions, we're a friendly bunch so feel free to mail or call us (all the details are at http://www.rockdirect.com). We also have a forum which lots of current Rock owners post to, they're the best people to tell you about us! that's at http://www.rockforum.co.uk if anyone's interested.
Kind regards,
Alasdair
I use the Vodafone card quite a lot. It is expensive per MB but for a business user it will quickly pay for itself especially on the £45/month unlimited tariff. Depends what line of business you're in but for our top bods here, for them to be able to check email and keep an eye on our systems while out of the office saves us more than £45 every month anyway.
transfer rates are usually perfectly good for web browsing and email etc. Internet gaming wouldn't work becasue latencies are too high but for everything else it's about the same speed in practice as that 250Kb/sec entry level broadband that NTL used to do in my experience.
The card is a freebie with all our Centrino notebooks anyway and you get 10MB to play with before you pay for anything.
christmas falls on 25th december <- does it work yet?
Can't wait for it to come!
Got one of those cool Pakuma Akara K3 bags with it.
Is there much room in the bag for books etc, or just the notebook?
However, looking back at previous chipset releases, the chipset for discrete graphics (notebooks that have a 7800 GTX for example) has come around 2/3 months after that for integrated graphics.
+ we could just about get you one of these in time for chrimbo if you ordered monday