CES 2010: The Best And Worst Laptops

[foxyshadis]

...but let's hope AMD/ATI learn a lesson from NVIDIA in 2010 and start offering mobile GPU drivers on their website.

QFT! Seriously....

ATI has posted mobility drivers on their site since before AMD bought them, unfortunately their OEM licensing contracts forbid them to publicly advertise it. Until they're all renegotiated I don't think it's possible to show or support them. I've been using this link since at least Cat 5.5:
http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/

Count me in as one who doesn't get the smartbook play.

[JPZ]

ATI has posted mobility drivers on their site since before AMD bought them, unfortunately their OEM licensing contracts forbid them to publicly advertise it. Until they're all renegotiated I don't think it's possible to show or support them. I've been using this link since at least Cat 5.5:
http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/

I came here just to point this out, but foxyshadis beat me to it. +rep

[plasma.]

I was personally impressed with the HP tm2 (review plox!), Asus UL30Jt and UL80Jt and Asus nx90.

[benyeap]

In CES, there is a new Ferrari One? Or is it the existing one?

The current Ferrari One only rocks with the design, nothing else. No HDMI & only HD3200. The Athlon Neo X2 L310 also loses to Intel Celeron SU2300 too.

I am looking for a better AMD ULV processor with HD5200 (or whatever it calls), at least with HDMI. e-SATA/USB combo is a plus.

[leaftye]

I agree a tablet should be min 12inch's any smaller it's not that useful.

I disagree to the point that I'm planning to buy a new tablet that's much smaller than the 12.1" tablet I've already had for years.

[The General]

To be honest, this article really leaves me cold. I'm sick of seeing reviews of netbooks and rather amused that this article is announcing now what I realised nearly a year ago. Netbooks have always been horribly underpowered and yet I still see reviews saying "overall performance with the Intel Atom platform is very reasonable". Reading those reviews, you'd think that a netbook was a reasonable alternative to a laptop, which is isn't. The very fact that this article is titled "The Best and Worst Laptops" and yet talks mostly about "smartbooks" and netbooks is ridiculous in itself.

The idea for smartbooks is ridiculous. Sure, I can see why it sounds like a good idea when discussed around the boardroom table but I really don't see where the "gap between netbooks and smartphones" is. Why would I want to buy something with the same features as my smartphone but which is too large to fit in my pocket? At what point would I ever find that I don't want to use a 3" smartphone, find it too inconvenient to carry an 8" netbook but am fine with carrying a 5" smartbook?

[Vogelbung]

The only thing that interested me at CES in terms of actual 'OK, I'd like to buy that' was the new Sony Z. If I were buying Sonys anymore that is - although the refresh is certainly giving me food for reconsideration.

There seems to be no real high-end anymore. Hell, Dell seems to be actually holding up the high-end these days. Dell! It's been like this for at least two years.

It's either gaming machines designed by 12 year olds with engineering which simply amounts to throwing all the latest things in there, affordable lightweights or it's netbooky junk. What seems to generate the buzz is 'it's got x, it's got y and most importantly it's under a thousand bucks'. Where is the standout 'envelope-pushing', not just 'innovations' for the easily marketed-to from Apple et al?

The U1 was certainly interesting, but that was it. Bah.

[Skyshade]

The only thing that interested me at CES in terms of actual 'OK, I'd like to buy that' was the new Sony Z. If I were buying Sonys anymore that is - although the refresh is certainly giving me food for reconsideration.

There seems to be no real high-end anymore. Hell, Dell seems to be actually holding up the high-end these days. Dell! It's been like this for at least two years.

It's either gaming machines designed by 12 year olds with engineering which simply amounts to throwing all the latest things in there, affordable lightweights or it's netbooky junk. What seems to generate the buzz is 'it's got x, it's got y and most importantly it's under a thousand bucks'. Where is the standout 'envelope-pushing', not just 'innovations' for the easily marketed-to from Apple et al?

The U1 was certainly interesting, but that was it. Bah.

Hey, what happened to the bowl on the cat's head? I like that one better (looks less photoshoppy).

I think even the Sony Z has some price point compromise in there, so maybe the build quality will still not up to your bar, actually. Still, option for 1920x1080 on 13.1" screen and the quad-SSD RAID 0 (so I guess you technically could go 512GBx4 if they fit) on top of i7-620M & GT 330M should give you some pretty amazing power at 3.3 lb.

[Vogelbung]

Hey, what happened to the bowl on the cat's head? I like that one better (looks less photoshoppy).

I think even the Sony Z has some price point compromise in there, so maybe the build quality will still not up to your bar, actually. Still, option for 1920x1080 on 13.1" screen and the quad-SSD RAID 0 (so I guess you technically could go 512GBx4 if they fit) on top of i7-620M & GT 330M should give you some pretty amazing power at 3.3 lb.

It's Conan cat. Regular bowl cat will resume shortly.

[foxyshadis]

ATI has posted mobility drivers on their site since before AMD bought them, unfortunately their OEM licensing contracts forbid them to publicly advertise it. Until they're all renegotiated I don't think it's possible to show or support them. I've been using this link since at least Cat 5.5:
http://ati.amd.com/online/mobilecatalyst/

Count me in as one who doesn't get the smartbook play.

Old news now, but I recently found out that ATI provides mobility drivers for the 2000 to 4000 series mobility cards right on their driver screen - but only if you choose the windows 7 option. (Which works in Vista, iirc, but I haven't tested performance.) So as long as you have 7, the biggest complaint about ATI hardware in new laptops is pretty much wrong.