The Technicist

2008 Back To School Notebook Recommendations

As we know, August is when back to school shopping really gets going, and at most colleges this fall, a notebook is something that will be extremely helpful to students. The notebook market is huge, with hundreds of models spanning vastly different categories to satisfy varying types of users. Which ones are the best? Here are my recommendations for this year.

• Subnotebook/Netbook
• Ultraportable
• Thin and Light
• Mainstream
• Desktop Replacement

More information on each category of notebooks is contained after the jump. Since I am writing quite a bit for each category, I will be putting up a category at least once every two days. Thanks for your patience.

HP dv4t shows up on HP's website!

The hotly anticipated HP Pavilion dv4t has shown up on HP's website here, though it is not immediately obvious where to find it on the HP Shopping site. The 14.1" dv4t replaces the venerable dv2000 line of notebooks, with the dv2500 and dv2700 updates along the way for the Santa Rosa platform and Penryn line of processors respectively.

The dv4t shares its style with the dv5z notebook released by HP earlier this month, and features some nice options that were not available in the dv2x00 line. While there is still no higher resolution than the standard 1280 x 800 WXGA available (other competing 14" notebooks like the Dell Inspiron 1420 have 1440x900 WXGA+ screens optional), there is an optional LED backlit panel option for a steep $200, and the completely flat Infinity glass-paneled screen as a $50 add-on. It features, as expected, the Intel Montevina platform, featuring Penryn-based processors ranging from the 2.0GHz P7350 to the 2.8GHz T9600 and the Intel PRO 5100 wireless card. The choices in graphics are the Intel GMA X4500 IGP or the Nvidia 9200M GS dedicated graphics card (+ $100). This is somewhat dissapointing, as the 9200M is expected to provide similar performance to the 8400M GS found in the previous dv2500t and dv2700t, and with Nvidia's recent struggles with both Windows Vista drivers and failure of mobile graphics cards, whether it is advisable to go with an Nvidia card at this time is very questionable. I would have liked to see a more powerful midrange graphics card like the ATI HD 3450 (available in the dv5z and rumoured to be optional in the dv5t as well) instead of the low-end Nvidia part. Rounding out the dv4t are optional Verizon mobile broadband, Bluetooth, a fingerprint reader, an available Bluray ROM drive for $199, a 6 cell battery (higher capacity 6 cell with 20% more battery life is a $29 option), and everyone's favorite Windows Vista operating system in either Home Premium (32 or 64bit), Business (32bit), or Ultimate (64bit) flavours.

Dimensionally, the dv4t remains very similar to the dv2700 that it replaces. The footprint stays nearly identical, with the same width and length increasing by .12". The thinnest point of the notebook goes from 1.05" in the dv2700t to 1.34" in the dv4t; however, the thickest point remains almost unchanged at 1.57" (vs 1.54" in the dv2700t), so it just is a much flatter notebook that doesn't slope down as much as the dv2000 did. Port-wise, the dv4t is much better than its predecessor, with 3 dedicated USB ports, an eSATA port (which doubles as a 4th USB port), and an HDMI port. However, it looses the IEEE 1394 port, though that is worth giving up for the additional USBs you gain, not to mention the eSATA port (for comparison, the dv2700t had 2 USB, one IEE1394, and a VGA).

Overall, the dv4t looks like a very worthy successor to the much loved dv2000 series of notebooks. It starts at $999, and should be shipping in early August.

Intel Montevina - and so the flood begins

Intel's new Montevina platform debuts today, and with it, the flood of notebooks based on the Montevina platform is starting to hit its flow. Whats new? As of right now, these:

• Lenovo ThinkPad: X200, SL300/400/500, R400/500, T400/500, W500
• Lenovo IdeaPad: U330, Y430/530/730
• Fujitsu Notebooks: E8420, S6250, S7220, A6210
• Fujitsu Tablets: T5010, T1010
• Sony: Z series, FW series, SR series, BZ series
• Toshiba: Satellite Pro S300, Tecra M10 and A10 - have previously announced the Qosmio F50, G50, and X305
• Asus: F8Va, M70Vm, M50Vm
• Samsung: Q210/310, R460/510/560/710, P210/460/461/510/560
• HP: EliteBook 6930p, Pavilion dv4t, Pavilion dv5t
• HP Compaq: 6530b, 6730b, 6830p, 2730p Tablet PC
• Acer: TravelMate 6293, 5730, 7730, 6593, and 6493
• Medion: Akoya S5610
• Sager: NP5796, NP2096, NP7680, NP7660, NP7220, NP8660, NP6790, available for order here

It is certain that Dell and the other big boys will debut their Montevina based notebooks in the coming days and weeks to keep current with the newest technologies. Most of these notebooks should be shipping by August, and a WiMax enabled version of the Montevina platform is expected to ship sometime in September, as the WiMax wireless card ran into some problems with the FCC, and Intel decided to ship Montevina without the WiMax at launch.

Also later this year, Intel is expected to release the first quad core processor for notebooks specifically, with the Core 2 Extreme QX9300, packing 4 cores each at 2.53GHz and the usual Extreme Edition goodies like an unlocked clock multiplier. It will presumably only be fitted into the extreme gaming notebooks fitting of the Extreme Edition name, since those are the only notebooks with a thermal envelope large enough to encompass a quad core processor. Interestingly, the TDP of the QX9300 is only expected to be 45W, which is 1W more than the 44W TDP of the X9100 dual core Extreme Edition mobile CPU, which is clocked at 3.06GHz.

Noteworthy enough to merit mention as of right now - the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 is absolutely amazing. It weighs under 3lbs to start, but pop for the 9 cell battery (4 cell is standard), which brings the weight to 3.6lbs. Its worth every ounce, as it reaches nearly 10 hours of battery life on a single charge, as per Notebook Review's review of the notebook. Thats with a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor and a speedy 7200RPM hard drive too, so its not a stripped out, SSD equipped ultraportable like you might be expecting. Even better, the X200 starts at $1199. Order yours on August 5th.

Another notebook thats quite interesting is the Sager NP8660. It is a 15.4" that offers either an Nvidia 9800M GT/GTS or ATI Mobility HD 3870 dedicated GPU, with 512MB of VRAM in all three graphics cards. Those are all high end gaming graphics card, roughly on equal to the 9600GT or HD3850 desktop GPUs. For comparison, most of the other 17" gaming notebooks feature the same cards, but in much larger and heavier form factors.

I am quite liking this crop of notebooks, much more compelling than the Santa Rosa generation of notebooks, where everything was decent, but nothing really stood out.

New Dell Studio notebooks

Dell has announced their new Studio lineup, with the 15" Studio 15 and 17" Studio 17 models. Both available in one of 7 different colours or a patterned lid design (with 4 optional trim colours) and feature displays up to WUXGA, with WXGA+ LED backlit screens available, a good range of Intel Santa Rosa and Penryn processors to pick from, optional ATI graphics cards (standard on the S17), a pricey Blu-ray burner option, and two pieces of new Dell software.

One of them is the Dell Dock - a blatant ripoff of the dock in Mac OS X. It does exactly the same thing as it does in OS X, which is to say that it is a program launcher, but it also offers much more customisation, in typical Dell fashion. The other is Dell Video Chat, which seems to be a competitor to iChat. It bundles video chat with IM and VoIP functionality to create a fairly interesting program which could become rather popular.

I think the Studio line was introduced to really amp up the style quotient of the Dell mainstream lineup, and it does that to a fairly high degree. At first glance, the Studio 15 looks like a colourful XPS M1530, and upon a second glance at it, looks like a colourful M1530 with a poorer graphics card and plastic instead of metal. Analysing the similarity between the two, I can say with some certainty that the lower end XPS models will be phased out in favour of the Studio line. Interestingly, I am surprised to see that Dell released these models now, when Santa Rosa/Penryn will be replaced by Montevina will be out within three weeks time, in the second week of July.

Notebook comparison tests

Ok, so comparison tests with multiple cars happen all the time in auto magazines, and I had an idea to implement the same kind of comparo with notebooks. I suggested this on the Notebook Review forums quite some time back, but it got shot down due to logistical issues or something. At which point, I have to wonder, with a site that has as much reputation and population as NBR has, how truly difficult would it be to get a Dell Inspiron 1525, an HP dv6700t, a Toshiba Satellite A305, and some other competing notebook all sent to one of the sites paid reviewers to run a comparison test on? You could get demo units from the manufacturers for at least two of them, and for the other two, get them from a store with a good return policy so that after testing is done, you could return them, or just keep them as company laptops afterwards with a tax write-off. Clearly, if they wanted to, it could be done.

Now, why is a comparison test so important? Because instead of individual reviews, which merely examine the strengths and weaknesses of a system in and of itself, a comparo evaluates a system's strengths and weaknesses directly in terms of that system's main competitors. So while a review would say, "the Dell XPS M1330 has very good build quality", a shootout featuring the M1330 would say something more along the lines of "the Dell M1330 has very good build quality, better than the Toshiba U405, but not quite as good as the Asus W7S". Also, with a comparison test, it is possible to rank the notebooks in the class with concrete evidence given by the findings of the overall review.

A word on head to head reviews, which happen every so often in the tech world. It certainly is a step in the right direction, and it can be successfully argued that they are simply comparison tests with two devices competing; however, pitting two systems head to head like that is simply scaled down too far to be at all effective in spanning a market segment. For example, is it really fair to only compare the Dell Inspiron 1525 and the HP Pavilion dv6700t, if the Toshiba Satellite A305 or Asus M51Sn is a better notebook? Not really, no. For a comparison to be worthwhile, it must effectively represent the relevant products in a given market sector.

As I alluded to in my previous post, I plan to run a comparison test for the major players in the subnotebook class - Asus, MSI, Acer, and Dell - once all of them have hit the market, which should be later this summer. I will return them once I have finished the test, but I may keep the one I like best for myself. We shall see how this plays out. Stay tuned for more.