AppliedVisual said:
Yes, and the VAIO notebooks equipped with the BluRay drive are scarce as hens teeth. And even if you do get one, they're buggy as all hell and the only reason Sony hasn't issued a recall is they're biding their time and stalling until they have a tangible solution (new model slimline Blu-Ray drive) to update with. Currently no other computer manufacturers anywhere have a BluRay drive standard. Only Sony in their Vaio systems. Sony is selling the internal BluRay recorder as a stand-alone drive though and it's been available for about 2 months. They updated it last month with new firmware that allows it to playback AACS content. Toshiba is currently the only PC manufacturer shipping systems (just two models of notebook systems) with HD-DVD drives, only one model is capable of writing. Like the Sony Vaio notebook, the Toshiba HD-DVD notebook drive is limited to single layer recording. Toshiba currently has internal HD-DVD recorders available for purchase as well, but I have yet to see any PC manufacturer offering them as part of a system.
That's funny Sager/VoodoPC have a 1.1" thick 15" notebook with a GO7800GTX 512MB GPU. I can dig up a few more if you want - Hypersonic has a pretty nice 1.2" model. But take a look at voodoopc.com and see the 1.1" thin 15". Getting pretty good reviews too, but most people seem to agree that the Sager version is the better buy since it's the same exact notebook minus the glowing trackpad and fancy paint job for nearly $800 less.
It depends on the notebook, but several 17" units on the market have large enough batteries to still squeeze 2 to 3 hours out of such a configuration. Realistically, most mobile power users don't care about battery life all that much. The apps I run can drain my 15" MBP in 20 to 40 minutes, so I couldn't care less if I get 10 minutes with a 7900GTX GPU in there. I have to plug the thing in no matter what... If I want a mobile system that can run forever off of a single battery charge, I'll go buy some wimpy little 12" thing or maybe even just a Macbook. ...Something that can check my email all day long and let me type in Word while I'm on an airplane for 3 hours. Yippeeeeee....
There's more to the notebook market than having long battery life and being super mobile. Many people buy them for portable gaming systems and there's many like me who buy them so they have mobile workstation systems (or something fairly close to a workstation) that they can work directly with clients on-site. It's a huge advantage to be able to dump HD video right onto a capable notebook while in the field or to make changes to a complex 3D model or scene with a client looking over my shoulder, at their office. Some people want or need this type of power and no battery is going to last long enough to be usable anyway under some of these conditions.
But now that this thread is over 100 pages long, I think I and several others have been over this at least 2 dozen times already. ...Not sure why I responded, I guess I'm bored watching an animation render thinking how much nicer it will be when I upgrade my render farm... C'mon Apple release the new 8-Core Xserves already...
A dozen times? Really, I must have missed that ;-)/
Well while youre waiting for your upgrade your render farm to process uncompressed 4k output from a Dalsa Origin, you could just use the software Apple released and cluster a bunch of the new MBP's (assuming higher bandwidth connections as an option) and have a onsite mobile render farm
. Don't forget your dual port Express Card RAID portable RAID connection to a bunch of 2.5in 160GB drives.
I could only find a review comparing
GG7900 GS to the GTX512MB for the Dell 17in gamer. It gets longer runtimes, but Dell doesn't mind if you can cook lunch off of their laptops(notice in the picture at this link, the digitherm is reading 197.6F- to quote Paris "that's Hot!". Those thinner laptops using the GTX512MB are likely to get very, very hot doing the things you want, but even
slightly thinner Apple models, results in more difficulty with cooling (ever read about how Dell laptops simply burn up the internal HDD's after a short period?). There's a reason the 15in MBP's x1600 is running at slower clock compared to the 17in.- thermal issues. Manufacturers are free to use a range of clock speeds with the GPU's. Serious gaming portables use SLI and 2 GPU's, and they have massive weight, hurricane force & sounding fan
s to cool the insides from having a system failure.
I'm sure there are many who will put up with any or all things, 10lb external Li-Poly batteries, all kinds of stuff. The acclaimed movie Russian Ark was shot in a continuous take, with cameraman being followed throughout the Hermitage museum by a cable and other person lugging around a 60lb pack of SCSI RAID drives. Those that are beyond what the majority will put up with, to get maximum performance. But Apple builds a compromise for what they perceive as a balance they think the majority will accept, Apple doesn't give you many choices unfortunately, they can't even give you a 2k res screen on the friggin 17in, let alone the 15in option available on the PC side.
Classic cart before the wheel on Hi-Def video optical drives. But did not Apple have one of the 1st DVD drives. So now instead of a tech leader, they are a tech follower? Just because the early drives don't work so well, never stopped companies before, surely that is not the reason Apple doesn't have one on their systems yet. Panasonic showed a prototype slot loading burner at last years 2005 NAB. Sony's BR drive is a tray loader.
Samsung M55 HD-DVD (player only?)
"And yes, gentle readers, there is a woman in that photo, now please try to comment on the laptop, mkay? We don't want to get rough, see." LOL, they were just asking for it.
LG's XNOTE S1-P555K laptop with HD DVD player (player only)
Acer Aspire 9800, 20.1in w/HD DVD
Sorry, I don't have the link to the Pani for NAB 2005, but others showing prototypes last year:
http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/05/panasonic-shows-off-blu-ray-notebook-drive/
Scarse as hens teeth? Huh, maybe you should click through the links for availability in this X-bit labs review of the Sony:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/mobile/display/sony-vaio-bluray.html
When have new(technology) optical drives not been buggy? Goes with the territory. So you're saying no one should consider the 160GB perpendicular laptop drives, cause with that new tech, you'll find lots of reports of drive failures on the Seagate...maybe they should have a recall on them? (Hitachi is newer with their 160GB, so who knows about failure rates-WD & Fujitsu have announced perp. recording 160GB laptop drives, WD is shipping)
Get a smoking hot (literally) PC laptop if you want a true desktop replacement of necessary performance (or set up your render farm of multiple laptops, lol). I'm confident Apple will not give us anything more potent than the 80nm GG7700, until we get to 45nm CPU's and <80nm GPU's next year :-(. Until then you'll just have to fry your eggs or testicles on a PC laptop that has been set for the highest clock---I wonder if there are utilities that can report the actual clock speed on these installed GPU's so we can see if the thinner laptops are actually using the full capability of the GPU?
Btw, genertik, Toshiba has had an OLED screen, not silly backlit keys, on laptop for more than a year. I'm thinking there are performance/quality issues with OLED, or quantity/cost considerations, other wise all laptop makers would have been using them by now, not just Apple. Now take a look at the link to the 7900GS v 7900GTX, at 'performance' mode the Dell is consuming nearly 100watts with either GPU. I believe I read TDP for the GTX was ~45w and the GS ~20w. I'll bet it's more a heat/cooling issue, rather than battery power or total system power consumption that is the deciding factor for Apple not using the higher end GPU's.
More than just the laptops you have mentioned have been announced. Where is Apple's announcement...coming in last place I see? Perhaps its Sony's PS3, doesn't that use a slot loading BD? So Apple can't get enough to make an announcement of updated MBP's until they do. MBP updates at MWSF, with BD slot loaders?
Ah well, might as well start the new thread on the upcoming AI or TS rumor about the imminent release of the 45nm Intel CPU's, with enough lead time we can get well over 500pgs, arguing incessantly over trackpads and mouse designs. I think I'll pass on that, I think I'd rather '
break some tooth' with Jessica Alba (btw, the 2nd page of this story has no text in the link provided, but I think we can see the 'two' reasons for that...hehe).
