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February 06, 2010

Back to work

How have you'all been? I was away visiting family and friends, came back and am picking up the pieces again. Whilst adding an AUD 5 dollar fan to a friend's Pentium 4 machine, I started reading my first Green Guide for the year. Charles was writing about the notebook market - something I had been mulling over.

I've just picked up an Acer 1810TZ (all those model numbers are piling up in a blur). It's an SU 4100 energy saver dual core light weight machine with longish running time on batteries. But there is so much overlap in price, machine size, generation of cpu, corporate model vs consumer model line, if you haven't established a firm bead on what you want, it's like being a child in a candy store - everything looks yummy and sweet.

A recent broadcast email by a notebook retailer notes that some models are indeed 50% off RRP given that they are Vista/XP without free upgrade to Windows 7. Of course, they may not feature the latest generation of CPU chip but they're competent machines nevertheless since mobile CPU chip trends are towards energy vs performance tradeoffs, not sheer speed championship.

Some month ago, one of the staff in a retail chain noted that notebooks were boring as anything, preferring to discuss digital cameras. Not any more. Not only are there different technical specs and CPUs in different machines, the machines themselves are cosmetically diversifying.

With the Apple iPad entering the fray and possibly Microsoft tablets in three different sizes coming soon after, this should be an interesting year.

Posted by Anandasim at 10:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack