Posts by James Dunne

Incorrect?

I've had this notebook for 2 months now. It excels beyond my dad's Vaio sz (bought one month previous) on boot time, game fps and program speed enormously.

Some corrections:

The plastic is certainly not 'cheap'. Perhaps with the influx of shiny plastics in recent months in new laptops, it could be considered on the lower end of the scale, but even then it is of considerable quality at this price point.

The port layout i've found is quite efficient. Considering the size of flash drives nowadays, the card reader on the front and the length of optical mouse cables, it makes sense to have just one usb on the side with additional ports on the back. Who uses a tv tuner with a 13.3" screen anyway?

This article reads like Jeremy Clarkson when he's scrutinizing a car. 'Nothing is right about this laptop, everything is lacking. But despite our "grumbles" its "great value" '. These grumbles seem to include a lack of built in "HSDPA 3G" (which is laughable at this price range), and the distinct lack of the only real criticism you can level at this laptop, one that you would find almost immediately if you'd actually got an example of the notebook for review (which I sincerely doubt at this point), fingerprints. The super shiny polish on the plastic makes them more visible after a day's work than the super super shiny Samsung logo on the front.

While I agree with the slight lack of viewing angles (which for anyone who wants to work privately will agree isn't necessarily a bad thing), the subsequent statement is a complete stereotype, which certainly isn't based on this laptop, having used it on the deck of a boat in the bright sunshine of the Solent when I first bought it: "as with all glossy displays, it’s a magnet for reflections". Bollocks.

"Unlike the three-antenna Wi-Fi Link 5300, this card only has two antennae". Oh dear. I've had no issues with the wifi whatosever, running off of my girlfriend's ancient 802.11b router from 30 metre's distance, running off my 802.11n router from my garden (the router is located some 40 metres away, inside a study which is separated from the garden by 2 brick walls and another room), or at uni, where the 802.11g wireless no better on my friend's £1100 Vaio, with the Intel 5300, than on my merely 2 antennae equipped 5100, at all distances).

The gaming laptop. At 700 pounds, what do you expect? I certainly didn't buy this laptop on the grounds that I could run high-end games. It will happily run Counter-Strike Source on native res at 50fps. COD4 will also run in native res at 25fps, naturally without any added texture settings and with AA off, but again, what could you expect at this price point with the new cpu?

Given the price point I would say this is a brilliant laptop, one that is quite portable (I walk to and from university with it (2 miles each way), 4 days a week, and carry it in addition to a suitcase with me on the train every month or so home). Graphics are to an extent limited, but I didn't buy it with a view to play tf2 let alone COD4. Next el reg will be criticising the Eee 701 because it won't play Crysis.

This article does make me wonder if el reg had the laptop at all, not for the lack of finger print grumbles, but for the distinct inaccuracies and the contradicting verdict.

Come on..

Why on earth would you need that level of storage on a notebook of all machines?

Spend the extra cash on a desktop and some online storage if its that necessary.

How is Gordon wrong?

I do love the way el reg has subscribed to the latest spell of Gordon bashing like every other sheep in the media. To say the ipod was invented by a Briton (Jonathan Ive) isn't particularly a stretch, given that (from the info i've seen) mp3 players were NOT invented by apple, and the attractively simple design that sets ipods apart from their competitors WAS Ive's design.

Whilst I acknowledge that there is 'a subtle difference between the house painter and the architect', the whole attraction of the ipod was the casing with the intuitive wheel interface and the smooth lines, compared with other mp3 players of the time such as the rio diamond or the mpman (which, granted were created 3 years earlier, but there were little prevalent alternatives until the ipod).

@ Tim Bates

People make a big deal of it because they're all secret AMD fans. :) And its extremely disappointing when the underdog screws up on something as elementary as getting the damned thing to work as its designed.

How can you be competitive with a leviathan like Intel if you claim to make 'true' quad cores and then screw up the manufacturing process?

As for the 6, 12, 24 et al core ideas... I don't honestly see the point in progressing that way. Surely the chip manufacturers should be working on increasing clock speeds efficiently, stably, before they add more energy consuming cores unused by the majority of applications?

x64?

And i'm guessing those of us that were cool enough to choose x64 will do without sp3 until Server 2003 is updated?

Yay. You'd think that Microsoft would be more concerned about releasing service packs for their Server os, given that its probably valued far higher by its more lucrative customers.

Then don't use voip in emergencies?

Is it not common sense to use a standard land line when calling an ambulance of all things? And even if they did use voip you would hope that they'd state or be asked for their address / postal code (zip?) when they spoke to the operator.

Tragic yes but..

Paris, because while she does like to lead the simple life, shes not this ignorant.

@ Ash

14 seconds? Sounds adequate to me. Depends how big the gun is you attach. Say you attach one of those tracer-spitting miniguns the US Air Force has welded onto the side of its Hercules cargo planes, with that rate of fire you could happily cream enemy soldiers in 14 seconds I think.

But personally I won't be satisfied until we have something like that fat minigun-toting heavy in the 'Return to Proxycon' sequence of 3dMark06 : )

Is everyone missing?

The fact that lite-on drives suck? : ) I've had cd-rs, dvd-rws, cd-rws, and seen a friend's blu-ray drive lite-on and they were all noisy, overpriced, low quality components.

No wonder Microsoft has chosen them.

This is just stupid.

And wheres the FIREwire support?

bdum tcht.

Did we not see such a device in the recent movie starring the famed monotonous puppet we know and love from team america?

7" of heaven

Agree with Rick Brasche on this one. This machine is fine for basic web browsing, checking email and using IM. If i want to burn dvds or need to examine web pages whose layout demands a bigger screen, i'll use my desktop or hook this one up to an lcd at work or college.

Asus clearly aren't going to declare a 10" version until this one has made its mark. So quit speculating on unreliable sources and buy one! I'd suggest overclockers.co.uk, preordered mine on friday, got it the day after it was released. Excellent machine.