ilovejedd wrote:
autoboy wrote:
I got the 15" A model without the discrete graphics and overclocking for my wife for Christmas. She loves this laptop and the extreme battery life is liberating. She can work all day on the couch or kitchen and never need to return to the wall for power. She's never complained about the speed of the 1.3ghz cpu. I lied and told her it is as fast as her desktop Athlon X2 2.1 ghz but seriously the performance can't be that far off. The notebook surfs the web just fine and plays all the videos I throw at it.
So far the only downside is flash video playback, but the Intel GPU can do acceleration with Flash 10.1 beta, so I am not concerned about that in the future. I won't install beta software on my wife's machine, but when it goes live, this notebook will be able to handle anything I want it to.
I actually find that the SU7300 is capable of 720p Flash HD (Legend of the Seeker ep1 Hulu HD) when running full speed (high performance power profile). By the way, the speed might not be too much of a lie. It's a 45nm part and clock for clock, the 45nm Core 2's are faster than Brisbanes, I believe.
Especially since if it has the Power4Gear or whatever its called with Turbo33, that 1.3ghz Core 2 Duo is actually running at like 1.73ghz. It really wouldn't surprise me if a 1.73ghz Core 2 Duo ran at the same speed or even a little faster than a 2.1ghz Brisbane.
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I got the UL80VT-A1 for x-mas and so far I have been very pleased with its performance once I did a clean install to get rid of all of the bloatware (seriously, there is a ton).
About the only gaming I do is WoW and it can handle that just fine; I get around 35fps in Dalaran and like 130fps in instances with the settings mostly turned down.
I am still not used to the keyboard and the position of the right shift is pretty annoying. Unlike many reviews, I haven't noticed any creaking or flex, though I also usually use it on a hard flat surface. The touchpad is too rough for my liking and makes my fingertip a bit raw after extended use and the mouse-buttons are a pain, I usually just end up tapping the touchpad to click.
The fan also seems to get pretty loud when I am playing WoW, though it is a fairly low frequency sound, at least compared to most laptops that I hear. Then again, after reading here for so long, I am pretty spoiled on quiet. My desktop currently has an 800rpm S-Flex, a voltage controlled 1200rpm S-Flex, the very quiet fan in the Signature 650 and a suspended 500gb Green HDD. Basically, my desktop is for all practical purposes inaudible in my room and I judge all other computers against it.
It may sound like there are a lot of things that I am complaining about, and there are, but they are mostly minor inconveniences. Overall, this is a great laptop because of its flexibility, I have the option to leave the charger at home when I am at school/work all day since I can get more than 9 hours using wifi or I can swap over to discrete graphics and have enough juice to do some portable gaming.
I think that this direction is a good one for laptops, to have both incredible battery life and enough power to get stuff done. Especially with both Intel and AMD working on SoCs that integrate the graphics onto the processor, I really hope they continue to work on this sort of hybrid graphics; it is probably more important for Intel chips since they have repeatedly shown that they could care less about graphics performance. All Intel would have to do is have enough GPU for Windows and browsing the internet, then someone who can actually make a decent GPU can add an a discrete chip that you can switch to when needed.