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12/1/2008
Monday morning
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| Prostar/Sager laptops are in the lower price ranges for a laptop (come
up first at Pricewatch) but I dont know anything about them. Still,
Id not be inclined to purchase those low-end brands. This may be
unfair to Prostar/Sager but I dont think theres a lot of customer
reviews/feedback on the Prostar itself or the tech-support/customer
service Prostar gives its customers--or doesnt give. So its an
unknown. |
| The same goes for laptop gamers. Making a blanket judgment that all
laptop gamers are stupid is wrong. There may be individual
circumstances that would warrant the user buying a desktop gaming
system to augment his laptop use, but most laptop gamers make a
conscious choice that they will live with the limitations inherent
in their systems. And in many cases, it is a perfectly sound
decision because the laptop user is already familiar with his system
and many games will play just fine on his machine. In addition,
even though high-end games dont play on most laptops, they dont
play on most desktop systems, either. Most laptop gamers can get
plenty of gaming enjoyment even with a mid-level machine. However,
that doesnt mean that they wont go overboard in finding ways to
stretch those limitations and it doesnt mean that they wont spend
a lot of time window shopping for something with even more
capabilities. |
| Back to the motherboard. In building your own portable, the best
option seems to be the PC/104+ standard. This is a motherboard which
is about 4 or 5 inches square. Check www.google.com for this and
youll find a bunch of links. Unfortunately, these motherboards are
not in high volume production, and so they cost a mint, relative to
their performance (I wish the sites that I had found would just list
the damn prices rather than asking that you email for a quote...grrr.)
Another option is using a small form-factor regular motherboard, such
as the NLX size which is about 8x10 or so. Thirdly, one could use an
integrated regular motherboard like Intels 810, or a Cyrix Media GX,
or finally, I understand there is a product called I-Opener which has
a small motherboard, which can and has been hacked, and so could
possibly be made portable. The latter two options (Cyrix, I-Opener)
seem to be good options, since they are both low power consumers and
these motherboards have been used in laptops.. |
| In my experience, comp.sys.laptops is _the_ place to look for
information on expanding the possibilities when it comes to using
laptops. Calling people stupid who try to push the boundaries is
counterproductive. If you dont agree with a posters goals or
think that they are impossible to achieve, you should post what you
think and why to the best of your ability. If you simply think that
a poster is stupid, we would all be better off if you kept your
opinion to yourself. |
| * Name brand laptops consist of IBM, Dell, Apple, Toshiba, Compaq, Acer,
Gateway, Sony, and
* Laptops from these manufacturers with comparable features also have
approximately comparable prices, except for
* IBM, but this is due to their high build quality and exemplary after-sale
support, and
* Also Apple, but they also have extraordinarily high build quality, and by
the way,
* Dell also has superb support, then all the other name-brand manufacturers
have about the same level of after-sale support (i.e. pretty darn good),
with the notable exception of
* Sony, which has legendarily poor after-sale support (particularly in terms
of web-based support), but
* Dont forget that 3rd tier laptops manufacturers such as Sager or
Prostar usually have cheaper laptops, but
* Thats because 3rd tier manufacturers are also about a generation behind
name brand laptops, but of course
* You can get name brand laptops at discounted prices from retailers such
as Tigerdirect.com, but
* The reason these la. |
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