Notebook required

**AtW** · 28 January 2004, 10:18

You need to narrow down a search a bit by making a few principal decisions:

1. Do you plan to work on battery long or is it just a desktop replacement?

2. Also, you need to think if you like shiny brandnames like Sony etc. Technical differences could be minimal but if you like showing off then good brand is a must.

3. You need to decide on screen size - I take it 14'' minimum useful for VS (too cluttered on my 15'; work, even 18'' home).

4. Weight - again you seem to want desktop replacement which means its going to be heavy (3 kg+).

5. Gaming - used to be big question but now most laptops have good video cards, given choice I'd go ATI rather than NVIDIA as their latest offerings suck.

**DimPrawn** · 28 January 2004, 10:34

Sony

Sony are cool.

They do a sexy beast with 16" hi res screen and 1Gb ram as standard. Quite pricey. Only for well off happening kind of contractors (like me). Costs just under £3K inc VAT.

Sony Vaio GRT796SP

Specifications

Hard disk drive capacity (GB) 80

Optical drive specifications Write: DVD±RW 1x, CD-RW 8x, Read: DVD-ROM: 5x max.

Floppy disc drive Not Supplied

Floppy disk drive Optional (PCGA-UFD5)

Multi-purpose bay For DVD±RW drive, second battery, weight saver

Display size 16.1" (40.9 cm)

Laptop Screen Resolution TFT colour display 1600 x 1200 UXGA

Graphics chipset NVIDIA GEFORCE FX GO5600

Graphics memory 64

Multimedia MPEG2 digital video and 16-bit stereo sound

Main usage Business

Speaker Built-in stereo speakers

Interfaces VGA connector for monitor (via display adapter);Parallel port;RJ-11 direct port;DC-In;Docking Station port;MG Memory Stick Slot;TV out;Headphone Jack;i.LINK (IEEE1394), 400 Mbps;Microphone Jack;RJ-45 direct port - built-in Ethernet 10 BASE-T/100 BASE-TX;3 x USB 2.0 (High/Full/Low-speed)

Modem Built-in modem V.90, K56 flex, Fax / Modem

PC card slots 1x Type III 2 x Type II, I PCMCIA: Card Bus compatible

Lithium-ion battery PCGA-BP2NX

Approx. Weight (Kg) 3.700

Operating system Microsoft® Windows® XP Professional

Pre-installed software (Imaging) Photoshop Elements 2.0 (Image editing software);PictureGear(TM) Studio 1.0 (Digital image application)

Pre-installed software (Movie) QuickTime(TM) 5.0 (movie player application);Click to DVD(TM);WinDVD(TM) (DVD Player Software)

Pre-installed software (Video) DVgate (video/still capture);Adobe® Premiere® 6.0 LE (video editing software)

Weight range (Kg) 3Kg+

Pre-installed software (Music) SonicStage® (music storage programme);RealPlayer® (music player application)

Pre-installed software (Utilities) Acrobat® Reader 5.1 (PDF Reader);Sony Notebook Set-up (notebook configuration);HotKey Utility 3.0;VAIO WebPhone software;Network Smart Capture (video and still capture)

Pre-installed software (Others) Click to DVD(TM) 1.1;Norton Antivirus;Drag n Drop CD+DVD 3.0

Supplied accessories Lithium-ion battery;AC adaptor;Weight saver;Power Cord

Bluetooth(TM) Not Supplied

Bluetooth(TM) Optional accessory

Wireless LAN Integrated Wireless LAN 802.11b

Integrated CCD Camera Motion Eye No

Integrated CCD Camera Motion Eye n/a

Guarantee 1 year (extendable to 3 years with optional Warranty Pack)

Language version English

Microprocessor Mobile Intel® Pentium® 4

Microprocessor speed 2.5 GHz-M - Intel SpeedStep technology

Standard memory (MB) 0000001024

Memory specifications DDR-SDRAM (266Mhz)

Cache memory (L2 - KB)

**ASB** · 28 January 2004, 15:24

Cheers,

DP:

The Sony I looked at (not sure if it was exactly the same model) had a parallel port but no serial port. Both of these are must haves for what I need to do, so it was unfortunately no good.

AtW:
As to your list most of it is a bit redundant but:-

1) Don't care about battery life. Never use it on battery.

2) Not too bothered about branding

3) Except when in a hotel (which is quite often) it is connected to an external screen and 19" monitor. This is at 1600 x 1200 'cos thats the minimum I can be effective with IDE's. My dell is only 1024 x 768 so that is a pain when I am using it's screen. Don't really care about the physical screen size but for me 15" on the notebook with 1600 x 1200 is OK.

4) I don't really worry too much about weight. It's lugged from home to airport to hotel etc. But trying to keep total under 5kg with case and crap like that is useful since some of the airlines I use can go on a hand bagges crusade.

5) Don't care about playing DVD/Music/Games. Only reason I need a DVD is because that is the media a lot of the resource I use are supplied on.

I think I am going to be driven by what I Can actually get that has both a paraller and serial port.

Simon.

**Mark Snowdon** · 28 January 2004, 19:26

laptop

Simon,

I think you will find it difficult to get that sort of spec.

What do you need the serial and parallel ports for ? Those 'legacy' items are getting rare. Are you doing device driver stuff ?

Would a mini docking station be acceptable ? or a pcmcia card with two serial ports ?

Mark

**ASB** · 28 January 2004, 22:41

Ports

Mark,

Yep, I know it's difficult.....

The reasons for the ports are:-

1) The parallel port. Some of the development I do is Micro Focus Cobol, an old version 3.4. This requires a dongle on the parallel port. The rainbow driver is not available beyond NT but there is a hack available that gets it running on XP.

The actual code produced is 16 bit OS/2 which runs in NT-OS/2. Obviously XP won't run this code but having recently done some experimentation I think I can achieve my goals with a host NT partition and MS Virtual PC.

Since I travel with it the parallel port must be on the notebook.

2) The serial port. Quite a lot of the development I do involves certain specialised peripherals, ultimately the requirement is to be able to access "COMn".

In an ideal world I would have about 5 com ports (the card I use in my desktop provides an additional 8) . So if a mini docking station (or PCMCIA card) provides ports that are acessible as COMn it should work fine.

Cheers.

Simon.

**AtW** · 28 January 2004, 23:36

Re: Ports

COMs should still be there, though I'd be careful to check

**ASB** · 29 January 2004, 10:24

trying to find out

That is one of the issues. Trying to get an accurate answer. Whoever I try (high street and dell so far) I have the following conversation:-

Me: "And so that serial port on the card is exactly the same as a serial port on the mainboard"
Salesman: "Yes"

M: "So to labour the point all my software which uses it will continue to function without problems"
S: "Yes"

M: "So I will make it a condition of the sale"
D "Oh no we can't do that"

M: "So you'll lend me one for a couple of days first"
D: "No"

The problem is that they wan't me to shell out a considerable sum on the say so of some herbert who can say no more than "it will probably work, but if it doesn't tough". Still 'twas ever thus I suppose.

Simon

**zeitghost** · 29 January 2004, 14:01

Re: trying to find out

I was reading a thread on Tek-Tips the other day from someone who was trying to run an ap in a "dos" box on XP and communicate with a USB serial port because his laptop didn't have a serial port.

The ap was an antique (like most of mine) and he got as far as having it sort of recognize that a port was there but that was it.

Funny how essential some of these "legacy" items can be....

**ASB** · 29 January 2004, 15:12

Real antique.

Yes, the app I do quite a lot of work on was spawned from one I produced in Aus in 95 - on a completely different HW platform (completely bespoke). That in turn had been spawned from one I wrote in the UK in '87 - on a different completely bespoke HW platform.

If the port to .net is working well then maybe I'll be able to string it out for another 15 years.

Simon.

Notebook required