I made the plunge

[Dravis85]

I finally made my final decision and purchase what I hope will be a great laptop. I think it will be on a clevo chassis, which some of ya'll seem to be familiar with.

Here's the specs:
17" WSXGA+ LCD
2.26GHz Pen-M "Sonoma"
1Gb PC4200
100GB SATA150 5400 RPM
nVIDIA GeFORCE 7800 GTX 256MB
Sound Blaster Compatible 3D Audio
8X24X10X24 DVD/CDRW
Intel PRO/2915LAN 802.11 a/b/g
Bluetooth Wireless

All that for around 600$

[mynameis]

All that for around 600$

What?

[PCJ]

Where did you get this for $600? Buy 5 more and sell them on eBay for massive profit!

[Dravis85]

woops sorry guys...I think i typo'ed...I meant 2600.

still a good price though

oh and what exactly is the "sonoma" chip..I think it's the predecessor to the dothan, but I'm not sure...it shouldn't effect performance, or will it?

[PCJ]

OK, 2600 is a lot more reasonable.

Yes, the Sonoma is the latest P-M.

Be aware though that if you want to actually use the notebook on-the-go, the Sonoma has mediocre battery life in comparison to the old P-Ms.

My FS550 came with a Sonoma, and switching to a Dothan gave me 30% more battery life.

[Hammerstein]

Yeah. Intel had heat and power draw issues on the i915M used for Sonoma. It's a shame, because it really is an ultra-modern conception and design (PCI-E, 533 MHz FSB, etc.)

[Dravis85]

I spose I could have gone with an older dothan, but there isn't one that is above 2Ghz that I could find. I'm particularly worried about performance issues in my laptop when the next batch of games come out. With what I've got I should be set for a anything in the future.The battery drain isn't going to worry me cause I can get 2-3+ hours of on-time, and that's enough for me. I won't be putting the thing on my lap so I'm not worried about burning my pants.

[Vengance_01]

OK, 2600 is a lot more reasonable.

Yes, the Sonoma is the latest P-M.

Be aware though that if you want to actually use the notebook on-the-go, the Sonoma has mediocre battery life in comparison to the old P-Ms.

My FS550 came with a Sonoma, and switching to a Dothan gave me 30% more battery life.

hate to break it to you Sonoma is the name of the chipset. The 915, DDR2, and PCI-Ex16 lane for video cards. So how did you manage to switch that?? Dothan is the cpu, there are two revisions, 400FSB with 1 meg L2 cache, and newer 533FSB 2 meg L2 cache. Get your facts straight. both with the same watt usage.

[Dravis85]

oops

[PCJ]

hate to break it to you Sonoma is the name of the chipset. The 915, DDR2, and PCI-Ex16 lane for video cards. So how did you manage to switch that?? Dothan is the cpu, there are two revisions, 400FSB with 1 meg L2 cache, and newer 533FSB 2 meg L2 cache. Get your facts straight. both with the same watt usage.

You're right. I didn't get my terminology straight. Either way, I switched back to the previous gen of P-Ms, and my battery life went up quite a bit. I'll do some research on it to see if others have had similar results.