Summer Brings Forth Dreams of Laptops

Summer Brings Forth Dreams of LaptopsMy long time client whose roots are deeply nested into the local I.T. Distributorship scene (she used to work in a major Distributor and now runs a Dealership for a well-known gadget brand) floored me recently when she agreed to offset my retainer for a laptop when I broached the idea.

Naturally this sent me scurrying off to several local websites, battling fatigue late into the night trying to make sense of what was available out there. My priorities were simple. 1. Cheap As Possible., 2. Lightweight, 3. As much RAM as possible. 4. Sturdy, and 5. Cheap as possible.

Thusly guided, my observations:

  • PC Corner sub site LaptopKing seems to be the most comprehensive, featuring 32 laptop brands.
  • LaptopKing and PCCorner have this terrific dropdown type selection system which differentiates by brand, processor, ram, video adaptor, hard disk, screen size, optical drive, chassis type, “our choice” and my favorite, Price Range. I wish though, that they also included “weight”, which is my 2nd most important consideration, along with “dimensions”.
  • Incidentally, weight and dimensions are not mentioned in many of the laptop’s complete specification pages, along with a link to their home website if any. These are Major Oversights.
  • Strangely enough, the complete specs page of local laptop brand Neo is the one I like best as it not only shows what the products have, but also says what it doesnt have. Click this link for an example, otherwise check this out:
    whats wrong with this picture

    Can you see what’s ‘wrong’ in that picture? Firewire, Infrared, S-Video and Bluetooth are marked as unavailable for this model, saving you a hell of a lot of time in traveling back and forth amongst the other product pages to figure out what you’re missing, or on the other hand, what you’re getting, in relation to other models.

    That’s a huge help, and with the way shopping websites seem to be designed to befuddle and confuse you, a breath of honest fresh air right there.

  • Trimming down price range to absolute cheapest (below 30k) results in ECS, Prestigio and Q-Note. Second cheapest (30k ~ 40k), adds Acer, Blue, Apex, Benq, Asus, and some 2nd hand Twinheads, Acers, IBMs and Compaqs.
  • Built in web-cameras, situated to display the user’s face whilst in chat mode I assume, seem to be a hot item with these things, for what purpose I can only guess. For whatever it’s worth, I’m not surprised anymore why so many “private” images tend to be scattered all over local internet sites.
  • In fact, why not let’s go ahead and do away with a whole lot of other stuff I don’t need as well? Fingerprint access? Out. External Floppy? Out. Firewire? Buhbye. PCMCIA slots? Out you go. In fact, I’m even willing to give up a modem and a serial and parallel port. Why not? In my experience, if you’ve got a desktop PC handy already, as long as you’ve got ethernet/wi-fi, you’re good to go. The only things I think, one really needs, is USB and PS2, and a Video out. Even CD/DVD optical drives are iffy if your laptop’s going to be a second machine to a full-on PC. Other than that, the only interesting option I’d consider are 4 in 1 card readers, and… I think that’s it. If we could choose to remove these options, I bet we could chop off more than 10k from the list price.
  • I was thinking of Bluetooth after that last note, but then I thought about it. I always thought Bluetooth doesn’t really quite cut it. In fact, I’d go so far as to say Bluetooth is a waste of time – possibly developed only to add another feature to sell gadgets with – if you like conspiracy theories. See, most gadgets I’ve seen usually have Bluetooth and some other way more efficient method of networking, like wi-fi or LAN, negating it’s need. The only time I’ve really found a need for it was when I tested a Bluetooth headset mated (wirelessly of course) to a Motorola phone. Boy was that cool, and it dealt away with wires too. But is it enough per se? I don’t think so.
  • By the way, it’s no mistake some of those brands I mentioned don’t have their own webpage links, basically because I couldn’t find any to link them to. Considering how easy it is to get a website going these days, that’s very lame.
  • It would also be nice if the computer stores would mention if the brand they were selling was home-brewed, relieving us of uselessly Googling around for reviews or more info. There’s nothing particularly wrong or misleading about branding a laptop they made themselves and marketing it along with the better known models. What is misleading I think, is not saying so.
  • I was surprised to note that wi-fi isn’t a standard in notebooks yet. I thought it would go the way of the 10/100 LAN port by now. Some of the cheaper notebooks offer this as a P4k add-on. This might be stretching it, but in my case I’d rather drop a 56k modem (a constant in all models) for wi-fi capability. I think you’ve a better chance finding a free wi-fi area to connect with than a pokey old POTS.
  • Unrelated, but most of the sites, namely Rising Sun, PCX, TQM, and Villman use ASP, while PC Corner and it’s sub-site Laptop King use Java. Why!?
  • Also unrelated (hey sorry these things matter to me, okay?), Google searches for ‘laptops’ and ‘computers’ while using the ‘pages from the philippines’ option produce various results, none of which goes to any of these vendors, except maybe an accidental link here or there. These guys need to learn about Adwords, and considering that none of their competition is doing that, even a small investment would probably pay off.

So far, the closest I’ve liked is the X-Mobile M121, a home-brew from PCX, featuring:

    Intel Celeron M Processor 350
    1.30GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 400 MHz FSB
    Intel 855GME + ACH4 Chipset
    40 GB HDD, 256 MB DDR Memory (1GB Max.)
    12.1 inch WXGA TFT (Glare) WIDE SCREEN (1280 x 800)
    CNET Mini PCI Wireless LAN Module B/G
    DVDRW Drive
    2 x USB 2.0, 1 x Type II PCMCIA, 1 x Infrared Transfer port
    1 x External CRT Monitor output
    10/100 LAN, 56K modem w/ V.90/V.92 Compliant
    Built in Web Camera, Headphone jack
    Microphone jack, 8 cell Lithium-Ion battery
    295(w) x 235(d) x 26(h) mm, 1.8KG
    Laptop Bag

all for P44,295.00. It’s very small and light, which like I said, are high on my priority list, at a price that wouldn’t really hurt. Also since it’s home-brewed, I’m wondering if I could arrange the removal of the DVD burner and webcam to trade it for more RAM instead. Caveats might be trying to make sense of viewing 1280×800 displays on a 12″ screen, but I’ll reserve an opinion on that until I see it. Finally, I’ve never really been big on processors, and I’m sure a Celeron will serve me well. More RAM always works. As far as I’m concerned, RAM is king.

At any rate, it’s still early in the game and I’ve yet to conclude my search. If you think about it, that sort of relates to a failure of these websites to do their job, considering I’m fairly ok in the tech department, along with the fact that I pretty much have a good idea of what I want (which is more important).

What helped me most is not a website, but a PDF download, a simple Excel tables and rows affair, displaying what they have, how much it costs, how it compares with others, a disclaimer, and that’s it. And yes it thoughtfully adds on weight and dimensions. Halelujah.

5 thoughts on “Summer Brings Forth Dreams of Laptops”

  1. Great writeup, Gary. I came up with some tips here, w/c may be of additional use. Though I doubt you’re a novice at this, but this might be helpful to your readers who aren’t really into laptops.

    Cheers.

    J

  2. thanks jangelo. Link’s still wrong, but I think I found what you’re referring to from your PTB post here.

    Anyway, the very general tips are ok, although I’m raring to read articles that are more ‘localized’, meaning I want to learn of experiences on buying a laptop in Manila, from choosing specs to choosing vendor and even payment options if possible.

    At any rate, in my specific case I don’t care about brand at all, and have a high emphasis on RAM, weight, and connectivity.

  3. thanks so much for the article. been looking for local reviews of local brands too. my priorities are also simple – weight, durability, screen size, RAM processor speed, wifi. unlike u however, brand for me is important because they are likely to perform well – meaning durable. i would love to have a toshiba or compaq but my budget does not permit so. so far, i’ve scaled down to ECS, prestigio, acer ( based on tsismis, ok siya), NEO, twinhead, MSI ( but a friend who has a MSI laptop said the brand is not good. her MSI laptop which is not even a year old is giving her a lot of headaches), and HP (there’s a new HP 500 that has very good specs). i wish i could find local reviews of prestigio, ECS, twinhead and MSI.

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