I think there must be a choice. I can not find a laptop with IPS panel! Why? If I have a blue-ray then I need good screen to watch my HD moves. If you want to edit photos you need a good screen!
But if I have a good screen then may be I wont by a knew device for some long time. Which may not be desirable for some body? May be I should wait for 10 bit OLED panels to come out?
What I want in a dream gaming laptop is integration. I want to pick up just the laptop and go. I don't want to have to pack a duffel bag all the stuff I need to make my laptop usable. For example, make the trackpad a removable device that can be taken out and used as a mouse then put back in a used as a trackpad when there is no suitable surface for a mouse. Maybe also add some accelerometers so it could also be used like a wii. Next, the power cord. Integrate the brick in the laptop and make cord retractable so I always have it with me. Next is battery life. Make a laptop with a big battery standard. Not some available large battery that makes my laptop look like it has a giant growth coming out of it. As for battery life lets aim for 1 blueray movie plus a little - say 3 hours. All of these should be easy to design so I'll tack on a piece of dream tech - a foldable display. Take a look at www.seamlessdisplay.com. They claim this tech can be used for a foldable seam or a detachable seam. Lets see this in a trifold screen - center with 2 wings that fold out on either side.
What we need to make notebooks gamingworthy is a sort of "notebook docking bay" in which you can place standard "desktop pc" graphic cards.
Let's face it, mobile gpu's will always be behind in performance and very expensive so lets's cut to the chase and allow users to plug "standard" cards into their notebooks (by way of this bay thingy that someone needs to invent).
Cheers, Scott.
1) Battery life. There needs to be some improvements to getting battery life up with watching movies / HD content. Web surfing is fine and I understand high end gaming is just impossible on any current battery for more than ~60-90minutes.
2) DVI port, this should be a standard feature by now, doh.
3) SSD's - Intel's new X25-E SLC please. 240MB/s read, 170MB/s write! But yeah any high end laptop absolutely needs a SSD boot drive.
4) A track pad that is as good as a mouse. Yeah probably impossible, but I can dream.
5) Can't agree more with PCI-E 2.0 external support.
We have to start asking ourselves, what can a laptop really do that a iPhone can't. Play games / watch HD movies. It won't be long before there is a handheld device that can do high resolutions and steam HD content with Wifi / 3G etc.
I really see the high end laptop segment sinking. Gamers will continue buying desktops, business men and women will pickup smart phones and ditch their laptops, and the people needing the absolute bare minimum at a cheap price will be the 300$ netbook.
Integrated graphics / mobile graphics and battery supply need to get better and quick or I just think the 2K$+ laptop segment will just get smaller than it is now.
I know I'm a pecimist here and kind of going off topic, but the 2 main problems I listed above don't seem like they will improve greatly anytime soon.
An ideal gaming laptop is IMHO the ultimate LAN-box: small, simple to setup, tidy, stylish and with a great deal of geeky gadgetry. Here are some random points that i can think of:
- Detachable screen, with a bout 30-40cm of cable.
- Detachable keyboard for better ergonomics.
- DVI port for that 24" gaming goodyness.
- In-built powerbrick. I always thought that not including the brick in the laptop was cheating: it's not like you are carrying the laptop anywhere without it, especially gaming laptops. 15-minute batterylife anyone?
- I really like the idea of a PCIe x16 external connector. Flexible risercards can be ordered off ebay for a few bucks, so it should be possible.
- sunken USB ports. You really do not wanna know how many USB-sticks i broke off because they protrude. Oh, and if you dont sink them, at least locate them on the left or front where i dont need the space for my mouse!
- One thing i'd also like to see iss some kind of inbuilt temperature monitoring system.
What I'd like is a docking station with a 16x PCI-e port and a PSU that could power a decent graphics card. Couple that with a hybrid graphics chipset and ...
I wish someone would push to a standard which allowed an external PCI-E connection (in another form factor obviously) with more bandwidth than the Asus XG Station. I love the idea, but it's pratically stillborn with the PCI-E x1 lane. If I could put any graphics card of choice into a similar device with its own power delivery and upgradeability, and with sufficient bandwidth (PCI-E 2.0 x8 perhaps?) to the laptop, I could use a laptop with integrated graphics when on the move, and plug in this thingy when I need more graphics oomph. The CPUs, chipsets, ram and HDDs on modern laptops would suffice, the graphics demands are what's hindering portability of a true gaming laptop.
I agree with the sentiments on memory, thankfully these days we're able to easily outfit a notebook with 3 - 4GB without breaking the bank. More than sufficient for most things you can throw at Vista.
Upgradability is key in my opinion, and it's very tough to force on a notebook due to the lack of standardization (necessary in part due to the push for cooler, smaller, more unique - and thus less standard - form factors).
I couldn't agree with you more about upgradability. Especially when you buy the best laptop you can afford, and a month later a new lower power, faster GPU is released. I would add memory speed and quantity to the upgrade category. I'm finding that my applications require more and more memory and I want to be able to keep the memory speed as close to 1:1 with the front side bus speed. I don't need to overclock per se, but I do want to be able to install memory with tighter timings and be able to take advantage of them.
Sorry instead of knew should be new.
I think there must be a choice. I can not find a laptop with IPS panel! Why? If I have a blue-ray then I need good screen to watch my HD moves. If you want to edit photos you need a good screen!
But if I have a good screen then may be I wont by a knew device for some long time. Which may not be desirable for some body? May be I should wait for 10 bit OLED panels to come out?
What I want in a dream gaming laptop is integration. I want to pick up just the laptop and go. I don't want to have to pack a duffel bag all the stuff I need to make my laptop usable. For example, make the trackpad a removable device that can be taken out and used as a mouse then put back in a used as a trackpad when there is no suitable surface for a mouse. Maybe also add some accelerometers so it could also be used like a wii. Next, the power cord. Integrate the brick in the laptop and make cord retractable so I always have it with me. Next is battery life. Make a laptop with a big battery standard. Not some available large battery that makes my laptop look like it has a giant growth coming out of it. As for battery life lets aim for 1 blueray movie plus a little - say 3 hours. All of these should be easy to design so I'll tack on a piece of dream tech - a foldable display. Take a look at www.seamlessdisplay.com. They claim this tech can be used for a foldable seam or a detachable seam. Lets see this in a trifold screen - center with 2 wings that fold out on either side.
What we need to make notebooks gamingworthy is a sort of "notebook docking bay" in which you can place standard "desktop pc" graphic cards.
Let's face it, mobile gpu's will always be behind in performance and very expensive so lets's cut to the chase and allow users to plug "standard" cards into their notebooks (by way of this bay thingy that someone needs to invent).
Cheers, Scott.
1) Battery life. There needs to be some improvements to getting battery life up with watching movies / HD content. Web surfing is fine and I understand high end gaming is just impossible on any current battery for more than ~60-90minutes.
2) DVI port, this should be a standard feature by now, doh.
3) SSD's - Intel's new X25-E SLC please. 240MB/s read, 170MB/s write! But yeah any high end laptop absolutely needs a SSD boot drive.
4) A track pad that is as good as a mouse. Yeah probably impossible, but I can dream.
5) Can't agree more with PCI-E 2.0 external support.
We have to start asking ourselves, what can a laptop really do that a iPhone can't. Play games / watch HD movies. It won't be long before there is a handheld device that can do high resolutions and steam HD content with Wifi / 3G etc.
I really see the high end laptop segment sinking. Gamers will continue buying desktops, business men and women will pickup smart phones and ditch their laptops, and the people needing the absolute bare minimum at a cheap price will be the 300$ netbook.
Integrated graphics / mobile graphics and battery supply need to get better and quick or I just think the 2K$+ laptop segment will just get smaller than it is now.
I know I'm a pecimist here and kind of going off topic, but the 2 main problems I listed above don't seem like they will improve greatly anytime soon.
An ideal gaming laptop is IMHO the ultimate LAN-box: small, simple to setup, tidy, stylish and with a great deal of geeky gadgetry. Here are some random points that i can think of:
- Detachable screen, with a bout 30-40cm of cable.
- Detachable keyboard for better ergonomics.
- DVI port for that 24" gaming goodyness.
- In-built powerbrick. I always thought that not including the brick in the laptop was cheating: it's not like you are carrying the laptop anywhere without it, especially gaming laptops. 15-minute batterylife anyone?
- I really like the idea of a PCIe x16 external connector. Flexible risercards can be ordered off ebay for a few bucks, so it should be possible.
- sunken USB ports. You really do not wanna know how many USB-sticks i broke off because they protrude. Oh, and if you dont sink them, at least locate them on the left or front where i dont need the space for my mouse!
- One thing i'd also like to see iss some kind of inbuilt temperature monitoring system.
Good ideas.
What I'd like is a docking station with a 16x PCI-e port and a PSU that could power a decent graphics card. Couple that with a hybrid graphics chipset and ...
I wish someone would push to a standard which allowed an external PCI-E connection (in another form factor obviously) with more bandwidth than the Asus XG Station. I love the idea, but it's pratically stillborn with the PCI-E x1 lane. If I could put any graphics card of choice into a similar device with its own power delivery and upgradeability, and with sufficient bandwidth (PCI-E 2.0 x8 perhaps?) to the laptop, I could use a laptop with integrated graphics when on the move, and plug in this thingy when I need more graphics oomph. The CPUs, chipsets, ram and HDDs on modern laptops would suffice, the graphics demands are what's hindering portability of a true gaming laptop.
I agree with the sentiments on memory, thankfully these days we're able to easily outfit a notebook with 3 - 4GB without breaking the bank. More than sufficient for most things you can throw at Vista.
Upgradability is key in my opinion, and it's very tough to force on a notebook due to the lack of standardization (necessary in part due to the push for cooler, smaller, more unique - and thus less standard - form factors).
Take care,
Anand
I couldn't agree with you more about upgradability. Especially when you buy the best laptop you can afford, and a month later a new lower power, faster GPU is released. I would add memory speed and quantity to the upgrade category. I'm finding that my applications require more and more memory and I want to be able to keep the memory speed as close to 1:1 with the front side bus speed. I don't need to overclock per se, but I do want to be able to install memory with tighter timings and be able to take advantage of them.