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Recent laptop developments

HP Pavilion dv6000t	IBM Lenovo ThinkPad T60	Toshiba Satellite A135	Sony VAIO SZ	Dell Inspiron 6400
Apple MacBook Pro	HP Pavilion dv9000t	Sony VAIO TX Series	HP Pavilion dv9000z	Toshiba Satellite A105

Here's a quick run down of some recent laptop developments:

Sonoma Chipset The new Sonoma Platform, Intel's next-generation Centrino Chipset is already on the market. Members of the Sonoma club are growing daily - Sony, IBM/Lenovo, BenQ, Dell, Samsung, Acer, and Toshiba... another 80 or 90 'Sonoma-endowed' products will be released very shortly. No doubt, it will become the Platform standard for many high-end notebooks. Actually, it won't make or mean that much difference to the ordinary Joe/Jane who just want a notebook or laptop for web surfing, word processing and e-mail. Notebooks with the Sonoma Platform will be just a little bit faster and have a little better battery life. Improved performance will be experienced because the new Pentium M's have a 533MHz frontside bus, supported with up to 2GB of DDR2 DRAM, Serial ATA Hard Drive, and PCI Express, plus improved integrated graphics, including Intel's Hi-Def Audio. All are possible with the Sonoma Platform.

PCI Express PCI(Peripheral Component Interconnect) Express is a new standard for expansion cards that comes in different versions. Presently, we have the x16 and x1 lanes, which will be followed by x4 and x8 versions. It offers increased bandwidth for example, x1 lane offers 500MB/sec instead of just 133MB/sec for PCI. All computers, including laptops have different buses, (collection of wires) that transmit data from one component to another. For now we have to rely on different internal buses to move the data around, the PCI Express is a great improvement and will make your laptop faster.

Graphics Card These are always improving. A Graphics Card handles the graphics or visuals on your notebook. If 3D graphics and games is a pastime, you will want to buy the highest quality system. Some of the higher end products are: ATi Mobility Radeon 9800, X800, and FireGL V3200 or Intel's Graphics Media Accelerator 900. If you can, go with a NVIDIA GeForce Go 6800 graphics card or for the real game diehards - wait for the debut of NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 that features NVIDIA's TurboCache technology. Gamers will be aware of NVIDIA SLI technology, ATI's CrossFire and Hyperthreading. All new stuff that's bringing the gaming experience up to a higher level of perfection that would even be worthy of a Spielberg or a Lucas Production. Not really, but it's getting there.

64 Bit Laptops Most systems today run on the 32 Bit System. Keep in mind, the major difference between a 32-bit and a 64-bit system is the amount of memory that they support. Around 4 GB for 32-bit and 8 GB and up for the 64-bit. Right now -- Intel, Apple, and AMD all offer 64-bit systems. Do you need all this memory? No, for the average laptop user it amounts to overkill. However, if you're interested in gaming, desktop publishing, or the graphic arts you will benefit from 64-bit technology.

Dual Core Notebooks Two is better than one! Dual core laptops are now on the market. The gaming industry is the starting point for many of these advanced systems. For example, the British Laptop maker Rockdirect now produces Xtreme 64, a gaming laptop with AMD's new dual core Athlon 64 X2 processor. This same laptop also sports the ATI Mobility Radeon X800 XT graphics card that features 16 pixel pipelines, an industry first for notebooks. The major producers of dual-core chips are Intel and AMD. The Intel dual-core processor has hyperthreading (HT), the two cores are divided into four virtual CPU units. Is all this needed? Again, if you're into heavy graphics or gaming, it's something you should consider and explore further.

Built-in Cellular Modem Most high-end laptops now come with an integrated tri-mode 802.11a/b/g for wireless WI-FI connections. Some recent models, like the Sony's New Ultra-Portable VAIO VGN-T350P, are raising the bar; it has the world's first 'Built-in Cellular Modem'. You can use your cell phone to connect to the Internet. This may be a great advantage since finding a 'Hot Spot' in some parts of the world can still be difficult.

The Avant-Garde: LumiLED Display Be on the look-out for LED monitors in the near future. The brightness, colors and backlighting technology in LED monitors will be quite different from LCD displays. The Forerunner in this field is NEC's SpectraView LumiLED, and will offer a much better image and color. Keep your eyes peeled.

19 or 20 Inch Laptop Screens There is a rumor, only a rumor, that Dell is coming out with a 19-inch laptop. There is also buzz that LG-Philips has a 20-inch LCD panel which could easily be used by laptop makers if they want to explore this market area.