Asus Turion 64 Thin & Light/Ultraportables?

I've been eyeing the Z33a for a while now, and now I'm waiting for the Z33ae before buying anything.

However, I am an AMD user at heart. The last four PCs that I have used have been AMD, all the way back to an old K62-233 with a whopping 128MB of RAM. As far as I can tell the Turion 64 and P-M are pretty equal in terms of performance, and the Turion has 64 bit and a wider range of CPUs available for the same socket, along with being from

Is there any chance of seeing something like a Z33ae with a Turion from Asus in the near future?

MSI has the 1013 with a 12.1" widescreen, but the styling is bland and I'm a bit sketched out by the build quality compared to Asus.....

 

I read a review that put the P-M and the Turion head to head (sorry don't have a link anymore). They concluded that the P-M and the Turion where almost identical in performance except for one area where the P-M outperformed the Turion with a substantial 22% on average, game performance.
I know it's not what you asked but it is something to think about if you want to play games.

 

I don't *think* they have plans for a 12" turion, but a W3z (14" widescreen) may be here before the end of the year...... The M5 series has been a great one and the Z33ae is just the lasted and greatest in that series..... I think the Pentium-M offers more and the systems based around them are much better as well....... unless you're a diehard anti-Intel guy... I'd say stick with your gut..... I think it'll be this time next year before Turion can get off the table and really start to move and hopefully Asus can put more into the development of purely Turion designed systems.

As a side note.... Lance Armstrong really hasn't been in much to push Turion..... and he's AMD's spokeman for it...... I know things are going to start to ramp up next year and I'm even working on a couple projects for some Turion marketing for AMD/Asus/Lance.... they need some more time.

 

the asus built is better than the msi but the msi isnt a bad model.. the price is great for the 12" msi.

P-M outperformed the Turion - remember the turion is a 64bit model.. so im sure if it utilizes a 64bit platform it will perform much better than the p-m

 

If anyone is considering the MSI verify first that the issues with power saving are resolved before buying. It seriously lasts less than 80 minutes with the standard 4-cell battery (apparently a BIOS issue. It failed several Turion system qualification tests.). The distributor that was offering them here withheld the model for this exact reason when no one could offer a schedule for a fix. (Edit: For comparison I think that the S260 lasted 270 minutes with the optional 8 cell while the S270 could only keep it going 163. Both similarly specced.)

In addition it has the ‘most glossy’ glossy screen I have ever seen. We’re talking bathroom mirror glossy here. (I’m assuming here it has the same screen as the S260, as I haven’t seen an actual S270.)

 

I'm not 'diehard' anti-Intel. I would just prefer to stick with AMD. P-M performance is no slouch - it's too bad Intel messed up so bad with P4.

I have an old Celeron (P3 core) 1.1ghz laptop sitting here that I used all summer while I was away from home and waiting to build my new A64 X2 desktop system. It works, but with only 256MB of PC100 SDRAM, a 4200RPM hard drive, and 16MB integrated graphics, it's approaching the point of uselessness for modern things. The battery is shot, and it's worn to the point where I hate using it in public... I guess that's what happens when a non-technical family member uses a laptop daily for two years then hand it down to you...

Anyway, portability is my main concern, hence the Z33a idea. There aren't many 12" screen laptops, and it seems to be the best for the price that I've seen yet... The styling is awesome too...

 

sorry to hijack the thread, but can someone provide a link for some more info on the Z33ae? I love that form factor

Cheers!

 

wraaa it's so small!

 

You won't be unhappy with any Asus 12" I promise. I've used both a W5 and an older S5 for a bit. Both delightful systems.

And nothing against the Turion as such. It's just that some of them (including the A6K) doesn't seem to be performing the way they should with regards to power saving. There's something wrong when an nx6125 with the same chipset, a weaker battery, a bigger screen, and a more power hungry processor can easily outperform the MSI when it comes to battery life. Some have speculated that these discrepancies may stem from the fact that AMD seems to be changing core revisions as often as normal people change underwear an that some BIOSs may be 'out of date'.

I'm not saying don't buy one, I'm saying don't buy one until you have found a report from a real user with regards to battery life for the model you're interested in.

 

Basically we've got the updates on our site: http://www.proportable.com/detail.aspx?ID=5

Basically the only difference from the Z33a is that it has 512mb on board instead of 256..... so you've got a 1gb max instead of 768mb.

 

Right I understand that most AMD guys were totally put off with the P4 -- I'm one of them! But the Pentium-M has been out for almost two and half years at this point and has proven itself worthy.... If this were a desktop issue, I'd be hands down with for an AMD product, but for the notebooks... Turion has been out for like 4-5 months and all the money is getting thrown towards Centrino in terms of development....

 

Well, I love the styling on the Z33a. It's not some crazy over the top thing like some of the other 'specialty' laptops, but it's not plain black either. I got a chance to play around with a Z70V that a guy here has for a bit and was impressed with the build quality, and after seeing all othe OEMs that Asustek acts as ODM for, I'm not terribly concerned anymore.

My size constraint came from spending some time thinking about laptop's I've used, what I really need in a laptop, and playing around with a friends 12" PowerBook. The Toshiba that I have has a 15" screen, and weighs 7.5lbs or so. My desktop is a huge hulking monstrocity with a 19" LCD. I really want something around the size of a regular (paper) notebook that I can easily carry with me when I travel, toss in a backpack in a sleeve around school, and generally not break my back carrying. Gaming is a secondary consideration with the desktop available, and there are enough older non-3D games that I enjoy playing to keep me busy (and save HD space and battery) when I'm using the laptop. Battery life was another consideration - I'd like to be able to pull out a laptop and sit somewhere on campus and do light work for an afternoon without running out of juice...

I looked at the Dell 700m, various Fuji and Sony models, IBM X series, Averatec, and the Asus and MSI models. IBM, Fuji, Sony, and Dell were eliminated essentially for cost reasons (expensive with the configuration I wanted, especially 3 year warrenty), and Averatec for 'you-get-what-you-pay-for' reasons ($999 ultraportable? for a year until it breaks maybe).

Anyway, I'll probably wait until the Z33ae is available so I can get 1GB of RAM, but in the meantime any other suggestions for models I might have missed, or any personal opinions on the M5/Z33a beyond the reviews I've found?

 

I think the 14" wide screen option is great for you...
if you can hold on for the W3z, that'll be something you should definitely consider.

 

Yep. That'll be something to look forward to. I need to do more research on it. Unfortunately, nothing has come out yet I'd like to find out about driver compatibility and such. (Since it is a 64 bit system)

P.S. I wonder if they'll keep it the same colour as the z63a.

 

No, the color is going to be *slightly* different....... I've seen high res pictures and even there you can barely tell...... but the white part of the z63a is going to be more like the silver part of the w3v...... sorta a mix of both those colors.

 

I would have said that the light coloured parts of my W3A (hinge / battery area and part of edge of screen surround and chassis were a light silver, not white.

John

 

It's not really white nor silver... but something in the middle.
A sparkly off-white is what it is...

 

... it's a pearl.. white with silver flake almost.... but I'm saying that - that part is going to be more like the darker silver/grey of the W3v...

 

I think I'll probably stick to the 12" screen, just for the sake of size and weight. I like the little tiny PowerBooks and the iBooks for their form factor, but there is no way I would buy a G4 based system now, the technology is just too out out of date and the 'Apple styling tax' is high for the PowerBook...

If I could get something with a 14" screen and dedicated graphics, maybe, but it's the same chipset either way, so 12" it is. The uSODIMM limitation is kind of annoying, but I can't fathom a good reason to have more then 1GB of RAM on a laptop with integrated graphics anyway.

 

a matter of taste. if you like ibooks, youll like the white 1013..if you like thinkpad x41, youll like the black 1013..

don't be: its stamped out of a solid chunk of metal. not sure what kind, but its very cold to the touch as a result..and definitely more solid than either of my thinkpads. of course the Carbon Fiber ASUS are no slouch either..

 

Stamped out of a solid chunk of metal? Sweet! Now the mechanical engineer in me is wondering about yield strengths and heat treatment.

The carbon fiber is nice, though. Although calculations dealing with failure of composite materials are much more complicated then for isotropic metals

I wish there was somewhere around here that sold Asus/MSI/etc so I could try them out, but I live literally in the middle of nowhere in northern NY when I'm at school, and in the middle of nowhere in VT when I'm at home... lol