Pre-order the new Santa Rosa W7S-3P054E

I found this while digging up info on the upcoming W7S, and thought others may be interested too:

http://www.microanvika.com/product.asp?TXT=INFO&PNO=ASU14427

Apparently Micro Anvika is letting customers pre-order the upcoming W7S. Check out the specs.

Asustek Computer,Inc
Asus W7S-3P054E WVB T7300 1.5GB 160GB Intel Centrino Duo T7300 1536MB (1024+512) DDRII 667 SDRAM 160GB (5400rpm) HDD DVD Super Multi D/L nVidia Geforce Go 8400M 128MB Dedicated 896MB Turbo Cache 56.6k Modem 10/100/1000 LAN Firewire 6 cell Li-Ion Battery Intel 4965ABGN WLAN Microsoft Windows Vista Business Carry case and Mouse

And check out the price: £1,399.00 Inc. VAT

 

Alot of places can do that, but since it's a "pre-order", you pretty much buy a phantom 'item' until it is in stock.

Pre-ordering does not mean you get it earlier then if you don't pre-order it.

 

I wasn't implying that someone could get it earlier by pre-ordering it

It's the only place I've seen that offers the pre-ordering of one of the new Asus SR laptops coming out (although I may be wrong). Also, I find it interesting that the ram offered is 1.5 gbs, at least on this website. They could have just stuck a 1gb and 512mb in, but I still find it a strange number, considering the the W7J had 512mb soldered on...makes me a little worried even though reports claim 2gbs. Do companies normally put in 1.5gbs? I thought the norm was either 1 or 2gbs.

The price is also a significant jump from the W7J (around $1399 these days). 1399 pounds equals to around 2788 US dollars. While this may not be how much it'll sell for in NA, it gives an idea to how much it will be when it first comes out here.

 

Has it actually been confirmed that the new W7S has 2 memory slots? It seems likely that they just soldered higher density chips so it would have 1GB integrated instead of 512MB. Then people can put whatever they want in the single slot.

 

Overall, I like the specs, but that RAM thing worries me slightly. Although, if there is 1GB soldered in, it doesn't matter too much. 512 would be a killer though.

 

I agree, especially with the 896MB TC on the 8400M.

 

You can not compare UK and US prices. A fossil watch that costs 90 USD in New York, costs 95 pounds in London. Almost double the price. (i am studying in London so I know, its frigging expensive here)

 

yea tru dat. As a comparison, the cheapest G1 you can get here is £1250 here. Im not sure how that compares to the american price. Anyone got a figure?? (Proportable, milestonepc, gentech?)

 

Hope battery life improves!

 

Yeah, 2.5 hours is pathetic for a portable laptop. I'd venture to guess that it's 1GB built-in and one extra SO-DIMM slot, at least based on that other spec of 2GB RAM (there are no 1.5GB sticks of RAM ).

 

I used the yahoo currency converter and the average price for a G1 is about $1900, which converts to £955.

 

Santa Rosa is supposed to improve battery life from 40 to 60 minutes with a .4w power savings (all approximate of course), so hopefully we can see a jump from 2.5 hours to a little over 3 - still not impressive. Does anyone know if undervolting etc will still work the same way? (sorry, I've never tried so I don't know how/if SR affects it.) The W7J can be tweaked to give 3+ hours of battery life, so at the very best we can hope for 4 hours, I would think. That would be better... Still, it has nothing on a MB's battery life, which could get even longer when SR comes out for macs

I know there aren't 1.5gb sticks I guess even if 1gb is soldered on, we can still get up to 3gb of ram, and possibly even 5gb in the future (seeing how Samsung is out with a 4gb dimm http://apcmag.com/5956/4gb_on_one_stick_of_ram).

 

Pricing based on the G1:
955/1250 = 0.764

We can round that to 0.75: So, if we were to speculate on the W7S's price based on G1's figures, the US price would be 75% of the UK's price. This would mean that the W7S would be 2788*0.75 = $2091 US approximate. Not too great (compared to non-SR $1399)...so hopefully the real percentage will be lower than 75%.

If we further speculate (just for fun now - I know we won't know until models actually start coming out)...

non-SR model (W7J) is $1399
SR model (W7S) is $2091.

2091/1399 = 1.49...we can round that to 1.5.

If all speculations are true (heh...) and apply to different models, the new (ASUS) SR models would be 1 1/2 times (150%) the price of its non-SR counterparts. Or, if we're just talking about price difference, it could be around $600 more expensive.

Since those are all *very* ballpark figures, we'll see. For all we know, there may not be a significant price increase. Still, it's something to think about if you're trying to hold our for SR but don't know if your wallet can handle it.

Edit: Based on the italian pricing of the G1S (other thread), it could be closer to 120%...whew.

 

I wouldn't really count on Santa Rosa providing major power benefits. Intel's official TDP ratings have the Crestline Northbridge in Santa drawing 2 times more power than Calistoga in Napa and ICH8 draws 50% more power than ICH7. The 800MHz FSB also doesn't help much. There are new power saving features such as half FSB frequencies allowing Merom to downclock deeper to 600MHz, but these are just to counteract the higher power of the Santa Rosa chipset itself. There might be some power savings at idle, but average power is probably a wash, and max power is definitely higher.

 

I can't see the W7 being all that successful at a price significantly above $1600, because then it will lose the main advantage it had over the Sony SZ: It was $400 cheaper than the regular model, and $600 less than the premium. I think that at max, there will be a price increase of $100, otherwise, no change at all.

 

Assuming an average sized 6-cell around 65Wh and power draw of 20W, an extra 0.4W power savings would translate into about 4 minutes of extra battery life. Hardly 40-60 minutes?

 

Those are the numbers I got off a slide from one of the Santa Rosa presentation slides. I couldn't find the pdf file I was looking at, but here's a pic:

http://hardware.thgweb.de/images.html?/2006/09/28/idf_2006_3/idftag3_3_big.jpg

They are quoting that there will be longer battery life because of other reasons, such as "Enhanced Deeper Sleep" idle state, and other adjustments that are probably already mentioned in other threads. They just mentioned the power savings as well.

 

Just to update this, it is starting at $1399 US and has 1 GB of RAM. As of right now, there is another option for $250 more in order to get the 7500 processor (2.2 GHz), the extra 9 cell battery, and an extra 512 MB of RAM.

1399 is a good deal, but I would love to get that extra RAM and battery for less than $250 more.