V1j, F3j, or...

help.
i already posted on 'what should i buy' but only got one recommendation: V1jp. coriolis and jetstar, you said maybe i should wait for santa rosa and centrino pro-- is that more speed, better video, or what? i'd kinda rather not wait 2 months.
so i really need more help deciding what asus to get. i'm not a gamer, i'm a beginner laptopper, but i want a powerful, sturdy, dependable machine. (basic specs seem to fit V1j, F3j, maybe G1). [is it ok to post this here?]

 

So people can help you better, I'll link your original post.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1870845

The 3 Asus models you mentioned all have powerful video cards which may be unnecessary for your needs since you don't play games. From my point of view if you're not moving it around too much and taking it out with you, there's no reason for it to be durable. Could spend the extra money on a better internal components.

The NC8430, T60 and V1Jp you mentioned are all very well built in full or partial alloy (magnesium alloy on all 3?). With regards to all the others (F3J, DV6000t, G1) you can read the reviews for those and above 3 in the reviews section of this website.

 

Personally, I would never advise anyone to buy a cheaper, worse-built laptop, even if they're not moving them around. All kinds of troubles can happen with that sort of laptop (and usually will in a few years at most).

Also, muzikman said he wanted a "sturdy, dependable machine".

Among the three choices you gave, I'd go with the V1j; note however that there might be battery wear issues with it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=106773 .

I think F-s are "mainstream" (entry-level) series? Please correct me if I'm wrong. And by what I gathered skimming around the threads over the last period, the G1's build quality is not the best there could be...

About Santa Rosa: it's the nextgen CPU, better speed for the same size/heat dissipation. I don't know what Centrino Pro is There might be other new technologies in a laptop a few months down the road, but if you don't know whether you need them or not, you probably don't need them.

 

From what I know . . . Centrino Pro is Santa Rosa . . .

Sorry if I'm mistaken . . .

 

Correct. I just checked and they're the same thing (Centrino Pro is the marketing name for Santa Rosa).

Also, by "better speed' in my post above you should read rather 'better performance' due to changes in the architecture from the Core 2 Duo. I am however unsure how extensive these changes are or of what they consist.

I am saying "rather" because usually clock speeds aren't stepped up that significantly (the difference between the mainstream Core Duo at 1.83GHz and the mainstream Core 2 Duo at 2.00 GHz is a mere 200 MHz), but gains are made due to better architecture and larger cache size.

To be precise: between Pentium M and Core Duo, and between Core Duo and Core 2 Duo, the difference in clock-per-clock performance was about 20-30%. So there is a step up of 20-30% in performance at the same clock speed with each new generation. Maybe that's what we can expect out of Santa Rosa as well -- but I'm by no means sure of it.

Also, one should note support for Robson technology in the Santa Rosa CPUs (near-instant boot of the OS from a NAND flash rather than the HDD). I am however unsure to what extent this technology will work reliably in the near future -- and by this I don't mean to be negative I simply don't know.