The notebooks of 2009: the same as the notebooks of 2008?

Except for gamers, notebooks have been pretty much stagnant from a hardware perspective for the past few years. I mean:

CPU: Most notebooks still use the same old Core 2 Duo we've had since 2006 with few improvements other than a die shrink.
Memory: 4 GB has been affordable for quite some time, but going beyond that is still prohibitively expensive.
Hard drive: SSDs still remain too expensive and HDDs have seen little improvement over the past few years.
Graphics: This is probably the biggest area of improvement and about the only thing that would clearly differentiate a notebook today from something dating back to 2006 or 2007. This really only impacts gamers though.

 

Well it's stagnant because the market is; most consumers don't need more power than is already present, therefore the market caters to the other aspect consumers want i.e. a cheaper price.

Back when I got my 14" HP 3-4 years back, it cost me 550$CAD and had a Celeron M and that was considered quote for quote "a good deal". Nowadays, you can get a 15" Core 2 Duo machine for 550-600$ if you know where to look. Also, Core 2 Duos have made it widespread to smaller machines like 14" and 13" whereas they were a premium a few years back in such a small form factor.

So really, laptops IMO have been catering to cost/performance recently rather than pure hardware performance. It's a question of mainstreaming technologies and rendering them more available/more affordable to the public. Core 2 Duo used to be a premium and now it's pretty much standard.

Really, power isn't an issue with a large portion of the market of laptops so while there are developments in terms of this recently(ex: Intel producing the mobile i7), it won't become a majority anytime soon simply because of they'll need to create a demand for power as it's not genuinely there in large enough proportions(ex: most people don't need a Core 2 Duo let alone an i7's power).

 

A lot of 13-14 in laptops now use ULV processors and the main aim is on battery life, thinness and not power. This might make things appear a little stagnated or taking a step backwards. It probably would make more sense to argue that things have taken a step in another direction.

The SZ that i bought in 2008 still measures up well and is also more powerful than some laptops in this market that are being released today.

As Forever Melody wrote there are more powerful offerings out there but the direction of a lot of laptops in the consumer market appears to have changed.

 

Yeah I agree, they should make more progress.

I want the speed to double every year. Right now it's a very poor effort being put into power. We need more competition in the CPU and GPU markets.

 

I wouldn't mind more stagnation, if it means boosts in screen resolution (have you noticed how fewer and fewer machines other than netbooks have weak resolutions... ok well, they are also trimming at the high end in some places, but generally, the trend seems upward) and battery life. Also, while it isn't my thing, I think a lot of effort lately has been going in to the design of notebooks. They are becoming (or in the case of Apples and some Dells, already are) fasion statements, much like cell phones. I'm not really happy about that, but it is what it is. And as pointed out, most people already have more power than they need in a C2D lappy with 4GB of RAM.

Oh yeah, and as a gamer, I wouldn't mind being able to buy one computer every 5-10 years and have it still remain relevant for that whole period.

 

At least in the mobile space, I'm on the opposite side of that fence... I'd rather see performance held more or less constant and power consumption halved every year. At least to the point where I can have a thin, fanless, mainstream notebook with a day's worth of battery run time.

I'd also spring for better displays, backlit keyboards, more development in tablet PCs... but details, details.

 

You can't have every aspect down, and still make it cheap cheap cheap.

 

LED screens, 5+ hours of battery life, switchable graphics, a full CPU, lighter and better built laptops.

THAT is what we should be pursuing, instead f dirt cheap laptops (although dirt cheap plus all of the above...wouldnt complain).

 

gaming laptops are a very very small percentage of the market.

 

Gaming, no.

Portable workstations that won't break our back and will last for more than 90 minutes depending on how we need them configured at that moment, yes. (What Serg said).

 

Even workstations represent a small percentage of the laptop market though. While arguably, mobile computing did aim at businesses to begin with, few are the businesses/people who need a so powerful machine.

The so called "dirt cheap" laptops make up a large percentage of the market, likeit or not. Lots of students, starting companies and other such customers are in the market for laptops and these are more numerous than thsoe willing to spend +2000$ on a machine.

At this point, I can only agree with the movement to make technology more efficient rather than more powerful. I think what's out today satisfies probably 80% if not more of consumers and those wanting more want it more than they need it.

 

Forever_Melody,

Yes, maybe 80% are more than satisfied with what's available, but is that a reason to exclude the 20% who not only need it, but are willing to pay for it?

No problem - as when I'm ready to upgrade this notebook, an i7 based 'monster' will probably still be cheaper and more powerful than my current one was and, last longer on battery power too.

Now, if only they went one or two steps further and gave me a reason to (finally) get rid of the desktop too!

 

We're not excluding anyone. Technology is still advancing; the mobile i7 is a prime example of power being brought over to the mobile world. The R&D simply follows the market. Seeing as most of the market doesn't favor power, most of the R&D will not be put into pure power. If a small percentage of people want more power, a smaller(but still present) effort shall be put towards developing more powerful solutions.

If tomorrow everyone decided that they didn't care for portable, cheap and battery efficient laptops, but for mobile beasts, then the market would shift and R&D would be put towards that.

 

Except that battery life and portability haven't improved all that much either. A new mainstream 15" laptop still gets the same 3-5 hrs of battery life that a 15" laptop in 2006 did, and it still weighs the same 5.5-6.5 pounds.

Sure you can get a 15" CULV nowdays, and those do get better battery life and weigh less than something from 3 years ago, but you're not getting anywhere near the same level of performance a first-generation Core 2 Duo T7200/7400/7600 would provide, which is pathetic when you take 3 years of advances into account.

If performance was truly held constant and battery life and portability were improving, I wouldn't mind, but that's not the case here. It's more like you can sacrifice performance relative to a laptop from 3 years ago for better portability and battery life, or you can simply have a laptop that's slightly faster than the 3 year old one you're replacing and gain no other benefits.

I dunno about you, but I don't like the idea of spending money to "upgrade" to something that's even slower than what I already have.

 

Battery Tech. and Heat dissipation are lagging.

Other than that, I must disagree with most of you, Corei7 seems to be Leaps and Bounds above C2D.

In almost every area I see Competition driving the Notebook Market.
LED Backlight?
OLED?

$1000 qx9xxx vs $550 QuadCore i7?

Sure we've not seeing Cost Range Drops, but $800 will still buy you a Faster/Better NB than the same $800 18 to 24 months ago.

But that same $800 may not buy you a Faster NB to replace your $1200, it will most likely still buy you a better one.

While we'd all like to see a Range Drop, I think it would be at the Cost of QA.

 

Core i7 wasn't available at all for 9 months of 2009, and even today it's still only available in a small selection of notebooks. When you take into account all non-netbook notebook sales this year, the i7 is pretty much negligable.

WLED isn't new. RGBLED is, but given how most of the screens that have RGBLED are 16:9 instead of 16:10, there's a tradeoff involved so that's not a clear advantage either. And uhh, OLED is pretty much nonexistent in 2009.

You're comparing an 820QM to a QX9300. The $550 820QM isn't as fast as the $1000 QX9300 in workloads with high parallelism. The 920XM that's as fast or faster than the QX9300 in all situations also costs $1000. Intel didn't cut prices at all on their high-end CPU's with the new i7's.

Something for $800 today is maybe 10% faster than something that cost $800 at the beginning of 2008. Hardly noticeable.

 

I have a 2 gz c2d processor, 4 Gb of ram, a 17" screen and 500Gb of disk which cost me less than $500- after rebates.

In two years I expect to spend another $500- for a new machine with updated specs.

The halls are littered with the names of companies who tried and failed to make it as premium high-performance notebook makers. Even Sager has to survive by selling their machines as OEM boxes to people like BFG.

'Perfect' is the extremely costly enemy of Good Enough.

 

Idk where you've been looking, but you're comparing a premium laptop from 3 years ago to a "regular one" from now. Core 2 Duo wasn't a standard 3 years ago like it is now. Therefore, we're improving in terms of making technology more affordable and more widespread to people. Idk where you're getting the analogy that we're paying the same price for "similar" tech. A Celeron M was still around and cost 500$ 3 years ago, nowadays you can get worlds better for a same budget. I have a Celeron M and I paid it that price and it wasn't considered a bad deal back then. I also couldn't squeeze more than 4-5 hours on that thing and now we can squeeze 3-5 hours on a Core 2 Duo which is worlds better? That's better improvement on battery life if you ask me.

You're looking at the higher end market, which arguably has been somewhat stagnant because the demand wasn't(maybe still isn't) as high.

I can understand your point of view, but the market advances because of supply and demand. If tomorrow we'd stop buying laptops because we noticed that there wasn't a noticeable improvement, companies would be forced to pressure R&D into developing and releasing something worthwhile. Blame the masses for not noticing and the companies for "taking advantage" of it(but why wouldn't they?).

 

You're right, I'm talking about the higher end ($800-$1200) market here.

But really - people who buy $500 laptops generally don't know or care about anything other than price, battery life, and screen size. It's the people who pay $800+ for a laptop that actually pay attention to things like performance, and it's in this range that the stagnation is most apparent.

 

the two things that probably need a high performance machine are gaming and processor intensive scientific/engineering applications.

for gaming, graphics technology HAS advanced, processor is not normally the bottleneck, and for workstation applications, most often desktops are used.

 

CPU: old Core 2 Duo since 2006... core 2 duo is a brand with many cpu's. some older some new. it's just a brand from intel. it's far from stagnated. newer cpu's don't even have 6months. and have you heard of i7????
Memory: you have more adoption of DDR3. the 4gb been affordable but going beyond is expensive? well 4gb is expensive. it respects the More's law and the ram prices just like desktops. it's far from stagnated. you can buy 8gb modules. prices will always drop and the transistor count will double every 18months.
Graphics. have you seen the new ati cards?
but there's more...
wifi draft N it's not draft anymore.
blue-ray is getting way more cheaper and available.
LED LCD's appeared.
SSD's, the huge grow in SSD's in performance and capacity and the price drop, also respecting More's law.
and so on...
imo the only stagnated thing it's the batteries, but that's due to the technology itself. there's no tech available today to make them last longer.

Far from stagnated.

 

I have to largely disagree with you this time Peon.

On the CPU area, a first C2D compared to the latest ones (on the same performance bracket) it is a big jump, where a 2.4 Santa Rosa is outperformed by the 2.4 Montevina. And take into consideration that 2 years ago, C2D was a premium on higher end laptops (nowadays you find dirt cheap C2D based laptops).

Core i7 is becoming more and more common. Not that you need it, but the 820QM is on par and even outruns the QX9300. Only on heavily quad-threaded things, the QX9300 will still show performance up, but on power management, the i7 beats the QX hands down.

RAM. 2 years ago, reaching 4GB of RAM was like "wow...that is massive". Nowadays most laptops come with 4GB pre-installed and are up to 8GB upgradeable (mid range/high laptops) and some even reach 16GB such as the M6400 and the Envy 15.

IGP. This has seen a quantum jump. 3 years ago Intel IGP was a GMA950 on some machine or a X3100. Nowadays the 4500MHD can perform well enough to watch real movies and some light gaming.

GPU. Here it has been a HUGE difference. My 2 years old IGP is a 110nm from ATI. Today you find 40nm on a laptop. According to my calculations, that is almost the third part. And performance has increased exponentially, at least with ATI, whereas NVIDIA had the rebranding story, but did some good things with the GT200 core, and now has much better performance. For example the GT240M which replaces the 9600M GT, has a much better performance on NVIDIA, and the 4670HD from ATI replaces the 3670HD and gives around 50% increased performance.

Screen are a mixed bag. LED is great. 16:9 not so great. Thing is that you are saving somewhat more life on that.

BQ, materials and body. Laptops have gotten thinner, lighter and stronger in general. For example the Envy 15 which is as thin as the MBP15 (not the last refresh but the one before) and cramps a 4830HD and an i7. Or the ASUS UL30Vt, which has switchable and it is thin and well build. Or the DM3 from HP which is metallic. This has seen a lot of improvements in general, where laptops are no longer bricks as mine ^^ and still perform as the bricks they replace.

Battery life is the one being stopped. Why? My theory is, no mainstream user needs more than the 3 hours, why get more? Why bother there since the average Joe wont notice it, nor use it. Lithium-Ion technology is dated, and we all know it. It shows its age pretty badly, but it is what we have, and ups from that is normally outrageously expensive.
The motivation to build a powerful laptop that gives loads of battery life is so small, that they dont bother mostly. They know, you are not gaming on battery, you are not stressing the battery, and 3-4 hours is enough for most people, so that is left there ATM.

There are techs available, but they are not used. There are some HP polymer batteries and high-capacity ones, but they are not that big of a "oomph" and the other technologies are not even used. I have read of it some times, and it sees no market...

In general, we have seen lots of improvements in performance, where a CULV can satisfy 80% of the market's needs and be affordable.

 

About the ram, some owners that have the PM965 chipset have learnt that their ram can be upgraded to 8GB. This is the case with the laptop that i own. In benchmarks the difference between DDR2 ram and DDR3 ram is not significant.
Of course the BUS is faster but again in tests it does not appear to be as much difference as it looks.
Of course small progression has been made though.

LED displays have also been around for a while but only in high end laptops.

 

With regards to processor, what I feel is the most significant improvement is the CULV.
It reduces issues regarding heat, increase battery life all at a low cost.
It simply improves mobile computing without sacrificing performance.
In fact it is good enough for everyone except gamers and other CPU intensive application users.

 

Meh. There is nothing interesting or fundamentally new here -- downclock the 25W C2Ds to CULV speeds and you'll have roughly the same thing. Intel just figured out that they can do this out of the box and still sell them at rather high prices. They've got to be loving this: $262 for a 1.4GHz, 3MB cache C2D.

 

Well, considering they cover the needs of most people, it was a very smart move.

 

Really? Downclocking a 25W P series is the same thing as my 10W SU9400?

 

Yes. What did you think it was?

The power dissipated by any given CPU is proportional to the clock speed multiplied by the square of the voltage it runs at. Furthermore, the lower the clock speed, the less voltage a chip needs to operate. This is the basis of Intel's SpeedStep and AMD's Cool'n'Quiet and PowerNow! technologies.

However, whereas the downclocking done by these technologies is dynamic (the CPU is throttled when it is not necessary and allowed to operate at full capacity when it's needed), the CULV processors are permanently set to the lower clock speeds and lower voltage. Of course, Intel probably did a little extra optimization -- they probably changed the voltage values in SpeedStep and let it go down to lower multiplier values, but these are second order effects. Take a 25W P series processor, cut its clock speed by roughly a factor of 2, slightly reduce the voltage and you'll more or less have your 10W CULV.

 

I think you are leaving the voltage out of the equation.

You would need downclock, undervolt, and a lot of luck to reach those levels that a CULV does naturally.

 

Please read what I said -- I most certainly did not leave voltage out of any equation. The lower the clock speed, the lower you can set the voltage. All modern processors make use of this; you can download CPU-Z and see for yourself.