a bit OT, but still let me ask why

why is that powernotebooks.com looks like the only high quality supplier of Centrino notebooks with non-widescreen SXGA and RAdeon 9700?

why other companies available in US fail to offer normal 14" or 15" high-res screens (SXGA) and good graphics with latest Centrino processors, at a reasonable price? Same goes for Athlon 64.
Don't get why for many years this incredible counter-intuitive phenomenon occurs in the laptop industry. HP is years behind in the graphics dept, and they force people to go wide-screen as if everyone only wants to watch DVDs on their laptops. If you have a reasonable explanation, please share... Am I missing something, will it always be like that and certain companies /like ASUS/ will keep listing the 400Mz celeron laptops?? I honestly don't know that's why I am asking.

 

Check out the Acer Ferarri series. Expensive though. Hopefully notebook OEMs (HP especially) will show more signs of cluefullness with whatever comes out in November.

I rather like widescreens, now that I have one, and not just for DVD movies (which ROCKS! And Netflix just dropped their subscription price a few bucks, must... resist...).

 

IBM offers a 15" SXGA+ screen on it's T-42 and R-51.

HP has a 14-inch SXGA+ option on the NC6000 and a 15-inch SXGA+ with the NC8000.

I don't mind the wide-screen format, even for just web surfing or whatever. It's not a must for me, but I appreciate it.

 

Widescreens are OK, but I (and a few others) would rather get normal screen at least as an option. I don't like somebody clearly forcing me to go widescreen, like HP (and others) do.

Ferrari is bright read - [xx(]... I'm not a punk, thank you.
Here's what they have to say about the latest and greatest Ferrari 3400: "The Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 3000+ puts you out in front!" - Should be:
"Unfortunately, our Mobile AMD Athlon™ 64 processor 3000+ cannot put you in front today. But it can put you right the middle"

from $2,269.43 = insane, isn't it?? At that price you can do much much much better today.

Widescreen SXGA+Athlon 3700+ had cost me $1228 from HP...

IBM: they are notorious for selling HW that belongs to the past year's industry. Here's what you get for $1,849.00
Intel® Pentium® M Processor 735 1.70GHz (how sure people are it's not Banias? Looks like the fastest CPU IBM goes is 1.7. Looks a bit suspicious.)
32MB ATI Mobility RADEON 7500

Here's what you will get from powernotebooks at $1768.65:
Dathon 2.0 GHz
128MB Radeon 9700

Resellerraiting profile: IBM = 2.5/10 (past six-month)
http://www.resellerratings.com/seller1335.html, check out the horror stories
whereas powernotebooks = 10/10

My original question holds...

 

The Ferarri 3400 is the only notebook out that has the new Low-Voltage A64 3000+, 35W max (less in practice), whereas the HP notebooks have the cheaper DTR-class, 81W max CPUs. Plus the Ferarri has all the bells & whistles, and it's about 2 pounds lighter. It has a Radeon 9700 vs. the HP's 3-year-old GeForce 440 Go. It's still overpriced, but I wouldn't mind having one.

Actually, Acer does have some cheaper A64 notebooks, including ones with GeForce 5700 GPUs, but figuring out which model has which options is tricky:

http://us.acer.com/acerpanam/page9.do?dau34.oid=6629&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=25&ctx1=PA&crc=3679944072

mwave.com carries them, but most models are out of stock and they don't specify which GPU is used.

 

why is hp not offering latest ATI and NVIDIA GPUs ? Only
dell uses the ATI 9800 (only in XPS).

t