IFL90 vs HEL80 vs S96J: What is best for me?

I need some advice. I like all 3 notebooks but am unsure which one to buy. I will mostly use my notebook for internet surfing and music/movie downloading. It will also be used for word processing. It will also be used for gaming. Some games I will probably play will be sports related (Madden, NBA Live), The Sims series, possibly games along the lines of Halo. I may not need the top of the line notebook, but I want one that will be somewhat future proof. I'd like it to handle Vista (which is the best vista choice for my needs? premium?), have a decent-sized hard drive for music (although I do have an external drive -- but wouldn't mind using that as back-up only), and can easily handle the games I mentioned. Which one would you choose? And what would you recommend I get when I configure it? Thanks so much!

 

It kind of depends if you plan on playing DX10 games. You mentioned you liked Halo so I am guessing you would want to get Halo 2. I would recommend getting the Compal IFL90 because it has a very good DX10 card as well as Santa Rosa.
Tim

 

I may play games such as Halo, but I mostly play lighter games like Madden.

I do want to future proof, so IFL90 may be the best choice. Force, Supra, or Ultra? How much memory would you recommend?

 

Well it depends how much you are willing to spend.

Personally I am probably going with the Supra because it has the 2.0GHz processor with 4MB L2 cache. The 1.83GHz only has the 2MB L2 cache and the 2.2GHz won't really be a noticeable upgrade.

I am going to use 2GBs of ram. I also think I will be getting robson which is 1GB.
Tim

 

Thanks for your help. Are there any other opinions?

 

Well I would definitely get the IFL90 over the HEL80.. it is the newer version and has a much more powerful graphics card. It will also be more powerful than the S96j. It is about $200 more than both the HEL80 and S96j.. but with that extra dough you get more power.

You could, if you wanted to, get the Asus G1S when it comes out, but I'm positive it will be more expensive than the IFL90.

 

g1s is around 2000 usd

yeah, if you want future proof, get the ifl90 since its the newest :3

 

just hold out for the IFL 90, you can do it! just a few more weeks

 

I need to know if $200 more to get the IFL90 Force is worth it over the Supra.

Here is what I'm thinking...
Either:
Intel Core 2 Duo T7700 2.4 GHz w/4MB L2 800 MHz FSB (Force)
-or-
Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0 GHz w/4MB L2 800 MHz FSB (Supra)

along with...
15.4" WXGA
2GB Memory
1GB Robson
120 GB Hard Drive
DVDRW
Intel 3965
Bluetooth
6 cell battery
Vista Premium
3 yr warranty

$1804 vs $1604
Does 0.4 MHz make that much difference?



Also, was wondering if the mousepad has a scroll feature on it?

 

No, don't upgrade the processor unless you desperately need that much computing power. It's not worth the extra $$$ otherwise.

 

What about 1.80GHz w/2MB L2 vs 2.00GHz w/4MB L2?

 

0.4MHz doesn't make a big enough difference for you to notice or justify the cost. My guess is the mouse will have a scroll feature on the right side of the touchpad. Almost every laptop has this feature now.
Tim

 

The 1.8GHz only has a 2MB cache while the 2.0GHz has a 4MB cache. This would be more noticeable than the 0.4 upgrade.
Tim

 

Definitely, stick with the T7300. And as far as I know, the step from T7100 to T7300 isn't nearly as big as the jump from the T5600 to T7200 in the equivalent Merom chips, so thats one of the really nice things about Santa Rosa.

 

I'm seriously looking into ordering an IFL-90, so it's pretty well agreed upon that the 2.0GHz T7300 is the way to go here?

Also will the robson memory benefit if I'm running XP? I don't plan on moving to Vista for quite some time, until it becomes actually better than XP, so would it be worth the 40$ to have Robson memory installed?

 

At this point, Robson technology only has drivers for Vista.

 

I keep reading about drivers for Robson but I can't totally figure out the role of drivers.

From what I understand, Robson is basically a disk cache. A disk cache should work without needing drivers: it's all hardware. Now, I also understand that Robson has some more sophisticated capabilities that the OS would want to control in some fashion. For those things, I can see a driver being useful.

So here's the question. If you have an OS that does not have Robson drivers, can it still at least work as a disk cache? I would expect the answer to be yes.

 

XP drivers, I thought it was only working in Vista? So it does or it does not function in XP then?

 

According to Donald's pre-order page Robson only works with Vista.
Tim

 

Is there much possibility of drivers coming out in the future to utilize this technology in XP? Also how upgradeable do you believe it is, for 40$ it might be worth it to have it installed at purchase so that a year or so down the line when Vista becomes more the standard and everyone starts switching over, you'll already have it. Does this sound like a sound decision?

 

Yeah I am planning on getting it since it is only $40.
Tim

 

Sorry everyone.. I made a typo.. That's what I get for writing while tired and pre-occupied...

Robson ONLY works with VISTA because MS wrote the software that enables the feature into their new OS only, and they have no intent at this point in going backwards. (If they port all the good stuff back, people will never leave XP).

I edited my above statement so it is now correct.

 

Drivers are required, because Vista manages what is stored in the memory. Robson comes on a PCI-E card. The Hybrid drives coming soon that have 256mb of NAND might be a different case, but those have nothing to do with Robson.

 

Man, y'all are really convincing me to drop another $40 for the Robson memory. It sounds like a really good idea. How much would that drive up the heat, though?

 

It shouldn't cause any heat (or very little) since it is flash memory.
Tim

 

Ah. My noob is showing. Thanks Tim