Notebook Reviews

Samsung AMOLED Prototype Notebook

Chris Guthrie — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:17:43 +0000

I was at CES this year specifically to cover netbooks but because I was only there for a few days I didn't have enough time to cover all of the notebooks as well. I did; however, have a chance to see this very nifty Samsung prototype AMOLED notebook though:

As you can tell the screen is see through. Pretty cool huh?

Bestselling Notebooks of November

hyder — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 01:48:57 +0000

Last month we had a Mac Book Pro as the bestselling notebook and this month there was a slight change. Although we still have an Apple made notebook leading the pack this time it goes to the less expensive 13.3 inch Macbook priced at $954.59:

The rest of the top 10 bestselling notebooks are as follows:

2. Apple MacBook Pro MB990LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop $1,149
3. Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 TruBrite 15.6-Inch Grey/Black Laptop - 2 Hours 25 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $579.99
4. ASUS UL30Vt-X1 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) $799
5. Apple MacBook Pro MB991LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop $1429
6. ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop - 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $819.95
7. Sony VAIO VGN-NW240F/S 15.5-Inch Silver Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) $699.95
8. HP Pavilion DV6-1354US 15.6-Inch Black Laptop - Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $679.99
9. Acer AS5738Z-4111 15.6-Inch Blue Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) $525.26
10. Acer Aspire AS1410-2497 11.6-Inch Blue Laptop - Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $399.99

Like last month, Apple had three notebooks in the bestsellers list. Asus and Toshiba managed to surpass HP with a few models. Against my prediction from last month the Windows 7 powered notebooks have not been able to crack Apple's stranglehold on the number 1 position. The Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 priced at $579.99 was the closest to Apple, but it was more of a bargain laptop than a full featured laptop. Who will challenge the MacBook next month?.

Side Note: For some reason this post didn't publish on December 1st like I scheduled it, so I apologize for the delay.

What do you think?

Cyber Monday Notebook Deals

Chris Guthrie — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:11:45 +0000

Now that Black Friday has come and gone it's time for some Cyber Monday deals. So if you were unfortunate enough to not get what you were looking for last week here's your next chance. Amazon is continuing it's deals with a dedicated Cyber Monday deals page.

First up we have a Dell Inspiron 1545 15.6-Inch Jet Black Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium which will be going on sale during their Lightning Deals round at 6:00 AM PST

Next we have a Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 TruBrite 15.6-Inch Grey/Black Laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium for $549.99

NewEgg.com is offering a deal on the ASUS P50IJ-X1 Intel Pentium dual-core 15.6" Intel GMA 4500M NoteBook for just $449.99.

Zip Zoom Fly is also offering a great deal on an Asus U20A-B1 which you can find here for $649.99 after $100 mail in rebate

If you find any other great deals be sure to send me an email and I'll update this post. Also, be sure to check out our sister site notebook deals for more great savings. Good luck!

Black Friday Notebook Deals

Chris Guthrie — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:06:42 +0000

Black Friday is nearly upon us and I've put together a list of some of the best notebook deals I've found while scouring the net. Currently the best place to find a cheap notebook without having to wait for Black Friday is over at Amazon.com's Black Friday Deals page. They are running deals throughout the week and on Black Friday as well.

The best deal I've seen so far on the Black Friday Deals page is this:
HP G60-530US 15.6-Inch Black/Silver Laptop - Up to 3.75 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) for $529.99

It's supposed to drop in price again during their "Lightning Deals" time frame at 8:00 AM on Thursday so be sure to check back then.

If you see any other great notebook deals online or in stores be sure to send me an email and I'll update this post to help others. For those of you planning to fight through the lines on Black Friday I've outlined the deals you can find in store on notebooks as well:

Best Buy:

HP 15.6" Notebook w/AMD Turion II Dual Core Processor M500, 6GB Memory, 320GB Hard Drive, Windows 7 $599.99
Toshiba 16" Laptop w/Intel Core 2 Duo Processor, 3GB DDR3 Memory, 250GB Hard Drive (Model # L505-S5984) - $399.99

Walmart:

Acer 17.3" Blue Laptop w/4GB Memory, 320GB Hard Drive and Windows 7 Premium (Online Only) - $498.00

Newegg:

CyberpowerPC Gamer Ultra 2019 Athlon II X2 245(2.9GHz) - $399.99

Again, please email me with any deals you find and I'll be sure to do another post for Cyber Monday as well. Happy hunting.

Bestselling Notebooks of October

Chris Guthrie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:59:34 +0000

This is the first in a series of posts I'll run every month that shows off the bestselling notebooks of the month. Kicking it off in first place position we have the Macbook Pro priced at $1,410 (the 13.3 inch variant model MB991LL/A). As you can see this notebook has been among the top of the bestsellers for months in a row:

The rest of the top 10 bestselling notebooks are as follows:

2. ASUS UL30A-X5 Thin and Light 13.3-Inch Black Laptop - 12 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $699.99
3. Apple MacBook MC207LL/A 13.3-Inch Laptop $959.99
4. Toshiba Satellite L505D Series 15.6-Inch Laptop $479.99
5. Apple MacBook Pro 13.3-Inch Laptop ,168.95 ,1
6. ASUS UL80Vt-A1 14-Inch Thin and Light Black Laptop - 11.5 Hours of Battery Life (Windows 7 Home Premium) $823.53
7. HP Pavilion DV7 Series 17.3-Inch Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) $783.32
8. HP Pavilion DV6 Series 15.6-Inch Laptop (Windows 7) $799.99
9. HP Pavilion DV6 Series 15.6-Inch Laptop (Windows 7) $699.99
10. HP G6 Series 15.6-Inch Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium) $499.99

This month it was a win for Apple with three notebooks in the top five. HP primarily held onto the bottom section of the top 10 bestselling notebooks but my prediction moving into November is that the Windows 7 powered notebooks will start to take some top positions on the leader board. Windows 7 was only out for the very last portion of October and so in November with a whole month to go I believe we'll see some a lot more movement.

What do you think?

Windows 7 Laptops Shipping

Chris Guthrie — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:20:50 +0000

Amazon has posted a Windows 7 Laptop section on their website which allows you to easily browse Windows 7 powered laptops:

I like this section because I'm personally looking for a new laptop for my wife and it makes it easy to be able to sort by manufacturer, price etc. and still make sure I can get something that's from Windows 7.

Browse Windows 7 powered laptops here

Toshiba to offer Ducati branded Satellite U500

Chris Guthrie — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 07:52:17 +0000

I've personally never been a huge fan of laptops that have additional company logo's slapped on there to increase the price a few percentage point, but nevertheless here we have Toshiba offering a Ducati branded Satellite U500.

The laptop is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53 GHz processor with 4GB RAM. Also included is an ATI Radeon HD 4570 512MB discrete graphics card, which delivers great graphics performance. It is expected to be loaded with Windows 7 OS; however, this has not yet been confirmed. But because of the fact that no price or release date has been announced, it is a safe bet to expect that by the time these particulars are specified Windows 7 will already be out. You've got the regular ports on the side and including a slot load DVD burner. The laptop has a very attractive design with textured surface and Ducati badge is on the top of the lid.

Detailed specifications are not announced yet, but we'll have more on this one as it develops. I'd prefer to see more movie branded laptops myself... perhaps a District 9 branded alien laptop or you can always just stick with the Asus Transformers laptop.

Asus G51 Gaming Laptop for Pre-order

Chris Guthrie — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 18:52:29 +0000

The Asus G51 gaming laptop has made it's way to Amazon in the form of a pre-order for $1634.98.

Here's a short list of the specs:

* Intel Quad Core Q9000 Processor 2.0GHz; 4GB of DDR2 800 RAM, 2 Slots, 4GB Max
* NVidia GTX 260M Dedicated Graphics with 1GB DDR3 VRAM; Gaming Backpack and Gaming Mouse Included
* 640GB SATA Hard Drive (7200RPM); DVD SuperMulti Drive
* Windows Vista Home Premium (64 Bit) Operating System
* 15.6-inch Full HD 1920 x 1080 LCD Display; Free Eee Stick and 9 Games Included

Overall I think it'll be a great addition to Asus' line of gaming latops.

Click here to pre-order

Samsung 256GB SSD under mass production

Chris Guthrie — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:00:37 +0000

Solid State Drive technology showed a lot of promise in the past few years, but sadly hefty price tags and a lower performance levels than expected have put a hamper on increasing their popularity. Thankfully Samsung's new 256 GB drive that has just gone into mass production has actually managed to double the performance of their existing 64 GB and 128 GB SSD's.

Samsung says that having a 256 GB SSD in your laptop is like having a 15,000 RPM drive without it's size, noise, clutter and heaint drawbakcs

There is no pricing or official launch date for the drives but needless to say there will be plenty of high performance users clamoring to use them. If you can't wait for the new SSD's to come out be sure to check out some of these options via Amazon.

What do you think about SSD's? Worth the price or expensive novelty?

via laptoplogic

Asus Transformers laptop is truly unique

Chris Guthrie — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 08:45:45 +0000

Asus released a Transformers laptop as part of a theater promotion in the UK with voice activated commands like "Autobots Assemble!" and "Let's rollllll out!" Only kidding of course about the voice activation, but they did come up with an admirably spec'd notebook for the promotion. The gaming rig is based on a G60 gaming laptop, features a 15.6" HD display, a quad core processor and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M GPU.

Even though the 2nd movie was terrible, I still wouldn't turn down this sweet machine. View more pictures here on Flickr.

via Laptoplogic