Nocturnal Poïesis: Latest Technologies: Laptops

Latest Technologies: Laptops

Mobile computing has been stepping it up since the last few quarters. Leading the long race are top names like Apple, Alienware, Sony etc. The latest in laptops are lessons in power and speed, which are with you even when you are away from your desk.

The latest in gaming laptops are getting more sophisticated as days go by and the term ‘desktop replacement’ is being used more often lately. It isn’t easy to distinguish between the many different options available apart from the obvious choice of high-end ones like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this article. The latest offerings from Asus, HP, Acer and Toshiba all include multi-core processors, large amounts of high-end RAM and spacious storage options. The usual screen size is either 15 inches or 17 inches.

With such options in mind, it ends up being a war of smaller details that ultimately wins over the customers. One of the main area of interest for gamers is the graphics card option; where there is a huge divide between the ATI camp and the nVidia camp. So sometimes the maker of the graphics solution ends up being the deciding factor. Although ATI seems to be a more common sight in laptops than its rival nVidia.

After the major features there are the varied connectivity options. Almost every laptop over a specific budget and below a specific age offers features like Bluetooth, wi-fi, USB2.0, LAN, FireWire etc. So here the choice is between more USB ports, built in multi-card readers etc.

Design wise, it is hard to beat the likes of Alienware, Apple and Sony. But the budget laptops from HP, Dell and Toshiba are all getting cosmetic facelifts. Take the Samsung Q-45, the Acer Ferrari or Lamborghini laptops. They are all more or less the commonplace laptop with the average set of features. But they have unique styling that makes them more appealing than other laptops in the same performance category and price bracket.

A recent trend in laptop storage is the use of SSDs or solid state drives. Solid-state drives have speeds that leave the current hard disk drives far behind. These drives have no moving parts inside them and hence, the time needed for reading and writing data is decreased to fractions of the time taken by the spinning platter type hard drives.

But laptops having these are quite expensive and low on storage because the technology is still very expensive. It is somewhat like the BluRay situation but here at least the prices are falling very fast and bigger SSD storage options are becoming more affordable.

While the developments continue to happen, companies like Lenovo, Acer etc. are fighting it out by providing extra features like biometric security (face, finger print recognition security), bundled offers etc. Advances in mobile computing by chipmaker Intel have also given a major performance boost to the laptop market.

So far, 2009 is set to bring about more innovations in the market, but do not expect too many new product launches because of the depression.

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Google indexing FTW! And no, my blog has not been hacked or anything. It is me, the lost_poet posting mindless web-content as part of an SEO experiment. Normal convolution will resume soon.

Conjured by the lost_poet on Friday, May 08, 2009 | Found under: My adventures, my work, Tech Talk |

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