Am I missing something?

[Big Shed]

/Rant on

Have been looking for a new notebook and can't find one I would want to buy.

Reason?

They all have those blasted glossy screens that reflect everything, lights, windows and worst of all you can admire yourself in the screen whilst you are using the damn thing.

Why do all new notebooks have these, almost none of the desktop type LCD screens are glossy, and virtually no LCD screens for home theaters are glossy.

The explanation given to me is that you get better colour rendition when you are watching a DVD, is that the only thing people use their notebook for these days?

May have to look for a good used one.


Rant off/

[Cliff Rogers]

Have you looked at Toshiba?

I favour them the most.... I got an A120 for our local theatre group last week, I can't remember it having a glossy screen.

[Big Shed]

I know I have looked at some Toshibas, but all had glossy screens and most had that strange little "joystick" that moves the mouse. Have never been able to get on with one of those!

Maybe I should go Mac!


I could understand if there was a mixture of screens on the market, but every notebook I have looked at, at least 30, had a glossy screen. I even asked whether they could be ordered with a matte screen, and all I got was "the look" that says "you want a what?"!

[Cliff Rogers]

A120 has a touch pad but I always stick a USB mouse in as well.

I didn't notice the glossy screen, will have to look again.

[Big Shed]

Just looked upthe A120 on Google, it certainly has a touch pad and it says it has a matte screen. Must do some phoning around to see where I can look at one.

The one on the the web has a Celeron, are they available with "real" Intel processors?

[Cliff Rogers]

...The one on the the web has a Celeron, are they available with "real" Intel processors?

The A120 has 3 different flavours of Intel, I think they are all Celerons but I can't remember off the top of my head.... I'll have a look at work tomorrow.

They are fine if you aren't doing rocket science or 3D animations & games etc.
The all come with Vista now & that makes them a bit slow.

[Cliff Rogers]

Go here & have a look around.

Type A120 into the search field & it should come up with 4 results.

[Big Shed]

The A120 has 3 different flavours of Intel, I think they are all Celerons but I can't remember off the top of my head.... I'll have a look at work tomorrow.

They are fine if you aren't doing rocket science or 3D animations & games etc.
The all come with Vista now & that makes them a bit slow.

No Celerons, once bitten twice shy! I do a lot of rather humongous VB6 compiling (haven't gone over to .Net yet!) and Celerons don't like that sort of work, it takes forever.

[Cliff Rogers]

The link I posted timed out so I have changed it.

you could also search for the product numbers.

PSAC1A-0R903H

PSAC1A-0QV03J

If you go to Products & then the Tecra series, have a look there.
The A7, M5 & P are stilll available with Win XP.

[Big Shed]

Thanks Cliff, I have looked at the A120 on the Toshiba site and they look good. It appears they are also available with better processors.

I have phoned a few local people and no luck with stock. All are willing to order in, but not interested in buying a "pig in a poke". Next time I am in Melbourne will look at some of the bigger dealers there.

The urgency is now out of the situation, have finally got my current notebook going again.
It broke down some time ago, would fire up and before it completed the startup cycle it would shut down. It had been giving me the dreaded blue screen of death after being on for a while, the time period progressively getting shorter.
Anyway, when it finally gave up the ghost, I got a quote to fix it, $500 and some change!

I was reasonably sure that the memory was the culprit, but decided that perhaps it was time to get a new one.
After seeing all these stupid glossy screens that didn't appear to be an option either!

So, put in 2x256Mb of memory, and bingo, works as good as new again.
And they wanted $500+ to fix this?

I think the problem is heat related, it is a Clevo D400S with a P4 2.8 desktop processor which tends to run a bit on the "warm" side.

Will keep using it now, works great, great handwarmer in winter too!

Even if I have to feed it new memory chips every year, it is still cheap computing