I was amazed to see a Santa Rosa laptop today - brand new Acer with TM7100 processor and the new Intel integrated graphics and 1GB RAM. It was priced at 35k or something. Acer's finally improved their designs too, looked a bit nicer than before, and all in matte black.

Chiang Mai pantip plaza. I thought it would take a little longer esp. because I haven't seen any availability dates or prices for santa rosa laptops anywhere on the web. Yet there it was, right in pantip Chiang Mai and if I had forked over 35k baht it would be mine now.

PS For non-geeks, Santa Rosa is the new generation of Intel's centrino duo platform, new chips and new chipsets.

nikster - Hold on to your money for just a little longer.

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How about a laptop with:

- 20.1" XHD (Extreme High-Definition) 1080p capable (LED backlit) screen

- Centrino-Pro (Santa Rosa) Core-2-Duo T7700, 2.4GHz

- 4GB DDR2 (main memory)

- 2 x 200GB HDD

- ATI Mobility Radeon X2600 XT graphics (256MB GDDR3 dedicated)

- HD-DVD Burner

- HDTV tuner

- HDMI output

- Intel PRO 4965AGN (802.11n) w/Bluetooth

- Weight 15 lbs.

- and .........

Price: $3000.00 (US)

waldwolf

(PS - Sorry, no datafax modem)

Acer is also going to be releasing new designs (gem concept) for their Aspire series. Other brands are also going to release a ton of Santa Rosa notebooks within the next few months. If anyone is planning on a new notebook purchase soon, you should wait a bit, as new model releases usually mean significant price drops for older models.

How about a laptop with:

- 20.1" XHD (Extreme High-Definition) 1080p capable (LED backlit) screen

Interesting, but don't like it. This is the tuk tuk of laptops. It crosses the disadvantages of a laptop with those of a desktop. The box is just too big; I have a 15" laptop and feel at the limit of practicality for travel. Yet the display on this one is not quite as big as an enthusiast would get on a desktop machine. Hard drive space is more than normal laptops, but still limited compared to a desktop. Ditto for the graphics and keyboard. And it costs twice what a comparable desktop. The giant plastic (height adjustment?) apparatus on the back is fugly.

The major Santa Rosa disappointment is they pulled WiMax out at the last minute. That will come in the '08 Montevina platform along with 45nm Core 2 CPU's, DDR3. Still, Santa Rosa is not a bad evolutionary step and you get the new Socket P.

There are tradeoffs for everything. If you want ultraportability, you sacrifice harddisk space/speed (go to 1.8" HDD form factor), cpu speed (single cores), itsy bitsy screen space (12"), keyboard comfort, battery life, and many times the optical drive (external). In return you get something that you can carry around all day without noticing that you're carrying it around. Or, you can get a "notebook" with a 20 inch screen, SLI graphics, dual RAIDed hard drives, tons of memory, HD-DVD, a big CPU, and even a keyboard with a normal numeric keypad. It would weigh a ton and break both your bank and your back, but it would sure look and play nice.

Wimax doesn't seem to be mature enough in terms of products to have Intel integrating it yet. Too bad, it would have been nice.

nikster - Hold on to your money for just a little longer.

How about a laptop with:

- 20.1" XHD (Extreme High-Definition) 1080p capable (LED backlit) screen

- Weight 15 lbs.

- and .........

heh, yeah, a monster. I'll pass on that one though, bigger is not better for me when it comes to laptops.

though that HP is more like a portable desktop.

Here is some interesting bits from the grapevine about more of Intel's upcoming goodies to look forward to this year.