Notebooks

Perhaps Toshiba was feeling left out in the cold.  That is the only thing that would explain them jimmying new technology into an old product.  The Toshiba Dynabook SS RX1 is nothing particulary new.  It is a sweet little notebook, but it is no X300 or MBA.  It fell short of greatness.  Toshiba has two new variations of their plain Jane ultra-portable.  One variation packs a 128GB SSD into the notebook, the other packs a CDMA WIN X1 chip, which will allow owners to surf anywhere that they can connect to AU.  You will be paying for the privilege, both on the unit cost and on the monthly access fees.  The price is starting from $3900 and it gets a lot more expensive if you crank up the options.  It seems such a waste.

Source: Akihabara News, Toshiba

If you had not heard of Vology you are not alone, I had never heard of them either. For this reason I was very surprised to hear that they are claiming to have the world's fastest gaming laptop. The model in question is the Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2. How have they made it so fast? Easy, they have blended desktop and laptop components together to create a powerful, though somewhat unwieldy concoction.

The specs of the Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2 are very impressive for a laptop. It is packed with an Intel Core 2 Quad 2.66GHz, GeForce 8800M GTX 512MB, and 4GB of DDR2 – 800MHz RAM. It boasts a full-sized keyboard with hot keys and a 17-inch screen. Peripherals include a 7-in-1 card reader, 200GB HDD, Pioneer DVD burner and we are assuming a full spectrum of 802.11 wireless support.

Is the Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2 fast? I am sure that it would fly through processor intensive tasks, but that is not what gives you the juice in gaming. The bottleneck for most gaming systems is video. That is why Alienware and the like are pushing mobile-SLI solutions in many of the higher end mobile gaming platforms.

Laptops like this are semi-portable at best. No one wants to lug a brick like this around any further than a trip from the living room to the bedroom. It is too big for commuting and I am guessing the battery life will be as laughable as other gaming laptops. Which brings us to the price, at $4,600 it is simply too expensive. If you want a powerful gaming platform, get a desktop. $4,600 would build an incredibly powerful system that would blow the Vology Limited Edition Predator X-2 right out of the water.

The Asus G70 is essentially a scaled down version of what ASUS promised us quite a while ago. We were initially promised up to 8GB of RAM, now we get 4GB, which is more than enough for most gaming scenarios that you are likely to encounter in this day and age. It rocks a pair of GeForce 8800M cards in SLI. The standard configuration will give you 400GB of storage. Sound is supplied by Altec Lansing who have managed to build in stereo speakers and a subwoofer.

I am not quite ready to jump on this whole gaming notebook bandwagon. All of the components that are jammed into them make them extremely heavy and you can forget about battery time. I understand that some people view them as desktop replacements, but I have to say, I like having a desktop. Desktops are easy to tinker with yourself, whereas with laptops things become a lot more complicated. Dropping the max down to 4GB of RAM is not really an issue for today's applications. It is a beast of a notebook, but I have to say it is not for me.

Sources: SlashGear, PC Launches