Acer Ferrari and ASUS Lamborghini laptops

[Franz]

Acer has had a Ferrari laptop series for several years and I guess ASUS' new Lamborghini series is "inspired" by that...the Acer series is a sponsor deal between Acer and Ferrari and same goes for ASUS and Lamborghini.
What you get is a cool looking laptop, bragging rights and a heavily drained bank account - but they DO look cool, don't they ?!? But you pay a lot extra for the Ferrari/Lamborghini logos and those money could be spent more wisely on better hardware...

The Acer Ferrari 3400 :
http://www.laptopid.ee/pildid/ferrari_0.jpg

The Ferrari series comes in black too... :
http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200508/acer4005WLMI_LGrpspc.jpg

You can check it out at Acer's official site for it here (http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/fr3400.htm).

ASUS hasn't really released any pix of it yet so this is the best yet... :
http://www.tweakup.dk/images/news/857120451a1352d313c8b9536158c9b57b60-big-vilmex0520.jpg

You can learn more about this new ASUS Lamborghini series at ASUS' News site here (http://www.asus.com/news_show.aspx?id=2070) and read an article about it at The Inquirer here (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=28715).

You can see some large stylish pix here but they don't really "reveal" anything :

Pic #1 (http://pics.computerbase.de/news/12706/1.jpg)

Pic #2 (http://pics.computerbase.de/news/12706/2.jpg)

Pic #3 (http://pics.computerbase.de/news/12706/3.jpg)

[Chris S]

Amazing! I am going to need to get a nice laptop next summer for college, hmm...all in good time ;)

[Franz]

You don't need an expensive laptop for writing essays :D But you DO need one for 3D gaming...

While on laptops... :

Seems we'll be seeing nVidia's dual videocard feature, SLi, moving into the laptops come february - at least according to an article at DigitalReviews.net :

A source close to ITC, a market leader of custom made notebooks in Australia, has informed us that there is indeed such a notebook in development. Unfortunately, no details on the CPU or chipset were given, but according to our source, the new SLi notebook will be shipping by late February to early March. Heat and power consumption has always been the big issue with developing such a system. According to another source, this notebook will have 2 cooling systems. One will be the traditional intake from the underside of the laptop with the vents at the rear. The second will have a blower-style tunnel system taking air from one side of the notebook, cooling the 2 x GeForce Go 7800GTX GPUs and blowing it out the other side. By the sounds of it, this will not be a quiet system. But it should make up for that with its extreme gaming performance. This notebook should easily score 11,000+ 3Dmark05 points.

Normally SLI shouldn't be possible in laptops due to the power usage, it would drain the batteries in no time, but the GF 7800 GTX chip (codenamed the "G70") is very well designed - it's very powerful and performing really well eventho it's running on very little power !

nVidia GF 7800 GTX Go ("Go" = mobile version) - imagine a laptop with two such chips in it ! :
http://www.tweakup.dk/images/news/850739a457141d847d02d034bb58634b857e-big-vilmex0496.jpg

You can see the article about it here (http://digitalreviews.net/news/200512/go7800gtx-sli-notebook.html).

[Chris S]

That would be very nice. SLI with laptops could be exactly what SLI was meant for and Laptops need!

[Franz]

Check this out - it's from my latest News Thread post at the DD board :

Dual Core desktop CPUs in laptops :

Hexus is taking a look into and reviewing the Rockdirect Xtreme 64 4800+, and we all know that an AMD 64 4800+ is the currently most powerful dual core processor from AMD made for the desktop platform, right ? So what's going on here ? They're cramming desktop hardware into laptop cases...

We've taken a look at a number of desktop-replacement laptops (DTRs) in the last year or so. Characterised by larger-than-normal chassis that held 17-inch wide-aspect displays and a plethora of high-quality components, we surmised that DTRs had effectively blurred the performance gap that existed between desktops and laptops, justifying their DTR acroynm. However, all DTRs that had been through HEXUS Labs. had a singular failing, that is, the lack of dual-core CPU support, which, most commentators agree, is the architecture that will be prevalent in the coming years.

Your gaming-hardware needs should be covered with one of these beasts...provided you have £2,500 :
http://www.tweakup.dk/images/news/8539fc0a232dec554749014ac84700d3d6c2-big-vilmex0507.jpg

You can check it out here (http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=4188).

^^Now that's a laptop I wouldn't mind owning !^^
If only it came with a GF 7800 GTX instead of the GF 6800 Ultra...

[Ravendhi]

All of the advances in laptops are nice, but it seems to me that most have issues with overheating. I was playing bf2 on my brothers alienware laptop and it overheated constantly, the same has been said about many of the new dell xps laptops.

[Franz]

True, there are examples of ppl having had their "nuts" fried from falling asleep in a sofa with a running laptop in the lap...

Recently we've seen gadgets like this one appearing, it's a foldable notebook cooler :

http://cpg133.xf9.co.uk/albums/userpics/10009/Notebook%20cooler.jpg

But I doubt it will solve the problem entirely; when gaming your CPU and videocard will be running at max constantly which will generate a lot of heat and it seems we're in the process of crossing the line of what the notebooks can handle...unless some new cooling feature is introduced, like liquid metal cooling...

[Ravendhi]

Yeah, we use that with my bro's laptop and it helps some, but no enough to be worth buying one.