Sacrifice NothingJul 27 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Laptops
The Bottom Line Apple's laptops maintain full feature sets in small sexy packages while other laptops make compromises in weight, features, and price.
As the summer rolls on and the new fall term prepares to begin for colleges, college students and future college students, like me, begin the hunt for a new computer to call our own for our dorm years. There is a significant trend toward laptops in this hot collegiate computer market. College laptops are becoming more and more of a necessity than a luxury; a student’s work isn’t confined to a stuffy dorm anymore. Frankly, who really wants to be stuck in a dorm room alone for long periods of time? We all gotta get out more, even us dorks with no real social lives. Up until a few years ago, laptops were seriously handicapped compared to desktop computers. There were still tasks that demanded one to be grounded and sitting at a desktop computer, so laptops became supplementary machines. However, for the starving student and most everyone else on a budget, two computers is not an option. Thankfully, the new crop of laptops for this season has a selection of laptops that are powerful and functional enough to wholly replace a desktop computer, yet are affordable enough to actually own. A friend of mine recently asked for my advice deciding on a new laptop to take with her to college. She had her mind set on two of the most recognizable brands in the PC market : Dell and Sony. I took a look at both of the online stores (both of which are badly designed and confusing, as I soon discovered) and really, I was surprised at their selection of laptops. They were either extremely thin, extremely expensive, and extremely lacking in terms of functionality, or they were bricks. If you’ve read my other Epinions, you know that I am a big fan of Apple and their products, and especially their laptop line this year. The limitations that my friend ran into with PC laptops, too much weight, too little function, too much price, are not an issue with the Apple laptops, which have found perhaps the best balance of these all factors. Desktop Computing, minus the desk First of all, lets consider what elements or functionality of desktop computers that make them our primary machines. *Speed: The computer has to be fast enough to handle all your tasks… nowadays, extremely processor-intensive tasks like video editing, graphics, and even a little gaming are becoming more common, so this is absolutely necessary *Big Screen: all of our tasks need big screens and elbowroom that desktop computers can provide. *Disc Drives: Computers have disc drives that do anything and everything now. CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs for movies, and CD-RWs for creating your own CDs *Ports: a desktop computer has a full compliment of ports and can connect to and interact with many digital devices *Internet Access: A desktop computer can get online easily… whether through a 56K dialup modem, or broadband like Cable or DSL. Lets see how laptops, and more specifically, Apple’s laptops stack up based on these basic computing requirements. Speed: Desktop computers are getting faster and faster, but the speed increase is less dramatic in laptop computers. The limitation lies in the processors. The Pentium III, Pentium 4, and Athlon processors were never designed to be laptop processors from the outset. They are extreme energy guzzling beasts that throw off an excessive amount of heat. These chipmakers, AMD and Intel overcame this obstacle by using a technology called Speedstep. Its simple really. If an 800 mhz chip in a laptop got too hot or drew too much power, the chip would automatically drop its speed to lets say 500 or 600 mhz to cool off. Much of the time, you’re not even running at full speed, so there is a performance hit. Apple uses processors made jointly by IBM and Motorola, the PowerPC. The two processors used in Apple’s laptops are the same one uses in the desktops, with no modification like Speedstep, mind you. Apple can use the same processors in its laptop line because the PowerPC is an extremely efficient chipset designed to maximize performance with as little energy consumption and as little heat thrown off. Compared to the Intel and AMD chips, the PowerPC G3 and G4 are lightweights in terms of energy, but heavyweights in terms of computing power. To put things in perspective, the high end PowerPC G4 used in Apple’s desktops consumes 12-15 watts. The Pentium 4 consumes 49-64 watts on average, but time and time again, the G4 has shown to be a match for Intel’s Pentium 4. At the top of Apple’s laptop line, is the PowerBook G4 Titanium. The processor inside the PowerBook is the PowerPC G4 processor running at 500mhz. This is the same chip that fuels Apple’s professionally acclaimed PowerMac G4. The G4 in the PowerBook incorporates the Velocity Engine, a 128bit subprocessor allowing the chip to process complicated floating point operations at speeds previously unattainable on anything less than a Cray Supercomputer. For media creation using intensive applications like Photoshop for graphics, and Apple’s own award winning Final Cut Pro for video editing, the PowerBook G4 is hands down the best laptop. Professionals, who put food on their plates based on high power PowerMac G4 machines and Photoshop, should take note, as all the power from the desktop has made it into a portable package. Big Screens: Desktop computers have large high-resolution monitors. We’ve all taken for granted the elbow room. Laptops however have always had to use LCD displays, which for many years meant small screens, low resolutions, and low quality. A desktop replacement has to provide a good screen. This year’s Apple laptops are wonderful for screens. The new iBook has a 12.1 inch display, and while the screen size is small, the resolution and quality are certain not low. With 1024 by 768 resolution, the iBook has the same resolution as a standard size desktop monitor with the same amount of pixel space. The new Powerbook G4 Titanium does one better. That machine has a 15.2 inch mega-wide display with a resolution of 1152 by 768. Many desktop monitors do not even provide that much room. Quality-wise, Apple’s screens are all sharp crisp and bright. Disc drives: Desktop computers have disc drives of all kinds; DVD-ROMs, CD-ROMs, and CD-RWs. PC? Here’s a dirty little secret about a lot of the sexy new PC laptops out there today costing over $3000 that are just 1” thick and weigh less than 4 pounds. To make their machines lighter and thinner, PC makers simply don’t include an internal CD or DVD drive at all in the machine. Instead, they make you carry around an external drive if you ever need to use it. The new Sony VAIO, for example, is 1” thin, but if you want to use the CD-ROM, you have to bring it to a special Docking Station that adds another _” to the thickness of the laptop to recreate the CD-ROM and other ports. Apple laptops, however, do not skimp here. All of the Apple laptops have on board disc drives. The iBook has a full range of disc drives, from the plain-jane CD-ROM, to a DVD-ROM for watching movies, to CD-RW for burning discs, to a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo, which does everything. The new Powerbook, though it is only 1” thick, has onboard DVD-ROM in the form of a slick slot load drive. Ports: Desktop computers have ports that can connect the machine to anything. USB for peripherals, 10/100 Ethernet port for connecting to a network or cable or dsl, Firewire for moviemaking and high speed external hardware. The new iBook and the Powerbook G4 have nearly every port you’d find on a desktop computer, and even some you won’t find except in high end desktop computers. USB ports are a necessity. They allow the computer to attach to peripherals like mice, printers, scanners, etc. Both the iBook and the Powerbook have two USB ports each. For video and high speed devices such as external hard drives, the port of choice is Firewire, also known as IEEE 1394. It’s a fast port (400 Mbits/sec) that is standard on every digital camcorder on the market today, making it a necessity if you intend to do video. Every iBook and Powerbook has a Firewire port. Laptops also have to function as presentation machines from time to time. Both Apples have VGA ports to connect to the standard projector, and if that wasn’t enough, both laptops allow you to hook them directly to a television set via composite video (or S-video) so you can use any big screen TV. Last but not least, 10/100 Base T Ethernet. On Apple’s laptops, they are standard ports on the computer. PC laptops fall flat in ports. Its no contest, really. USB ports are pretty standard on every PC laptop out there today, but everything else is up in the air. Firewire ports? Few PC desktops have Firewire to begin with, and even fewer PC laptops have them standard like Apple’s, so chances are, editing videos on a PC laptop is out of the question. 10/100 Ethernet. In all the years that personal computers have been on networks, I am absolutely shocked that you can still buy a computer without this essential networking port. Ethernet is one of the most important ports on the laptop because it is the key to getting online FAST. It is the port used when you get DSL or a cable modem, and for all you college kids out there, to access the fast campus Resnet, you need this port. Most PC makers offer Ethernet ports on the laptop as an OPTION. That means the port doesn’t reside on the computer itself, but rather on an expansion card with a dongle, a piece that hangs off of the side of the machine that recreates the port. Who would want that? Its annoying, and ruins the solid one piece design that a laptop should be. Internet: Desktops are connected to the Internet easily, and with the advent of broadband, they are many times always online. Most PC laptops, and all Mac laptops have 56K modems standard. They are good for when you are on the road and need to dial up get on the Internet (generally from some dingy motel in who-knows-where.) Broadband Internet like Cable or DSL (or the internet you get from your college dorm line) interface with the computer using 10/100 Ethernet ports. Like I mentioned, on the Mac, its standard. On the PC, it’s a toss up. When you start talking about Internet and laptops, you have to think about wireless, specifically the technology called 802.11. It functions in much the same way cordless phones work using radio, allowing you to be online without being tied to a phone line or network line. It has become affordable that homes can have a wireless network, and many college campuses themselves are starting to become wireless. (Carnegie Mellon being the first to be completely wireless). Many PC makers are scrambling to implement it, but Apple was the first to integrate it into all of their computers years before anyone even heard of the technology. All Apple laptops have 802.11 antennas built in, so all you need to do is install a card and the machine is ready. PC laptops are not as integrated. They were not designed with built in antennas, so the cards that you’d buy to make a PC laptop wireless are more expensive and jut out of the side of the laptop to accommodate an antenna. Special Laptop Concerns There’s are things of the desktop machine that shouldn’t or can’t be taken along with you with a laptop. *The Bulk. Desktops are huge machines. Monitor and computer combined, most weigh in excess of 60 pounds. Laptops need to be mobile, so size (specifically thickness) and weight are important concerns. There are many “featherweight” laptops out there today that cost an arm and a leg but leave out many features to weigh less than 4 pounds. They really can’t serve as desktop replacements and are really more of an “ooooh…. Ahhhhh” item, so let’s concentrate on the other kind. A fully featured PC laptop can be a real brick. Dell has a laptop that is 11 pounds (!!!) when fully loaded with battery? That’s just ludicrous. On average, however, PC laptops that fulfill most of my requirements for desktop replacement weigh in between 7-8 pounds. Its bearable, but Apple’s fully featured laptops, at both the professional and consumer price points, weigh in at 5.3 and 4.9 pounds with batteries included. Those two or three pounds that the Apple laptops lack compared to the PC equivalent makes an incredible difference for anyone who’s had to carry a laptop around for more than a few seconds. Ever try to sprint from terminal to terminal at an airport with a laptop in hand? Weight matters. Among fully featured laptops, they don’t get lighter. And thickness… PC makers seem to think that if you want a computer that does everything, you don’t care about being thin. Everything’s just crammed in there and it looks like its bulging out of the case. On the contrary. Hey… America’s the land of huge excess but also of supermodels. We all want to scarf down Whoppers, Big Macs, and Kentucky Fried Chicken, but we all want to look like Cindy Crawford. Well, basically, Apple’s done just that to their laptops. All the features, at 1”and 1.3” respectively. *Power Consumption. Laptops aren’t wired down. That idea gives a lot of freedom to the user, but also restricts the user with battery concerns. PC laptops claim around 2-3 hours. That’s it? 2-3 hours is nothing. What good is it to have a powerful fully featured computer if it just lasts a measly 2 hours? Both of Apple’s laptops, however, have exceptional battery life, up to 5 hours on a single charge on a single battery. In mild to heavy use, it usually is around 3-4 hours, but that is certainly more than PC laptops can claim simply because Apple’s computers are less energy hungry to begin with. Their processors, as I’ve mentioned, are more efficient, providing more computing power on less energy and heat. Sacrifices do not have to be made. Laptops have been around for a long while, but they’ve always trailed behind their more powerful and more stationary brethren. Compromises have always been made with laptops simply because they must take up significantly less space than desktops for portability’s sake. The limited space also makes heat a much bigger concern than on a desktop, and finally, energy is a huge concern. Laptops simply cannot afford to guzzle electricity like a lot of new desktop machines because they run on batteries. The result: laptops, in the past, have small inferior screens, slow processors, small uncomfortable keyboards, small hard drives, and lack a lot of standard ports. Its been a long struggle, but laptops have finally started overcoming these problems, and Apple is leading the pack.  |
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