Wednesday, March 15, 2006
A funny thing happened on my way through the forums
So it didn't take long, but I'm getting super frustrated using a notebook as my work PC. Maybe I was spoiled at Dell, but there I had two (yes, two!) dual 3+GHz Xeon workstations.
While the 2GHz proc in my notebook is just ok, and it does have 2GB of RAM, I find it doesn't typically get close to maxing either of these out (at least according to Task Manager). I'm thinking it must be the 5400RPM hard drive.
What I really want is a notebook with a desktop processor in it (i.e. not the M version of the Pentium), and 7200RPM drives. Almost anytime I am working on my computer, I have access to AC power, so battery life doesn't bother me. At Neudesic we currently use Dell hardware, and while the newer Dell notebooks do come with 7200RPM SATA drives, all Dell notebooks come with Pentium M or Centrino chips. They also don't offer any dual-drive configurations even in their top of the line Inspiron XPS, so nearly all of the consultants have to carry external hard drives around with them.
Here's what I'd like:
17" WUXGA (1920x1200) display [good for Visual Studio and Photoshop]
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor [good for pretty much everything!]
NVidia GeForce GO 7800 GTX video card [good for Windows Vista]
2GB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz [good for running Virtual Server networks]
2 x 100GB 7200RPM SATA hard drives in RAID 0 (stripe) configuration [good for keeping it all going!]
I started out looking at the "big boys", Falcon Northwest and Voodoo PC. They must have something like that amongst all their crazy gaming rigs, right?!
Falcon first... I priced it as close as I could based on their FragBook DR 6800 chassis. They didn't have the FX-60 CPU, so I chose the Athlon64 4800+. They didn't have 100GB hard disks, but they did have 80GB and the they could do RAID 0 (for those that don't know, RAID 0, aka. striping, is where you get to drives the same type/size and join them together to form one large disk where alternating writes go to each disk. This makes your disk I/O almost 2x faster, but if one of the drives fail, you lose the whole C: drive, so backups are important).
Anyway, with this configuration the Falcon system came to $5882! And thats with a $400 cheaper CPU and $100+ cheaper hard drive option!
Next Voodoo. With their Envy u709 I found the exact same configuration (plus a few things I couldn't deselect) came to $6101! I guess thats about the difference in the bits I couldn't get at Falcon Northwest. Yikes! I also had the option to add an even more expensive paint job to it and put on "tattoos" for that personalized look. I just almost hear the teasing I'd get at work showing up with this system ...
At this point I decided I needed to shop around some more. I know about Alienware from having one of their Shuttle-based desktop systems, so lets look at them. There, the same configuration (here in the form of the Aurora M7700) came to $4850 or so.
And thats when I noticed something odd. Did you spot it yet?
At this point I hit the forums to find out what the deal was. Do you know? They're all basically made by the same company - a company called Clevo. You can find the exact same computer at Clevo's site.
It was actually one of my colleagues put me on to this. He owns a Sager, which are also made by Clevo. It turns out the same configuration coming from Sager in the form of the Sager 9750-V comes to around $4195. For the exact same thing. Except that you've probably never heard of them. But who cares - its the same hardware with the same level of warranty!
Seems hard to believe that the same PC in the same spec could cost anywhere from $4200 to $6100 depending on who you bought it from. No doubt if you should up at a frag party with the Sager and your friend showed up with the Voodoo, you'd get mocked for it ... at least until you showed them all the games you bought with your $2000 savings!
So how about me? What am I going to do. I'm going to sit on it for a week or two. Its still $4200 at then end of the day. And its for work. I guess that means I get to write it off somehow on my taxes, but its still $4200.
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While the 2GHz proc in my notebook is just ok, and it does have 2GB of RAM, I find it doesn't typically get close to maxing either of these out (at least according to Task Manager). I'm thinking it must be the 5400RPM hard drive.
What I really want is a notebook with a desktop processor in it (i.e. not the M version of the Pentium), and 7200RPM drives. Almost anytime I am working on my computer, I have access to AC power, so battery life doesn't bother me. At Neudesic we currently use Dell hardware, and while the newer Dell notebooks do come with 7200RPM SATA drives, all Dell notebooks come with Pentium M or Centrino chips. They also don't offer any dual-drive configurations even in their top of the line Inspiron XPS, so nearly all of the consultants have to carry external hard drives around with them.
Here's what I'd like:
17" WUXGA (1920x1200) display [good for Visual Studio and Photoshop]
AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 processor [good for pretty much everything!]
NVidia GeForce GO 7800 GTX video card [good for Windows Vista]
2GB Dual Channel DDR SDRAM at 400MHz [good for running Virtual Server networks]
2 x 100GB 7200RPM SATA hard drives in RAID 0 (stripe) configuration [good for keeping it all going!]
I started out looking at the "big boys", Falcon Northwest and Voodoo PC. They must have something like that amongst all their crazy gaming rigs, right?!
Falcon first... I priced it as close as I could based on their FragBook DR 6800 chassis. They didn't have the FX-60 CPU, so I chose the Athlon64 4800+. They didn't have 100GB hard disks, but they did have 80GB and the they could do RAID 0 (for those that don't know, RAID 0, aka. striping, is where you get to drives the same type/size and join them together to form one large disk where alternating writes go to each disk. This makes your disk I/O almost 2x faster, but if one of the drives fail, you lose the whole C: drive, so backups are important).Anyway, with this configuration the Falcon system came to $5882! And thats with a $400 cheaper CPU and $100+ cheaper hard drive option!
Next Voodoo. With their Envy u709 I found the exact same configuration (plus a few things I couldn't deselect) came to $6101! I guess thats about the difference in the bits I couldn't get at Falcon Northwest. Yikes! I also had the option to add an even more expensive paint job to it and put on "tattoos" for that personalized look. I just almost hear the teasing I'd get at work showing up with this system ...At this point I decided I needed to shop around some more. I know about Alienware from having one of their Shuttle-based desktop systems, so lets look at them. There, the same configuration (here in the form of the Aurora M7700) came to $4850 or so.And thats when I noticed something odd. Did you spot it yet?
At this point I hit the forums to find out what the deal was. Do you know? They're all basically made by the same company - a company called Clevo. You can find the exact same computer at Clevo's site.
It was actually one of my colleagues put me on to this. He owns a Sager, which are also made by Clevo. It turns out the same configuration coming from Sager in the form of the Sager 9750-V comes to around $4195. For the exact same thing. Except that you've probably never heard of them. But who cares - its the same hardware with the same level of warranty!Seems hard to believe that the same PC in the same spec could cost anywhere from $4200 to $6100 depending on who you bought it from. No doubt if you should up at a frag party with the Sager and your friend showed up with the Voodoo, you'd get mocked for it ... at least until you showed them all the games you bought with your $2000 savings!
So how about me? What am I going to do. I'm going to sit on it for a week or two. Its still $4200 at then end of the day. And its for work. I guess that means I get to write it off somehow on my taxes, but its still $4200.
