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Flash based Camcorders, where it all started

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I'm on the edge of ordering 2 flash based camcorders for our team. Like all things in the BBC, we have to justify why were spending money on these cameras over other cameras we may already have access to. So why would we choose to buy flash based camcorders over miniDV or even DVCam/DVCpro. Well he're some public justification.

DV Tapes/technology is very old hat, painful and time consuming. The file sizes generated by the DV codec video and audio are stupid, there too big and problemanic for editing footage meant for the web, sharing and generally anything not for broadcast. DV relies on hardware which understands it and without it - its just a pain to use. Its not even like working with Mpeg2 which is more efficient (higher resolution at much lowe bit rates) or Mpeg4 which is extremely efficient. I mean a consistent 25mbit/sec no matter what is happening in the scene is pretty insane.

Some of you maybe saying but its huge file sizes for quality reasons. Well i'm not buying it sorry. DV is not a lossless format its based on DCT compression just like JPEG!

So a camcorder which doesn't use DV compression or/and tapes? DVD-RAM and DVD-R camcorders fell out with the general public years ago. HDD camcorders seemed like a good idea but for the most part they record to DV or Mpeg2. No its 2008, the big kid on the block is Mpeg4 and now with the h.264 codec you can quality which puts the pro DV stuff to shame. Yes it requires higher processing power but nothing a dualcore processor could not handle. The advantage is once your done editing, you just need to get the correct size, bitrate and framerate. No transcoding across formats needed.

So with that in mind, if the camera also supported Mpeg4, you could shoot, edit and upload in a matter of minutes rather that hours. Also the equipment is much smaller and portable. No more looking for a 6 to 4 DV cable and having to record it all in real time to a computer and huge drive.

Flash is the way forward and things are getting better and better.

I remember the first time I heard about a flash based camcorder (i'm pretty sure it was the worlds first) Panasonic Dsnap SDAV10. It could shoot 320x240 at 15 frames of second but a rare thing for the time, shoot as long as you had space on the card. It was amazing for its time (late 2002). The SD-AV20 and AV30 improved on the quality but Sanyo hit the market with there Xacti range of camcorders which shot up to VGA quality (640x480). They became the ones to get for the longest time, they even hit the market with the very first flash based HD camcorder. Since then there have been 1080p flash based records, upgrade of codec to h.264 at higher bit rates and serious challenges from Canon, Panasonic (3CCDs), JVC, Samsung and even Sony (which seems to be best you can buy right now).

Some people have been talking about the Flip, don't get me wrong it was a consideration but its too low quality and for the same price you can pick up a decent Sanyo Xacti C6 or even the Toshiba Camileo Pro

Rain uploaded videos from the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, which is exactly the justification for the flash based cameras. We do a lot of this type of interviews and I expect we'll be doing more in the future. We need to be able to edit quickly and upload files quickly. We also need to keep a reasonable quality version for future use, but it doesn't need to be huge files or tapes. I remember at Thinking digital I was able to record and copy files off the camera within the 2 min break between speakers and upload the footage to the web while the next speaker was talking. This meant by the time the conference was over, I was also done. No having to go back to the hotel to edit the footage or digitise huge files. I've also been thinking about paying Blip.tv to put a preroll (top) and outroll (tail) of the backstage logo sequence on all footage we upload. Which means we won't need to do much editing of the footage ever again. Makes sense right?

Flash camcorders are great and are really worth considering if your shooting for web content. Just make sure you get one which does capture to standard formats like Mpeg4 or Mpeg2. Avoid the cameras which shoot straight to Flash (swf) or even divx. They maybe great but a pain to edit. Also make sure you can read the flash card directly, aka can you eject the SD card and put it into a computer and read the files? If not run away! Most of the flash camcorders support USB connections but you should be able to swap cards around and read the data. Look for things like microphone inputs, stand mount and audio output which can be useful. For example my HD1 won't let you plug in a power cable and stand at the same time unless you use a special mount. I would also pick the biggest filming rez, because you can always squeeze a 1080p picture down to a nice SD broadcast quality picture IMHO. Lastly get backup batteries, the cameras eat power specially when using the higher rez's.

My Ubuntu desktop

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Someone asked in the comments for a screenshot of my ubuntu desktop. So here you go, one with quite a few applications open on just one of the workscreens. I usually keep about 5 workscreens and when everything is clear it looks like this. The background picture comes from Flickr which I slightly modified with permission from the creator.

The move from windows is complete

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I switched to Ubuntu ages ago on my Dell XPS 1210 laptop. But I did go down the route of dual booting at first. Soon after I stopped using Windows for everything except virtualdj which simply would not work emulated or virtualised under Ubuntu. Then a while back I found my 120gig hard drive getting quite full (unknown to me that I was backing up to the same hard drive at the time) so I deleted the c:/windows and c:/program files directories. I had changed my /home/ian directory to map directly on top of c:/document and settings/ian forrester/my documents/, so if I did boot into windows every document and media file would be accessible to me under Windows XP/Vista. So for about year I've been walking around and using the laptop with a small ext3 partition and a huge ntfs partition.

Everythings been great, but I sometimes noticed my laptop getting slow and sometimes hanging. I looked into it and it came down to two things. One Flash is still badly written for gnu/Linux and kills the browser if loading a large video or attempting to use the webcam. But this seems to only effect the browser environment, so sometimes I need to force kill firefox. Number two is Fuse/3g, which allows Unix operating systems to read and write ntfs formatted file systems. This was great at the start but I noticed Fuse will be eating all my CPU resources. So I put out a pled for somes software like Partition Magic which can convert a drive not just format. Some advice came back, but generally people said copy the whole drive somewhere then format it and put it back.

So today I did using a spare 100gig hard drive and the Ubuntu live CD. It all went to plan but a couple of points to remember! Chmod all the files to match nobody:nobody so later on you can access the files and change the mod to yourself. As default Fuse makes files on a ntfs disk root:root. This is fine till you move them to a ext3 disk and those permissions take affect for real. Also check the boot flag is assigned to the correct drive.

So now with NTFS gone, its goodbye\ Windows for good now.

You can't be serious...

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BitTorrent users are not second class citizens

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Comcast is facing a nationwide class action lawsuit for cutting off the BitTorrent traffic of their subscribers. The lawsuit aims to stop the misleading advertising used by Comcast, and to compensate BitTorrent users for the disruption to their service. Two weeks ago, the FCC announced that it will order Comcast to stop interfering with BitTorrent traffic. FCC chairman said that Comcast slows down BitTorrent users independent of the amount of traffic they use, and that the company failed to communicate their network management practices to their consumers.

The ISPs in the UK should take note and quake in there boots, I'm sure if I had kept my Demon logs I could prove Demon started doing odd things to bit torrent traffic.

I'm officially scared now

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If you've not seen BigDog the Quadraped Robot, be very scared. Imagine this thing chasing you down as you run for your life ... Forget the Dr Who monsters, this is a level beyond fear.

Technorati Tags: bigdog, quadraped, robot, run, walk, jump

A solution to my Dell Laptop Suspend problem? Solved!

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Ok yes its partly my fault but I seem to have power control panel for KDE and Gnome working on the same machine. If I use just the Gnome settings and close the lid of my laptop, it will lock up and the only way to get back to normal is to power the laptop off again (aka hold the power button in). If I use the KDE power setting and close the lid of my laptop, it powers down correctly and when I open it up again, I get Ubuntu exactly where I left it after entering the user password again. Why?

Actually I'm almost not interested in the why but the how do I use KDE's Power settings instead of Gnome but still use Gnome? Right now I have to remember to start the KDE setting otherwise its back to powering off the laptop again. Oh just for bug reports and the record, I'm running Ubuntu 7.10 with Compiz Fusion (this only became a problem in 7.10). on a Dell XPS M1210 with an Intel Graphics card and restricted driver a/b/g wireless card. Everything else is fine except suspend and hibernate (which never works)

So anyone with a solution?

Glyn solved my problem. The problem is to do with the Gnome Power manager, so we disabled it from starting up in the boot manager and wrote at the end of the file /etc/acpi/lid.sh.

grep -q closed /proc/acpi/button/lid/*/state
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
/etc/acpi/sleep.sh
fi

Tracking fingers with the Wiimote

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One of the guys at BBC R&I sent this around today. I only just watched this today but I'm really amazed. This is awesome stuff and reminds me I need to get my Wiimote working with my Ubuntu boxes.

I've also been thinking, everyones using that pinch movement/behaviour to indicate scale but what other interactions/behaviours? Is there more which have yet to become standard? Maybe a cycle of the fingers in tandum could indicate master volume or something more? Maybe 3 fingers down the screen could indicate something which should be deleted and 3 up something to be uploaded. The beauty of this low cost setup is that anyone can play and make up there own commands, its no longer just in the research labs. This is great and I'm always in favor of that.

NBC Dateline Reporter flees Defcon 15

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NBC Reporter with hidden camera in purse refuses official press credentials hoping to catch conference attendees committing to crimes (according to Defcon staff). She ends up fleeing Defcon 15 after being outed on stage.

Interview with Chris DiBona and Ed Parsons of Google

[ All Technology ] | Tags: gdd07  gdd07uk  googledeveloperday  developerday  google 

While at Google Developer Day, I caught some time with Chris DiBona and Ed Parsons from Google. Chris is well known in the Open source and Free software worlds for his work on Google summer of code and the book Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution. Recently he's (sometimes) hosts a great podcast with Leo Laporte called FLOSS weekly. Its hardly weekly but worth subscribing to anyway. Ed on the hand was the key man at the Ordnance Survey and tried to kick start the mapping craze well before Google maps hit the net. It made sense for Google to poach some a key man such as Ed.

Anyway, the interviews are up on Blip.TV as usual, and filmed with my Sanyo camera.

• Interview with Chris Dibona at Google development day
• Interview with Ed Parsons at Google development day

A couple of new things came out of the Google Developer Day. Google Mapplets, Google Mashup Editor and Google Gears.

First up is Google Gears, an open source browser extension for enabling offline web applications. Now developers will be able to create web applications that don't need a constant Internet connection to work. Users, meanwhile, can interact with Gears-enabled websites anywhere, whether they're on the couch or on an airplane. With this early release, we hope the community will provide feedback and move towards an industry standard for offline web applications. Read more on the new Gears blog.

An experimental product debuting today is the Google Mashup Editor, an online editor that enables developers to create, test, and deploy mashups and simple web applications from within a browser. Now developers can turn out those weekend projects more quickly. We've also launched a new blog where you can learn more about the Google Mashup Editor and get the latest news.

Finally, we released Google Mapplets yesterday at the Where 2.0 conference. Mapplets are mini-applications that any developer can build on top of Google Maps so that users can easily discover the creative genius and usefulness of the mashup development community. You'll find more about Mapplets here. And we're also quite excited about the interest that has been shown in Google Web Toolkit (GWT). Since its launch last May, there have been over 1 million downloads. You can read more on the GWT blog.

Mapplets is interesting but what makes me excited is the Mashup Editor which somewhat fits in area of Flow* and Gears, which seems to be the final step in the move towards the Google Operating System. I would usually say who cares but Google Gears will be a open source project and they already have Adobe, Opera and Mozilla on board.

Generally Google once again made it clear there commitment to open-source and developers. I look forward to hacking about with this stuff really soon.

Switching to Ubuntu on Desktop for real this time

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The other day I was installing some new wireless points around the house. My very 1st generation Linksys 802.11b access point had pretty much had enough and needed to be put out of its pain. And the pocket Asus wireless point (smaller that a Airport express) wasn't really made for constant use.

Anyhow, I happen to flip the switch on the Belkin 10 way power supply under my desk. Off went the Desktop machine. Thought damm it, and switched the 10 way back on. Well Windows was screwed, so screwed that I had to reinstall it again. Only this time when I reinstalled it, it kept getting upset about the hardware and would restart its self.In the end I got so pissed off with the whole thing, that I threw the Windows CD across the room and went looking for my Ubuntu CD.

Within a few hours I had Ubuntu 6.10 dapper installed (had to do some data shifting with partition magic) and before you knew it all the applications I needed, thanks very much to Nat's guide to Ubuntu she sent me over Twitter. I had a few problems on the way including writing to NTFS partitions and getting Azureus to run correctly. However this evening I got all those working without too much work. Now I just need to clean things up, get Hamachi running and sort out the Samba shares.

So far, its all god...

Little Big Planet

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I watched the demo of this recently and was wowed by the level of graphics and parciptation in and outside the game. Its on Playstation 3 only which is a shame but really shows off the power of the PS3 better that anything else I've seen to date. Theres also a level creator like you have never seen before and of course the levels are sharable. If they could make the PS3 a bit more affordable, that would be great. Right now, I'm still considering a Wii because its simply great to play and much more friendly to non-gamers.

More thoughts about the iPhone ongoing drama

[ All Technology ] | Tags: mobile  phones  europe  apple  windows  linux  openmoko  iphone  windowsmobile  nokia 

So the truth is starting to trickle out. First a note on openness via Kid666.

In The New York Times, Steve Jobs confirms every developer’s worst fears about the iPhone:

‘These [iPhones] are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.’

If Microsoft said that, everyone would jump and down (like they are about Vista) but Apple says it and the follows shake there heads like zombies. As Kidd666 says, nooooooo!

3G also looks like it won't happen says Engadget

It's not unheard of for a firmware upgrade to unlock new features or functionality in a device, but the sources we've spoken to have made it pretty clear that Apple hasn't wedged a UMTS or HSDPA radio into this thing.

A couple of other things. Did Apple steal Visual Voicemail? on top of stealing the maybe dropped trademarked name of iPhone by Cisco. I kinda of agree with Nokia no usable 3G and europe (which is a bigger market and us europeans are use to something small and powerful in our hands? DLTV) will have to wait comments. It is also worth checking out what DL.TV make of us Europeans.

And I'm also pretty much done talking about it now. Still very worried about the closed nature of the device but then again the iPod is also a closed type device and you can even run linux on it now. Its also worth pointing out that the Candy Bar touchscreen devices are very much the way forward now.

AppleTV and iPhone

[ All Technology ] | Tags: apple  iphone  applephone  appletv  keynote 

I couldn't go to sleep without saying something about the Apple announcements today.

So first up the Apple TV. This for me was disappointing, I was hoping to have something which maybe I could upgrade to. But for now my XBox running XBMC will still have a spot under my TV. I had expected something a little cheaper and cleverer. Its a worthy device which I would recommend to others but the software on it is underwelming. For example no 1080p support, yes its a very high standard but with shows going out on the net in 1080p (macbreak for one) and with the xbox 360 and PS3 supporting it. You would have thought Apple would get on board too. Anyway hopefully its a software upgrade. I'm also hoping someone ports XBMC or something better to it. Frontrow doesn't seem to have been upgraded that much and looks simply boring compared to the open source efforts of XBMC. Final thought for now, great hardware underwhelming software.

And now the iPhone or Apple phone. I do like what Apple's done. It seems like they've taken a HTC Windows mobile device and built a much better interface for it (multitouch). Finger based instead of Stylus, ok cool but not revolutionary. The features of the phone are good, I'd expect they will have 3G for the European (Q4 2007) and Asia models (2008), and it has most of the stuff you see in current phones - EDGE, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. These may sound amazing to the usual phone buying people but nothing special to a Windows Mobile owner. For example the fact the music pauses when a call comes in is nothing new. My Ericsson T28 use to that with the MP3 attachment, most phones do that. Matt at work didn't believe me and Ii showed him and earned myself a pound in the process. People wondered how Googlemaps could pin point your location without GPS, well Wifi and GSM can be used to pin point location. Oh one more thing the Proximity sensor isn't a new thing either. My old gold bar Ericsson had that feature, so you could answer the phone by waving your hands over it and it wouldn't do anything to the buttons while its next to your ear.Widgets on your phone, been done by Opera already. Multi-session text? Sounds like IM to me. High DPI screen is nice but the Nokia's also have high DPI screens. 8 or 4gig, well teh Nokia N91 had 4 gig over 12months ago and Samsung already have a 8gig phone. Suprised Apple didn't go with just Yahoo or Google instead of both. Also very surprised Google didn't offer Push email. There was no mention of Java support, or its poor 2 mega pixal camera. Lessig talked about read/write ability a while ago, well this is certainly a read device, it certainly doesn't feel like an empowering device for writers.

Don't get me wrong, all the tweaks to software and hardware to add up to a great phone which I would buy if it came out sooner that Q4 of 2007. The price point is not too high, but I expect it to be at least 250 pounds on Orange with a 18 month contract. Would I say Apple will put some more spice back into the mobile market and force mobile and software makers (Microsoft pay attention) to spend more time looking at the functionality of simple things like text, email and voicemail. For example Microsoft don't actually provide a MMS or voicetag client for Windows Mobile 5, so you get some 3rd party solution which usual suck and is totally inconsistent with the rest of the phone. Visual voicemail makes sense and is one of those tweaks which I can imagine not living without once you have it.

So overall, yes I wouldn't mind one but I'm not holding my breath or rather next upgrade decision for it. I'll get one in Q2 of 2008 when its been tried and tested and Apple have upgraded some of the lows like Battery life.

Anyone want to buy a Toshiba Portege 3500?

[ All Technology ] | Tags: laptop  tabletpc  dell  order  sale  toshiba  linux 

Today I received my Dell order(s) (one with bluetooth, one without - go figure). This at least confirms I will be getting my new Dell XPS 1210 Laptop sometime on the 8th Jan. So that means my current laptop the Toshiba Portege 3500 is up for sale.

There's nothing wrong with it except for the two things. The CPU fan sometimes rubs against the sides of the case if you shake it around too much and the touchscreen has a area where it no longer works as expected. Otherwise its all good. Pentium 3 1.33ghz with 768meg of memory and a 2.5 inch 40gig Hard drive which has and had no problems (spinrite says its fine). 802.11b Wireless, Bluetooth 1.1 and Card readers for SD, CF and PCMCIA. The tablet pen still works fine and I have all the media which came with the laptop. Its general condition is ok, its has wear marks of almost 4 years of everyday use. The new battery lasts about 2.5 hours with wireless and bluetooth turned off. I also have the first one which lasts no more that 5mins on full charge if you want to redo the cells inside of it.

Ideally I would like to see closer to £300 for it but I'll consider all decent offers.

If no one else wants it I'm deeply considering installing Ubuntu Linux on it and using it for browsing the web and to act like a ambient device for me and Sarah. If I underclock it down to about 733mhz I shouldn't need the fan anymore and it could make a great electronic picture frame, group calendar display and clock. Maybe use a widget engine or rss screensaver. I've also found a really good guide on how to take apart the Toshiba laptop which could help if I want to really go the whole process of converting my laptop

The other thing I could do is use my laptop is use it as a media centre by sticking a fresh version of windows media centre on it and adding a VGA to Svideo adapter on it. Its only a 1.33ghz processor but it can playback 720p video under the correct conditions, unlike my xbox.

Jim Louderback reviews the best small laptops on the market

[ All Technology ] | Tags: notebooks  laptops  ultralite  video  dltv  jimlouderback  hp  pcmag  dell 

This was taken from the dl.tv episode 124. Whats very interesting is the 4 laptops reviewed are exactly the same as what was on my final list and they also recommend the Dell XPS 1210, even over the Mac Book.

Oh I forgot to mention my wife also bought a new laptop. A HP DV2000 from Comet which she loves at the moment.

Dell call centres and final orders

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Ok so what happened next in the saga over my Dell Laptop? Well keeping a long story short, I ended up ordering it through Dell's phone system. The system is one of those indian call centres which everyone talks about. See I usually don't have a problem with them but explaining my web specs over the phone from memory to someone with english as 2nd language is simply painful. Its also not helped when the guy claims to know more about what I want to order that myself. Yes at one point he suggested I don't need Bluetooth because I already have Wireless. Ummm hello! 1. they are different 2. I'm the customer and thanks for your advice but its time to drop it. He (Hitesh) also didn't want me to get the 1x1024meg Memory module. He told me if I buy the one memory module, the laptop will only have one slot. But if I buy the laptop with 2x512meg Memory configured, it would come with 2 slots making it much easier to upgrade later. In the end I gave up questioning why Dell would make the same laptop with different amounts of slots depending on your configuration (I can only do so much research).

So why would I put myself through this hell of the phone system when I already ordered it online. Well £150 discount if you order it on the phone. Sarah found out about this, thanks sweetie. My current order is roughly the same with exception of memory but now down to £963 in total. This is great, but I still don't have a set date yet. I'm expecting it to come by the end of the next week latest.

I've choosen the Dell XPS 1210

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I've made my mind up, I'm going to go with the Dell XPS 1210. It really came down to the MacBook vs the Dell XPS but ultimately the Dell won because its simply very powerful and the 9 cell battery can give up to 4.5 hours worth of normal use (wifi on). This is insane, and although its thicker and heavier that most 12 inch laptops, its got all the features you would normally see on a 15 inch laptop. The Thinkpad X60 lost out because its hard to get it very configured in the UK and the price made it a non-starter when you added the 2.0ghz Core Duo 2 processor. Dell also just added a discount of 50 pounds on the XPS and a free USB TV tuner if you order before 2007.

What tipped me over was the reviews by a few bloggers and notebook reviewers (notebookreview, cnet, ). Don't get me wrong the Macbook did well in these reviews (notebookreview and cnet) but I got the general feeling that its lack of extras really let it down and although I can get a good deal out of it. I would always feel like I was missing out on things like card readers and usb's ports. These might sound stupid to most, but everything I own supports SD cards and even my new batteries for my camera support USB. So realistically I can take a XPS and Canon S3 on holiday and nothing else. (no card readers, no usb cables and no charge cable for the camera). Once Moixa bring out device driven batteries I'll be able to add my Sanyo Camera to that list too.

Dell also offer a 2 year warranty and support as standard with the XPS which suits me perfectly. I can extend it later if I like and I know the Apple Care is good but I was really put off by some of the things I heard about long delays, etc. Dell tend to be quite good about replacing machines.

So what about the 2gig of ram I loaded into the MacBook? Well I've selected the 1 stick 1gig option for the XPS and decided I might put in a 512meg or another 1gig myself using Crucial's memory wizard (41 pounds for 512meg and 82 pounds for 1gig). Also please note, once you add a 120gig hard drive to the Mac Book it hits £1000 with only 1gig of ram, so the Dell isn't that badly priced (although you do get the faster 667mhz memory with the Mac).

Some people will also turn their nose up at my choice not to include a Nvidia Graphics card but its an extra £230 and I'm not planning to do anything more complex that second life or some X3D stuff. The intel card can support OpenGL and DirectX 9.0 and runs cooler - so I'll be happy enough. This means I can spend the extra money on the 9 Cell battery and Bluetooth card. I was also tempted to get the 802.11(pre) N card but I'm worried about it using more power because its dell not Intel, plus I really don't need it. You may also notice I didn't add the free Vista upgrade to my list, I might add it because its free (11 pounds p&p) but just not use it. I looked into installing Linux on the XPS 1210 and it seems not too difficult.

The Dell XPS 1210 isn't as beautiful as the Mac Book but nor is my current Toshiba Portege 3500. But Funny enough the XPS 1210 is built from the material which kept my Toshiba safe all these years and it looks like the same machine from the lid. Its certainly road ready. The last thing which I think convinced me was Dell Media direct. This is buttons for DVD and CD playback without having to boot into Windows. The latest version goes one step further by being able to play mpeg3's from the HD and Storage cards, do file transfers, play office files, etc. It seems to be a cut down version of Windows Media Centre 2005, so I'll be very happy being able to do quick and dirty things like watch files on the train without booting up windows.

Anyway, here's my current setup in the Dell basket,

• Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T7200 (2.0 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB)
• Genuine Windows® XP Media Center Edition 2005
• Premium XPS Service, 2 Year (incl. Gaming and On-Site Support)
• 12.1" WXGA (1280x800) TFT Display with TrueLife™ and integrated 1.3 mega pixel web cam
• 1024MB 533MHz Single Channel DDR2 SDRAM (1x1024)
• 120GB (5,400rpm) Hard Drive
• Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW with Software
• 5-in-1 Multi Card Reader (MS, MS Pro, SD, MMC, xD)
• Intel® Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Up to 256MB shared graphics memory
• 9 Cell, 80Whr Lithium Ion Primary Battery
• Intel® Pro WLAN 3945 Internal Wireless (802.11a/b/g 54 Mbps) for Core 2 Duo Processors
• Dell™ Wireless 350 Bluetooth 2.0 Module (up to 3Mbps) with Enhanced Data Rate
• Money Off Savings: Save £50 inc VAT
• £1,041.35 (includes VAT & Shipping, nothing to Pay Until December 2007)

Thanks to everyone who helped me decide what to get. I almost got a macbook but its lack of features is perfect for someone who just wants a great laptop. I'm more a tweaker and the extra features on the dell will be used by me. Now does anyone want to buy a Toshiba Protege 3500 Tablet PC with a noisy fan?

Technorati Tags: computer, coreduo, laptop, notebook

Buying a new laptop, last minute thoughts

[ All Technology ]

So I'm on the look out for a new laptop. The Apple seems like a good deal (I can also get quite a percentage off). Also from what I've been reading I should get a Intel Core Duo 2 chip, at least for the 4meg Cache and future 64bit processing support but its not essential to get a high clock speed. Hard Drives have doubled again, so I dont need to worry about that. Here's top of my list at the moment, bearing in mind I only want a 12inch laptop (13 if I'm pushed)

Apple Mac Book = 2GHz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 2gig of memory is £1,014.01 (1 year AppleCare)

Lenovo Thinkpad X60s = 1.66Ghz Core Duo 2 with 80GB HD and 1gig of memory is £1,021.98 (3 years warranty)

Dell XPS M1210 = 2Ghz Core Duo 2 with 120GB HD and 1gig of memory is £960.22 2 years warranty)