Need opinion on a laptop please

[John Prophet]

A friend of mine sent me an email, her brother is looking at laptops and here is the info they sent me.

Evidently its an Ibuddie

Here is what she sent me as specs....2.4 operating, 512, 60, external battery, 6Xcd/dvd rw $1800

Im not sure if that means dvr burner or not, lol.

Does that ring a bell as a certain model and is it any good?

Is there a comparable dell that has the same or better specs?

or any other good laptops that match those specs at a better price?

Thanks, JP

[samwichse]

That is not a laptop at all, and the price is way too high.

It is what is known as a "desknote," a notebook-shaped desktop computer. Like you said, it has an "external battery." Repeat: it is not actually made to be used as a laptop, but a desktop.

EDIT: it uses a desktop processor, desktop chipset, desktop vga chip, no power saving at all. The battery space is taken up by all the extra cooling needed in there. With the external battery, the life is barely an hour, if even that (if I remember correctly).

And older review:
http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1628

Sam

[John Prophet]

Do you know the model number or link to it??

I just posted exactly what the person sent me so I have no clue what model etc it is.

The only ibuddie I have experience with had the gigapro processor.



JP

[samwichse]

Post above was just edited .

Also, you might note that it also has the standard desktop's 3 phase voltage regulator (power hungry and needs to be cooled itself)

The first telltale sign that the i-Buddie 4's motherboard was more desktop in nature than mobile was the large three-phase voltage regulator setup for the CPU. You may notice this regulator on desktop motherboards: they are the set of capacitors and inductors typically located by or around the CPU socket. Well the motherboard on the i-Buddie 4 has these regulators as well and they take up quite a bit of space on the system's bottom.

Sam