Need Advice on Multimedia Notebooks

Take a look at the SAGER 8890 and 5680 and even the coming 8790. You will simply not find more powerful machines for less or even the same. A fully equiped 8600, which is still not the equal of a 5680, will run you about $2200, about $150 more than the 5680. There's no point in comparing it to the 8890, sort of like comparing a nice sporty car with a GT40 or something of that calibre. However, for $3K you could get yourself a very nice 8890 that would do you proud in any undertaking. There's just nothing else like it. Ask aussie!!! Do a search on his review of the 8890. As for the Pentium mobile chips (those used in Centrinos, which are systems, not a chips), no, there's no P-M that will match up to a fully loaded P4 with HT. What makes it seem they are so hot is when you compare clock rates. Yes, a 1.7 P-M will perform about as fast as a 2.8 or even a 3.0 P4, but nearly all of that is because of the 2 MB L2 cache. If you put that size of a cache on a P4, it would blow the silicon out of a P-M. Which is why Intel is going to do that come February. But do you really care about clock cycles? Not me. All I care about is speed. Its like saying a Ford GT 40 with a 427 V8 turning over at 6000 RPM is better than an F1 V12 spinning at 10,000 RPM. They both put out a heck of a lot of power. But just because the big V8 does it at 6000 RPM instead of 10,000 RPM doesn't make it better.

As I do intense CAD, I can tell you the SAGERs can handle that with ease. I use my professionally including heavy duty 3D modeling. As for the rest, most any machine can handle that stuff, though DVD encoding can take a lot of power. I can't talk about Games, but if you search through these forums, you'll find a lot of very happy gamers.

As for the HP zd7000, this is more like the SAGER 4780 or the coming 8790 with the big 17" screen. I suggest you compare the hp with either of those machines.

How long would you want the notebook to be able to run on battery power? Your answer to this question will determine whether a notebook with a mobile or a desktop CPU would better suit you.

The best a 8890 might do is about 2 hours, more likely 90 minutes, and dang if that don't cut off the end of most movies. A 5680 has the option of dual quick swap batteries so it could easily handle 2.5 hours without even a swap and more with if you had a spare charged up. One note is the either of these pull too much power to use that plugs on the planes, those only put out 75 watts and they take 120.

The 8890 (see http://pctorque.com/8890.php ) and 8790 (see http://talknotebooks.com/showthread.php?t=9961) have similar motherboards, both offer P4's with HT on 800 MHz Front Side Busses and they both offer full size keyboards (very important in my book) & built-in TV Tuners. They both can carry up to 2 GB of Dual Channel DDR RAM and both can use their primary and secondary drives in a RAID. Both have two Smart Bays one of which is for the RAID if you have a HDD in it. The last bay is used by the TV Tuner but could mount a HDD. Beyond that, the 8890, as noted before, is a tank, its for serious heavy lifting, which is why it offers the P4 EE & RAID options though the 8790 is supposed to offer the Prescott. The 8790 is more artsy, less brute force, though that should not be construed as anything less than mongo. The 8890 has either 15" or 16" UXGA screens driven by an ATI 9600 Pro with 128 MB while the 8790 has a 17" WXGA screen driven by an ATI 9700 with 256 MB. A bit less resolution on a bit bigger screen with a bit stronger GPU. The 8890 has a bit more and better I/O with 2 PCMCIA and 4 USB2 while the 8790 has 1 PCMCIA and 3 USB2. Both have a FireWire port, IRA port and the other usual serial, parallel and PS/2 ports as well as the Gigabyte and modem jacks and S-Vid in and out. They both have built-in Wireless capability. The 8890 has a port for a MP3 player (not worth it) or 6 in 1 card reader while the 8790 has a built in camera and a 7 in 1 card reader. Both are very serious machines. Prices haven't been posted for the 8790 yet, but you can get a very nicely equiped 8890 for about $3000. I would expect the 8790 to be approximately the same.

I think that about covers it. Wait a second, the 8890 is available right now while the 8790 is supposed to come on line this month. So far there's no reason to doubt that.

i would suggest the Gateway m505 series. Its an all around type player

Based on your battery time requirements, a notebook using a desktop CPU such as a Sager 5680, 8890, or 8790 would be marginal at best. Such notebooks offer great performance but are relatively hot, heavy, noisy and drain batteries quickly. I recommend instead a Pentium M notebook with ATI 9600 graphics. You get 85% - 90% of the performance of a Pentium 4 notebook in a cooler, lighter and quieter package that will easily go 4 hours or more on battery power.

I second the recommendation on the Gateway M505. It is a well built notebook that does very well running AutoCAD. It is particularly designed for multimedia applications with an integral multimedia control panel on the left side and dual FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports. I can't recommend the Dell 8600 right now due to quality and support issues.