Tech Watch: Price dropping soon?

There's really no point in waiting because it will always be this way. Even moreso in the notebook market because once something happens in the Desktop world it takes longer to happen in Notebooks.

well if you look around, there has been a lot of talk about PCI-Express coming to laptops...but that's further than a month away. some laptops are coming out with the ATI radeon 9800 (as of right now, only DELL has that, but it should show up somwhere else soon). now that's all graphics-wise...with processors, nothing is really coming out within the month i think. i dunno, but the PCI-E will be the next huge thing...but again, not within the month. just look around, there's bundles of info on this forum.

Well, I just wrote a big long rant about people who answer the initial question by saying "there's no point in waiting...there will always be something new...if you think like that you will never buy anything." Then I deleted it because I didn't want to sound like a jerk.

But the bottom line is that just about everyone realizes the phenomenon of technological progress, and the second response above can hardly be seen as helpful or as an answer to the question asked.

If you are able to wait a couple of months before you HAVE to get your laptop, it is not only acceptable, but wise to research and find out if there is anything you might wish you had had you waited until the last minute of YOUR time frame. So the first question is valid, and depending on the answer to the question, there may indeed be a point in waiting, despite what some suggest.

I am in about a 3 month time frame myself. Therefore, as I shop I am not only shopping the products that are out right now, but those that may be out in the next three months. Ignoring those possibilities is just as foolish as ignoring any other current options.

Also, while it has been said above that "There's really no point in waiting because it will always be this way", that is just silly. Rghost said "...that I should wait a bit longer in order to get today's top laptops for hundred cheaper within two months?
Rghost is apparently not trying to wait for new technology for himself (though he may be) but he is more interested according to his post in prices of current models dropping when something new comes out to take it's place. He is trying to see if the one he wants now may be a little less expensive in a month or two because of some new thing that will take precedence.

So, in an effort to offer more than this little rant, all I can say is that yes, as mentioned above, there is the possibility of PCI-E coming out soon. However, the time table there is hotly debated even on this forum. Just because a manufacturer says it has something slated for a certain date, does not mean it will happen. But you can read pci-e discussion all over this forum with a simple search.

Other than that I can say no more than Neubs said above. There are some other people on here who are pretty sharp when it comes to this stuff so I hope they will chime in with anything that neubs (and I) missed.

and finally....sorry. No offense meant to anyone.

[EDIT] Darn..that was not supposed to be that long or that long-winded. Hope no one was offended. Was not meant that way.

Isn't there supposed to be a price drop for Dothan in October?

Can anyone confirm this?

Blazing Pascal. Well said. Good point about the 3 months now and then. Just that people should not dwell on stuff too much. I understand you.

Met a guy at school who has an Asus M6N with a 9800. Guess his buddy works at the Asus Santa Clara office and he hooked him up with a spot on a test panel or something.

Holy Smokes! and all I want is the Asus with 9700/128! If that darn lappy had that I would have bought it already. But a 9800? That is very interesting. I was not sure how many notebooks we would see with that card in them.

Y'know, with all the revisions the M6000 series has gone thru, you'd think they would have designed all their graphics cards to be pin-compatible. Meaning, if there's a future edition of an M6N with a 9800 card in it, that 9800 ought to work in a current M6N or M6Ne. After all, the machine is most likely unchanged in every other aspect.

Meanwhile - the price of Pentium Ms is supposed to drop one level. I.e., the new 755 price should drop to the old 745 price, and on down the line. Sometime this month. That probably only helps people who buy whitebook systems and buy the CPU separately; a preconfigured system whose CPU was purchased before will probably still sell for the original price.

It seems that you can generally expect a price step down every two to three months depending on other developments and the availability of parts. SO making sure that your laptop uses a mainboard that can take a new proc is never a bad idea.

Are you sure about it being an MR9800? Many of us felt that we wouldn't expect to see this GPU in anything other than a DTR due to cooling requirements/airflow.

The MR9800/MRX800 only has a 30W thermal envelope at full load. Most people think that because the Dell XPS is huge & heavy that means its from the MR9800. That is not the case. It is only from the desktop prescott in those systems. Putting the mobile R420 into a P-M system would be great.

I'd be surprised to see a 9800 on anything except a DTR. Only having 8 pipes makes it reasonable to put in a DTR notebook, but the clock has to be kept low to avoid overheat. The real-world stress testing of the 9800 in a dell machine shows that a larger chassis and greater cooling ability is necessary to keep the gpu from overheating.

While I agree that a P-M system with a 9800 would be sweet (and possible), I don't think we'll see any. The cooling system on it is a bit thick (and the card itself isn't small) for anything under 1.5" thick, and no manufacturer really has a reason to shoehorn it into a real-mobile solution like a P-M. Gamers aren't concerned with price and weight, and business people aren't concerned with getting the latest gpu possible.

Just another opinion.

Aye, and beyond the cooling requirements, the power consumption would be in conflict with the goals of the P-M, imo:

"the power consumption of the MR9800 is, according to the manufacturer's statements, about 30% to 40% above that of the MR9700 - despite the fact that the clock speed of the core is considerably lower at 350 MHz than that of its predecessor (445 MHz). But with 110 million transistors, the number of transistors is significantly higher. After all, additional power is needed to operate twice as many pixel pipelines and vertex shader units."

-Tom's Hardware

I ordered a M6N and was actually informed that the 9800 was going to be appearing in it by the end of the month
but I ordered it with the 9700 anyway

The reseller told you that, or Asus? That is, uh, interesting. Would you mind PM'ing me with your source? I am on the edge of getting the asus but the 64 megs is the only thing holding me back.

Love to hear other's thoughts on this.

I'd like to know where this info came from. My bying decision would be made.

I am sure battery life would suffer but the beautiful thing about the ASUS is the modular battery.

Would a possible release of a 9800 (I don't know enough to argue the validity of that) mean: a) a price drop for the models with the 9700 and b) could they possibly make the 9700 with 128mb?

Yeah, I'm sure.

So... Underclocked?