It's time to phase replace my office laptop and

[ehammersley]

It's time to phase replace my office laptop and I've got my heart set on the M4. I like the hardware options, the power is great when compared to the other TPC options out there and I don't really mind the weight (coming from a 10 lb Inspiron 8200). I've just been waiting until the new year to make the purchase, but now I'm hesitating.

First, I do not like that I don't get the choice of the 6600 video card any longer. Does anyone have any information on this? Is it coming back? Honestly I just want the extra umph looking down the road towards Vista. I know I don't always get what I want but anyone with some info about this would be appreciated.

Second, should I just wait? Does Toshiba have a new model on the lines that we can expect in the next month or so? Something to rival the M4?

Basically what I'm looking for is power in a TPC form factor. I'm a developer but 90% of my dev work is done on my workstation. The tablet is for mobile work, meetings and lectures now that I've gone back to school. I do want to be able to fire up the occasional VMware session for presentations etc. but not for extended use. The M4 just looks like the solution since most other TPC machines spec out below the M4. I've looked at most of the other offerings, Toshiba and beyond, and I keep coming back to the M4. Anyone have a suggestion given my usage outlined above?

Thanks for your time. Great forum for tablet information. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute as an owner soon. :-)

[wynand32]

Personally, I've found it impossible to predict when the next bigger (or smaller), faster, better configured, etc. piece of technology will be released. Certainly, in your case, you have good reason to wonder: with Yonah (Intel's new Pentium M processor, with dual cores and better power management) being released this month (Happy New Year, everyone!), at some point new versions of many systems will be released. I'm sure the M4 will be one of them.

I'm facing the same decision, except I'm considering a Gateway M280e, principally because I have an opportunity to buy a very nice configuration for a very good price. If I didn't have this opportunity _now_, with possibly less than a month to take advantage of it, I'd likely hold off to see what's going to happen with Yonah. From what I've seen of it, its performance in many tasks will be significantly higher than with current Pentium M's, particularly video encoding--something that I'm dabbling in and that I currently don't do on my Tablet because it's just not fast enough.


Prices on Yonah-based systems will likely be somewhat higher, although I've heard that perhaps the price delta won't be that terribly large. At the same time, currently systems will likely drop in price as vendors clear out inventory. So, that gives one reason to pause in both directions--buy the newest and best later and face higher prices, or lose out on even better pricing on current systems after Yonah is released.

I'm not one for prognostication, and so I'll not even guess when new systems will be released. But, I _will_ assume that Toshiba and other vendors will wait on Yonah to refresh their lines; no reason to do so now with such a dramatic change just around the corner. So, if you want to get a sense of when new systems will be released, I'd do some research on Yonah and see what others are saying about its ETA in shipping systems. That'll probably give you as good an idea as any.

It's a tough call. Good luck!

[ehammersley]

Thanks for the reply. You basically dictated my thoughts over the past few days.

As far as the coming models I was "hoping" someone might have some insider information. :-)

[GIS_guy]

i was in your same boat - I had a C840 (same thing you had with a different bios) and I got the M4. Could not be happier with the choice. Even if there are some new tablets that come out my guess is that it will be a while still, maybe 6 months or so... even then, you will have it for another 6 months and something better will come around. as for the M4 - I do all kinds of stuff from 3D images to running a 1 gig database in SQL 2005 (running on the machine) with no problems at all. It will be a while before anything will be THAT much better that it to make me want a new one... Just my 2 cents...

[ehammersley]

Excellent, thanks for the insight.

I'm going to call tomorrow, or Tuesday if they are on Holiday, and talk to them about the 6600 video card option.

Since the Intel announcement is rumored for Jan 6th it won't be but a few days to see what the initial offerings are from the big players. I don't know if there will be any tablet announcements (probably not) but some if not all of the big companies will most likely show off their new laptop models. Perhaps the tablet platform will gain more spotlight early on.

If we are talking 6 months down the road I will most likely go ahead and purchase my M4. Time will tell I suppose.