Greg Buchner wrote:
In article <qYGdnUO4JZU-CmrenZ2dnUVZ_s2dnZ2d@comcast.com>, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote:The "low-midrange" laptop is a 1.73GHz Pentium M, 512MB, dual-layer universal DVD writer, 15.4" screen, integrated video, 100GB disk, and it's about $1100.iBook 1.42GHz G4, 14 inch, NO integrated video (integrated video sucks from personal experience) is $1299. Probably will be faster Intel by this summer.Laptops mostly have integrated video, and it's getting to be plenty to satisfy all but gamers. Certainly video is well handled.Integrated video won't be good enough once Windows Vista comes out. At least for all the graphical extras that are supposed to be shipping with Vista. The manufacturers are going to take a bit of a hit once Vista starts shipping because they won't be able to list laptops (or desktops) with integrated video as being 'Vista Ready' fro what I've heard.
What you will find is that Intel's integrated video will increase its capabilities to fully support Vista's needs--otherwise Vista wouldn't be planning to use them. Full support of DirectX 9 is the state of the art. Good enough is good enough.
Meanwhile, every Mac Apple is shipping is fully compatible with Apple's Core Image which provides a lot of built-in graphical features.
And that hardware base will need to evolve, too.
And the iBook has only a 60GB drive and a 1024x768 screen, instead of 1280x768 for the PC. And still an 18% premium. Better than before, though. ;-)And it'll supposedly change more once it becomes Intel based. But the specs are anyone's guess outside of Apple at the moment.
I'll be watching to see what happens--so far the trends are good. -michael Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's! Home page: http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it is seriously underused."