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Loading ...The fantasy world of upgradable laptops
l3v1ck
Over the last few weeks I’ve been spending a bit of time looking at new laptops on the internet. Not that my current one is quite ready for the bin you understand, but just so I’m well informed when I do take the plunge.
I’ve soon come to realise that I’m just not a big fan of change however. The vast majority of new laptops out there don’t meet my needs at all, not because there’s anything wrong which them, but just because I don’t like them.
I use my current laptop for playing games, listening to music, watching DVD’s and browsing the internet. Mostly this is done in my spare time while I work offshore. (Two weeks can be a long time when the on board recreation facilities are limited to non-existent.)
Maybe I should say why my current (£1000 at the time of purchase) laptop is ideally suited for this?
The screen is a 15″ 1400 x 1050 TFT (matt finish). This is perfect for several reasons:
1) The high resolution is excellent for browsing the web without having to scroll too much. I can view a good portion of most web pages in one go. Also games running at that resolution look very crisp.
2) As I have a lot of older games that don’t support wide screen resolutions, the tradition screen ratio makes more sense. OK, the black bars are slightly wider than they would be on a wide screen TFT when watching DVD’, but that really isn’t an issue for me.
3) The laptop is used in a well lit office environment. As such the matt finish on the TFT doesn’t reflect light sources behind me at all, something that my colleagues with their modern S-TFT’s have to suffer.
The Mobility Radeon 9600 graphics chip maybe poor by today’s standards, but it can still run Far Cry at high settings at the screens native resolution. I opted for an 80 gig hard drive when I bought it three and a half years ago and I still haven’t filled it, there’s still over 25 gig of space left. The DVD-RW still works perfectly as does the on board networking, both of which are used on a regular basis. Unfortunately nearly four years of being thrown around in helicopter baggage holds etc is taking it’s toll, only two of the four USB ports still work.
So why am I having issues finding a replacement that I like?
Simple. Most new laptop have features that would actually make my life less pleasant. Wide screen now seems to be the default format which means there will be display issues when I try to run older games. Also many new screens sacrifice the number of vertical pixels to achieve their wide screen status, often they are limited to 900 pixels which is less than I have now. There goes my happy web browsing experience.
Anything above integrated graphics should wipe the floor with my old laptop these days, but getting a mid range GPU isn’t anywhere as cheap as it was three years ago. True, even a low end modern GPU would be an improvement, but I got a mid range GPU laptop for £1000 back then so why can’t I now? After all hardware prices have generally been coming down.
The solution to my problem is very simple yet quite literally impossible. Upgrade the laptop! And by upgrade I don’t just mean add a new hard drive, RAM and DVD-ROM which is pretty much the limit with most (if not all) laptops, but a full motherboard upgrade with a new dual core CPU and high end graphics chip in the same chassis so I can keep my old fashioned standard ratio matt TFT.
Alas, I’m living in a fantasy world. Due to the lack of standard laptop motherboard and case layouts, such a thing just isn’t possible. If only laptops were designed the same way that desktops are, then we’d all be able to truly customise them, choosing the features that we want and discarding the ones we don’t. Maybe it will happen sometime in the future, but I doubt it will be any time soon. Trying to convince manufacturers to adopt a single layout standard for all the ports would be almost impossible. Some progress has been made in the last few years with the introduction of MXM (mobile PCI Express Module). It’s now possible for manufacturers to insert different GPU’s into a single motherboard, where as five years ago they would have had to design each board around a single GPU. But there’s still a long way to go, the dream of a fully upgradable laptop is a long way off indeed.
Doh! It looks like the GPU RAM is on it’s last legs now. 
I’m getting graphics corruption in 3D games and when playing DVD’s in Media Player.
The question is whether you can wait for ATi’s external offering if it will also connect using USB 2.0.
Unfortunately the laptop would need to be fitted with ATi’s XGP connector, which mine obviously doesn’t have. Plus I have a few other issues with my laptop anyway (screen and USB port issues).
Still, we are slowly moving forward when it comes to customising laptops.
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Dell’s studio 15 laptops seem a good replacement for you, you can have one for £600 to £800, you would only have to bear the glaring widescreen monitor with a small hit in resolution,you will have a core2duo and an ati 3850 card. and no, i dont work for dell, i just had good experiences with them with my last two laptops.
I agree, when is custompc going to do another laptop round up, and can we have a reasonably priced gaming alternative to high end excess. i am trying to buy a laptop which can play intensive games at a reasonable resolution and show films for when i travel but six hours on the internet and reading your back issues to sept. ‘07, has done little to clarify the issues, i.e. minimum specs, screen resolutions, weight, battery life, why cannot these appear in your elite round up. does it have to be an apple macbook pro ‘08.
Errol