no but in all honesty, it was the user Detroittechno and this total gaming nerd at BestBuy here in Indianapolis that opened my eyes to the power of the AMD Athlon 64 processor.
there's a couple folks on this forum who have ordered the HP zv5000z based on my recommendation... drush just got one, and the other may have been peeddrroo? not positive. muthafunka is interested too.. 2 of these guys are old mac users, like me.
what is so great about the HP zv5000z and the almost exactly same Compaq R3000z ? Bang for buck, there is a whole hell of alot of it.
$1,499 American dollars gets you this in the HP zv5000z
AMD Athlon 64 3700 (with live, this is as powerful as a theoretical G5 2.7ghz, or a theoretical Centrino 2.3ghz, not that by theoretical i mean these cpu's dont exist yet),
15.4" Widescreen 1280x800,
512MB DDR333,
80GB 5400rpm HD,
CDRW/DVD Combo Drive,
802.11b/g wifi,
Windows XP Home,
3 USB 2.0, 1 4pin Firewire, VGA out, line in, line out (quite good actually, down to 4ms output latency with ASIO4ALL) pcmcia slot, 5 in 1 card reader.
and an upgraded 12-cell battery (from 8-cell standard), awesome battery life.
the same computer in the form of a Compaq R3000z (same guts, different case, slightly different speakers, but otherwise entirely same specs and parts) = $1408. Note that both prices are before the mail-in rebates that are bonuses for each machine ($30 rebate with the Compaq, $50 with the HP) Either laptop can be purchased from HPShopping.com
whats so not great about these laptops? The outdated Nvidia Geforce 440MX Go 64MB video card. I can still play UT2004, NFS, and Halo, though i try not to, heheh gotta stay productive but shooting shit can be fun. Don't think Doom3 or FarCry are gonna be playable however. It is safely overclockable to Geforce 460MX specs (30% more bandwidth), but that wont help you play DX9 games.
just my sixty five cents.