New Laptops from HP (and AMD)

Hi people!   I thought I'd make just one more post on graphics performance in consumer laptops after reading this...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/amd-fusion-hp

... in Wired.com a few days ago.

This is an announcement from HP and AMD of a new series of laptops with AMD's Fusion offering, called Llano or their A-Series of processor chips.  Like Intel's Sandy Bridge offering, Llano/A-Series puts some very significant graphics processing capability on chip with multiple processor cores. 

The article says that AMD is pushing the Graphics side of the equation harder and yet is also pushing the power side of the equation harder than Intel.  This direction will be perfect for Second Life running on a laptop and it will be fun to see what people's experience with the systems will be.

It may be tricky for the next year or so to get the right chips in your new laptop purchases since most manufacturers seem to like to cloud the issue.  Intel, for example, has i5's that are Sandy Bridge, and i5's that are not.  You can tell the difference if you really dig into the details but the ability to do so may depend on manufacturer.  So be careful out there!

robin