To wait or not to wait....?

I'd like to get a notebook computer, perhaps a Gateway 400SP Plus or
400S. I was originally going to wait until November, but sometimes I'm
tempted to get one much sooner than that. I keep flip-flopping. Question:
are there any upcoming technological advancements with computers that would
warrant waiting a few months?

 

No major technical advances expected in the next few months, maybe small
increases in CPU power. Only continued vicious price competition, followed by
one or more companies going belly up or being bought out... Ben Myers

 

Thanks for the response. Just took a quick peek at my bank
statement. I think I will wait a few months : )

 

I just checked Gateway's website, and they are no longer selling the
two notebooks I just mentioned! Gateway salesperson told me the demand was
so great they stopped making them.

 

A continuation of my last post. This is really frustrating for me,
because the 400SP Plus and the 400S had the exact specifications I wanted.
The other Gateway notebooks don't. For example, the others don't have the
option for an integrated 802.11g wireless networking card. Just the slower
802.11b.

 

Sure they do. 450 & 600 series both have this available. Guess you
now know the meaning of "for a limited time."

 

The 400SP, as currently customizable at the Gateway Website, offers you the
option of integrated 802.11g wireless ($69), or Linksys 802.11g wireless PC
card ($70). (These are under the "Wirless Options" section of the
customization page.) I haven't looked at the other 400 series models.

 

Sure they do. 450 & 600 series both have this available. Guess >you now
know the meaning of "for a limited time."

The problem I have with the 450 series is that they don't have the
Pentium 4 processor. Rather, they use the Pentium "M." And the 600 series
is too expensive for me.

 

Why would you want the P4? Everyone who has any knowledge of
processor design was eagerly awaiting the release of the M.

See:
http://www.cpuid.com/PentiumM/index.php

"Wow, what a CPU ! it is the best surprise Intel made us for a long
time : a very high performance CPU, with efficient power saving
features, in a word an impressive improvement for the mobile
platforms. We're just sorry that this CPU is exclusively reserved for
Mobile platforms !"

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.html?i=1800

"When looking at the present, the 1.6GHz Pentium-M is comparable to a
Pentium 4-M 2.2/2.4GHz, with the 1.5GHz Pentium-M falling somewhere in
the 2.0 - 2.2GHz range. For business/office applications, the
Pentium-M is unbeatable, clearly outperforming the fastest mobile
Pentium 4 at 2.40GHz. When dealing with games and media encoding
applications, the Pentium 4 will be faster, but by no means will it be
able to offer the battery life of a Pentium-M based system.

For the foreseeable future, the Pentium 4-M and Pentium-M will
coexist, but the Pentium 4-M will be mostly restricted to the highest
end desktop replacement notebooks, where battery life isn't as big of
a concern. For all other segments, the Pentium-M and the Centrino
platform will do their job better than the Pentium 4 ever could."

*** So unless you're equipping the P4M with a 64mb graphics card and
playing a bunch of games on the machine, you're kind of wasting the
P4's power.

On the low priced machines I would personally stick with the Mobile
Celeron, as it's basically a P4 internally with a larger L2 cache than
the desktop Celeron (256kb vs 128kb). Kind of a hybrid P4.

 

I ordered one a week ago ships out 8/4
This was a heck of a deal for $799.99. I went to the local Gateway store and
to get one that was available to carry out was $1099.99
I have read some of your post take my advise don't waste your time waiting
unless you have money to burn. With school going back a of people have some
pretty good deals.

 

Well.. by waiting, you already missed out on the 400SP-Plus.
When I saw that sucker at $799, I jumped in with both feet, and
upgraded the processor, the memory, hard drive, and got one
hell of a great deal on a terrific system.

Sometimes, acting fast is the right thing to do. And sometimes,
waiting pays off. To know which to do, get a better feel for the
marketplace by periodically comparing systems on Gateway's,
Dell's, IBM's, etc Web sites. Be savvy when buying!

 

The problem was that by upgrading it, you could get a
system fully equivalent to MUCH more expensive systems
and at a much lower cost. The upgrade paths they initially
provided were almost surely a major marketing error.