Five 17" Media Center Notebooks Compared: Which Is Best?

[bgerber]

Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE) is often the operating system of choice among consumers hungry for living room or family room systems that can help them organize and enjoy their music, movies, TV programs and more. We evaluate and rank five 17" MCE notebooks from Acer, Fujitsu, HP, Sony and Toshiba.

 

[prt123]

How can this be considered a serious comparison when the number one seller (Dell), is not included. Oh BTW similarily configured is cheaper too.

 

[extremefire]

I personally can not justify dropping that much on a "media center" notebook.

Whats the point of a notebook if you have to have the thing tied down with a coax cable? You are better of building a server based media center computer and playing the video off of that computer, or even transfering the files won't take long if you want the videos to go. And the best part, you would pay less for the media server and notebook, combined.

 

[bgerber]

As the story points out, Dell refused to send one of their current models, preferring to wait until their new Core Duo models would be available this week. We can wait on reviews for one vendor. You are right that you can buy a similarly equipped Dell Inspiron E1705 (the new model with Core Duo) for less than most of the other notebooks, around $1,900. However, that's only during the special introductory period. The regular price for the E1705 equipped as most of the notebooks in the review is $2,343.

 

[wrack]

How can this be considered a serious comparison when the number one seller (Dell), is not included. Oh BTW similarily configured is cheaper too.

Dell is cheaper with discounts but when there are less available HP comes neck to neck with Dell at pricing.

 

[sandstig]

The screen's supposedly a 17.1" WXGA+ Widescreen, how come the resolution is listed as 1600x1200? According to Fujitsu's own website, the screen only supports 1440x900. There's a chance that this machine was equipped with a higher resolution screen, but then the resolution should be 1680x1050 (WSXGA+ 16:10 aspect ratio), not 1600x1200 (UXGA 4:3 aspect ratio).

 

[riscy]

I was really annoyed they actually excludes Dell 9400 (E1705) laptop from review. I was looking above....Oh why didn't they do it !

I considered it the best 17" laptop I ever used since the Dell 5150.

Riscy