about time some companies start removing themselves from the intel monopoly

If it is goes in Indonesia with relative same price, I bet it will be hot.

Unfortunately Turion doesn't match up to Core 2 Duo....AMD needs a better notebook CPU.

True for the faster C2Ds, but do you really need that much CPU-power in a notebook? It doesn't hurt, but it's not always worth the money.

Instead of faster CPUs I would prefer a 45nm-shrink of the existing Turions with less power consumption (-> battery time...).

Well, I won't buy Intel on principle. I'm sure in a lot of ways AMD is a horrible corporate monster too...but they are weak atm and we need them even if they are just a fly buzzing around Intel's head.

That said, anyone who keeps AMD systems in their lineup gets my vote... I've been kind of sad that it seems like Dell, HP and the like have gone back to mostly Intel.

As far as mail in rebates. I have never once had an issue and I use them frequently. On the other hand, I worked at Office Depot for two years while I started college and I can tell you most people are just too stupid to actually read the directions and do what they are supposed to (and then they get mad that you, in fact, don't get money back if you don't follow the rules).

There any comparison's on the new Turion x2 ultra? I'd like to see how it actually performs. Maybe Toms can get a hold of a few similar laptops and compare them for us?

Did you miss the graphics chip in it? You'll obviously want a strong CPU for that chip to rely on in games.

I have a turionX2 and its not as fast as a C2D but it gets the job done. And for gaming and mayor task i have a desktop. One word about HP DV series is that i got the MB burn after only 1year just after the warranty went off. I hear a lot of people had the same trouble with HP laptops. Hope they solve this problem but i will never buy an HP again.

For $599, you'd probably be stuck with a Pentium or Celeron intel processor. Comparatively, a Turion should come in rather nicely on the performance side.

That said, you can get a lot of work done with a simple processor. My work PC is a single-core Celeron processor, and I still manage to compile builds, test software, etc... I think people have been spoiled by these super-fast CPUs, and often times don't even realize they don't need all that expensive horsepower to actually get work done. It can help, but for most people its not necessary. And no, I haven't tried to play Crysis on the Celeron, it IS a work PC afterall.

I'd plump up the extra $80 for the Core 2 Duo model any day. AMD's solutions right now are weak compared to their former glories. Its such a shame that they can't pull another K7 out of the bag. Intel's dominating AMD like AMD did back then. It looks like AMD's missed out on the new generation of processors already so hopefully they'll be regrouping for the generation following i7, throwing some much needed competition back into the scene.

Your speaking as an enthusiast which only make up 5% of the market. So which CPU is more powerful is irrelevant.

Forget the CPU, why have such a low res screen? It is hard to find any laptop that you get put a wxga+ or better screen on without spending over $900. Give us a cheap laptop that offers higher resolution. I hate browsing the internet on 1280x800!

At $599 why get the $500+ netbooks alot of companies are offering?

I agree with the comment that amd needs a better mobile chip, now that they've achieved a competitive desktop chip.

I have a compaq lappy I bought for $500 last year, actually it was $600 with MIR for $100. Turns out it was actually a 100 dollar visa gift card, so I felt a bit ripped off. I bought it at a radio shack, and I was able to use the card elsewhere, so it turned out ok, but still...

So it came with a QL-60 dual core at 1.9Ghz, 2gigs ram, gEFORCE 8200m, 15.4". I loaded windows 7 since it came with vista and I haven't looked back, it runs very well. Vista performed poorly.

Just for the experience, I played around with the idea of dropping a TurionX2 Ultra ZM-84 (2.3ghz I think). It's able to use ddr2 800mhz ram on the puma platform, I may still try this if I can find a deal. But what I noticed is that the processor in windows experience is just fine (5.0 or something along those lines) but my graphics are stuck at about 3.5. Ram is around 4.8 or something.

Anyway no matter what I do, the graphics are gonna be my bottleneck. Which it will be for any laptop I'm sure. Which begs the question, why the hell do you want to game on a notebook? Its not useful when on battery power, it will never be as good as your desktop, and there are always gonna be some games that you simply can't play on your laptop.

If you're planning on doing some serious gaming on your laptop, are you really gonna buy a $600-700 machine.?

Nah... I'd find it a pitty they didn't equip it with AMD's top model of the 4600 line (Radeon 4670).
The power difference between the two is reasonably small, but the performance gain is enormous!

Most likely these type of laptops have nearly no battery life.
I'm more for 4hours real life active battery life, not 2,5h barely when on standby...

I would like to see it with a mobile GPU that's a little better than a 4650, but that's pretty good power in a cheap laptop. Well even for a laptop starting at 599 it's nice to see a step up from the onboard graphics to a dedicated 4350 with 512MB, even if that 4350 really isn't too useful for games ^_^.

AMD Puma are really good for a multimedia notebook

My roomate bought an HP DV2622tx. In comes with a 2 year warranty that expires September 2009. Since the 2nd year begins, its mobo has been burnt & replaced 4 times.

HP has good customer service but that laptop is terrible. Buying another HP: Very unlikely.

Interesting about the hp laptop burn-outs. The compaq that I listed above had a mobo burnout about 6 months in, but it used to get super hot. I sent my pc to hp for service and got it back in January.

The new motherboard runs pretty cool mostly, the video card gets a little toasty after a couple hours use, but nothing like it used to do. I suspect a factory defect mobo that was replaced with a newer update version.
Anyway I am still paranoid about another burnout and have purchased a notebook cooler. I don't use it often, but I do if any gaming is going on. I no longer worry about taking it to school as it does not get very warm under battery power. Wonder if that has anything to do the machine running win 7 now and the new power saving features?

I say protect your investment and buy a cooler for your notebook regardless of how much you paid for the thing.

Unfortunately, most people look at battery lifespan on laptops and unfortunately, no matter how much I support AMD, I have a Macbook that runs Intel. It's just the reason that longer battery life can be achieved on Intel processors. Until then, I don't think I really have a reason to buy AMD, aside the fact that it's cheaper.

However, I do have every single desktop in my house running AMD, including my quadcore desktop and my dual-core media centre.