JarredWalton - Friday, Septemlink It would save time, but it wouldn't provide a ready comparison to other mobile GPUs, which is one thing I wanted to do.Otherwise, the vast majority of people will be better off with a midrange desktop for gaming and a true midrange solution. (Same for the HD 4670 and even HD 3850.) If you want to play modern games on a notebook, get the Gateway P-7811 or some other more powerful (and larger) notebook. Midrange mobile graphics *aren't* great, and in fact even the fastest mobile GPUs are slower than desktop "midrange" graphics: the 9600 GT costs under $100 and outperforms the 9800M GTS, and the ~$110 8800 GT 512MB is faster than any mobile GPU. That's not to say you can't play any games on these midrange GPUs, but I would hate to give people the mistaken impression that midrange mobile GPUs run most games "fine" when that's simply not true. Graphics aren't everything, true, but they do make a difference. There are plenty of other games that start looking quite poor before you break 30 FPS. :-) Yeah, that's sort of extreme, but so is a huge battery sitting under a small laptop.Īs for midrange graphics and gaming, let me reiterate: running at 1280x800 I couldn't break 20 FPS in Mass Effect or Crysis even at minimum detail, and GRID at medium-low detail was playable but looked like a four year old graphics engine. If you buy any of these laptops and six to eight extra batteries, you could get 24 hours as well. JarredWalton - Thursday, Septemlink The HP "24 hour" notebook includes an extra battery attachment that sits under the notebook and weighs several pounds if I'm not mistaken.According to our testing and information from Compal, we also expect the HL90 with a Core 2 Duo P-series processor should provide 25 to 30% more battery life. The system we received for review initially retailed for around $1500 now an upgraded HL90 system with a P8600, 4GB of memory, and Vista Home Premium 64-bit will run about $1400. One option we wish they would offer is a BD-ROM/DVDR in place of the Blu-ray recorder, as we don't see ourselves recording Blu-ray movies and you should be able to save about $250 while maintaining Blu-ray playback capability (not that Blu-ray support is likely to be any better than on the other laptops we've tested). This can definitely be overwhelming for uninformed users, but for technophiles this is about as good as shopping for parts at Newegg. Looking at options on the HL90, you have a choice of two LCD resolutions, 16 CPUs, 33 different RAM configurations, 52 different hard drives/SSDs, two optical drives (DVDR or Blu-ray recorder), 16 different operating systems (including no operating system), and various other items like networking, Bluetooth, and accessories. Since we are not dealing with a mammoth 17" chassis, we didn't find this to be as much of a problem as on the Gateway notebook, but it does make for a somewhat less desirable form factor.Īs mentioned already, the IFL90 that we are testing is no longer stocked by AVADirect, since it was replaced by the HL90. (There are two different 6-cell batteries, which is why it's not necessarily a 50% improvement.) Increased battery life is certainly nice to have, but the high-capacity battery has a similar problem to the battery on the Gateway P-series notebooks: it extends an extra inch beyond the back of the laptop.
![compal hl90 compal hl90](https://www.terahertz.cz/46053-thickbox_default/139171-compal-hl90-bottom-case.jpg)
![compal hl90 compal hl90](https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/XMQAAOSwElpartrR/s-l225.jpg)
We received the higher capacity 9-cell battery, which should provide 35% to 50% more battery life than the 6-cell option. Still, the 1680x1050 display is a lot better than most of the 1280x800 LCDs we've tested - and not just in terms of having a higher resolution.Ĭompal offers two different battery sizes for the IFL90/HL90.
#COMPAL HL90 1080P#
We'll cut through the suspense by saying that if you want a higher resolution notebook display, the 1080P option on the Acer 6920G ends up being a better overall solution right now. Tons of 15.4" notebooks ship with 1280x800 LCDs, but there aren't nearly as many with 1680x1050 displays so we were interested to see how this one compares to other laptops.
![compal hl90 compal hl90](https://www.avadirect.com/Pictures/500/1840863_2.jpg)
That feature is the LCD, which can be either a 1280x800 model or an upgraded 1680x1050 display. The Compal IFL90 is a typical midrange notebook, with one specific feature that caused us to request this model for review. AVADirect IFL90 - Features and Specifications AVADirect Compal IFL90 SpecificationsĤ-in-1 Flash Reader (MS, MS Pro, MMC, SD)