On 22 Aug 2004 18:15:07 -0400,
Hey,
I have to get a good Laptop for my girl friend, but don't know
what is best.
I know the
[b:481b24f554]Centrino[/b:481b24f554]
bundel is great, but what about a [i:481b24f554][b:481b24f554]AMD
M[/b:481b24f554][/i:481b24f554] + [b:481b24f554]w-Lan[/b:481b24f554],
which is better (haven't heard anything about the [i:481b24f554]AMD
M[/i:481b24f554])?
WHOA! Get yourself a proper newsreader there buddy! FWIW, just in
case you thought that this is a "help" forum for a specific web page,
your message is actually just being thrown out onto the Usenet
Newsgroup comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips. If you've never heard of
Usenet before you might want to look into it, your ISP probably has an
NNTP server that will let you get to it directly rather than tunneling
through some web portal.
:?: Which has a better performance? Which runs longer on one
battery?
Well, the first thing to figure out is just what the heck it is that
the dumb-ass marketing department is actually talking about. There is
no such thing as an "AMD M" processor, just as there is no such thing
as an "Intel M" processor. AMD makes processors, some of them are
sold to the mobile market and some of those even have an 'M' suffix
added to them.
Most likely they are talking about the AMD AthlonXP-M processor. This
is a very respectable processor, coming in with good performance and
power consumption for a VERY reasonable price. The maximum power
consumption of this processor could be either 25W, 45W or 63W,
depending on just what model of processor they used (AMD sells three
different power grades for their mobile processors, the "Low Power",
"Mainstream" and "Desktop Replacement" for the three power grades
respectively). Most likely they use the 45W max chips.
For comparison, Intel's Pentium-M has a maximum power consumption of
25W, only one power grade from Intel. More importantly though, the
Pentium-M probably has slightly lower power consumption at idle.
Generally speaking your processor is actually idle about 99% of the
time for most people, so it's maximum power consumption tends not to
have a huge effect on things. The Pentium-M does very well in this
regard, and that's why it will end up having much better battery life
than the Mobile Pentium4 or the Celeron-M. The AthlonXP-M is also
pretty good here, but maybe not quite as good as the Pentium-M.
:idea: She needs to be very mobile ([b:481b24f554]lite and long
battery life[/b:481b24f554]).
it is more important that it is lite rather than big screened.
Given that long battery life seems to be your top criteria, the
Pentium-M is probably your best choice. For any given price-point the
AthlonXP-M will offer much better performance than the Pentium-M, and
it's a GREAT alternative to any of Intel's Mobile P4 line (good
performance by VERY high power consumption), the Celeron-M (a
Pentium-M that has been intentionally castrated to increase idle power
and reduce battery life) or the Mobile Celeron (avoid these at all
costs! High clock speed but terrible performance combine with high
power consumption make the Mobile Celeron a TERRIBLE choice!)
AMD has a great bang-for-your-buck mobile product on their hands (and
their new Mobile Sempr0n and Athlon64 chips look like they'll continue
that tradition). However if long battery life is your top criteria,
the Pentium-M is top-dog.
The one problem with this recommendation is that you might have a
tough time finding a decent laptop that uses the Pentium-M processor
and that fits into your 1300 euro budget, particularly if you go for a
system with a 3 year warranty (personally I would tend to highly
recommend this, getting out of warranty laptops fixed is EXPENSIVE).
Having a quick look through what Toshiba (usually the lowest cost
manufacturer with decent quality) offers, the best I could do was a
Satellite M30 in pretty much the bare-minimum configuration with a
3-year warranty added on for $1410 US. Given a straight exchange that
would come in under your 1300 euro budget, but I understand that
prices for laptops is are a bit higher on that side of the pond.
Ohh, and a little FWIW for you.. The term "Centrino" is 100%
marketing trash (but INCREDIBLY successful marketing trash at that).
All it means is that the laptop uses a Pentium-M processor, an Intel
chipset and an Intel WiFi chip. If you use all three of those you get
a nice little "Centrino" logo and TONS of money in Intel marketing.
The whole idea behind this marketing campaign was to sell Intel's WiFi
chips despite the fact that they're really not very good (definitely
inferior to what Broadcom or Atheros offer). The Pentium-M processor
and Intel motherboard chipsets are good enough that everyone wanted to
use them, and Intel allocated enough marketing money to make it
basically cheaper for most companies to include an Intel WiFi chip
than to not include one.
