Pentium M 1.6GHz - any good?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bobby
  • Start date Start date
Bobby said:
I'm thinking of buying a laptop to compliment my desktop PC.

I've found this one which sounds OK:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...eljcflgceggdhhmdfhl.0&page=Product&sku=390205

Is a Pentium M any good? How does it compare with a Pentium 4?

What sort of battery life could I expect out of this system?

And is widescreen important on a laptop?
Click to expand...

Check out these laptops instead...
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/NBRanges.html

More value for money. Widescreen is really only important if you want
widescreen for DVD playback. I can see no other good use for it on a
laptop.
 
Bobby said:
I'm thinking of buying a laptop to compliment my desktop PC.

I've found this one which sounds OK:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...eljcflgceggdhhmdfhl.0&page=Product&sku=390205

Is a Pentium M any good? How does it compare with a Pentium 4?

What sort of battery life could I expect out of this system?

And is widescreen important on a laptop?

Cheers.

Bobby
Click to expand...

1.6 sounds bog slow to me but here is a review ...

http://www.hexus.net/content/reviews/review.php?dXJsX3Jldmlld19JRD0xMDMw

John
 
I'm thinking of buying a laptop to compliment my desktop PC.

I've found this one which sounds OK:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...eljcflgceggdhhmdfhl.0&page=Product&sku=390205

Is a Pentium M any good? How does it compare with a Pentium 4?
Click to expand...
The Pentium M(obile) is a laptop optimized version of the Pentium 4
with variable clock speed (i.e. the system can slow down from 1.6 GHz
to 1.2GHz etc... to extend battery life when not under heavy load) and
lower power consumption. It also adds some additional laptop features
I can't think of off hand.
What sort of battery life could I expect out of this system?
Click to expand...
It should probably say in the manufacturers specs.
And is widescreen important on a laptop?
Click to expand...
It depends on what you want. If you're doing a lot of travelling
you'll probalby want something small and light. If you're using this
as you're primary PC and aren't going to be carrying it around all the
time, the wide screen is quite nice.
 
Hi, I havent seen that model before but its a very good price for a
DVD-RW model and the make is good. The 1.6GHz will be fine - it will be
as fast as most any desktop you will get today for the standard tasks
(Web, email etc).

The M processor has double the cache memory of the current range of
Pentium 4 'desktop' processors hence the speed ratings are not
comparable directly. I use a older 1.4Ghz in an IBM X31 laptop (bought
last November) and it flies through everything - i.e. I click and it
happens. There is no noticable difference bethwwen this and my 3GHz Dell
desktop for what I do (though I did treat myself to a faster hard disk
as these can be slow on some laptops - you poo the old one out and
restore XP to the new one - about £85.00 for the fastest drive there is
- 7200rpm).

Note that all these lower end laptops will not run the latest games as
well as their desktop counterpars due to the graphics processor they
ship with - fine for most everything but not that fast for 3d games etc.
You need to spend a whiole heap more to get a laptop with a fast video card.

Go and see it inperson - see that you like the screen and feel of it.
Get it - you'll be fine!
 
Bobby said:
I'm thinking of buying a laptop to compliment my desktop PC.
Click to expand...

It's going to compliment it, eh? ;o) Why, I never knew computers could
converse. What's it going to be saying - "wow! Look at the hard drive on
that"? ;o)

The word you're looking for is 'complEment'.

Just a friendly FYI. Oh, and I wouldn't purchase from PC World, either...
 
Actually this model does pass comment on it's surroundings - you are
behind the times old boy.
 
Or saved a few bucks, got an AMD64 or Turion based laptop, and have a
better, faster machine than anything that Intel sells in the laptop arena.

Bobby...a different one than the OP.
 
in
microsoft.public.windowsxp.general:
It's going to compliment it, eh? ;o) Why, I never knew computers could
converse. What's it going to be saying - "wow! Look at the hard drive on
that"? ;o)

The word you're looking for is 'complEment'.

Just a friendly FYI.
Click to expand...

I'm glad to see someone besides me cares about these things.

The .sig line that offers "advise" is like fingernails on a
blackboard to me. :-)

And to the OP -- I've got a 1.8 GHz Pentium M and I get about 4 to
4.5 hours, depending on ehat I'm doing. Wireless surfing and
playing DVDs would drive that down, of course.
 
And to the OP -- I've got a 1.8 GHz Pentium M and I get about 4 to
4.5 hours, depending on ehat I'm doing. Wireless surfing and
playing DVDs would drive that down, of course.
Click to expand...

How much of a power drain is wireless surfing? Is there a website where I
can compare the relative "draining" features of different
devices/activities?

Cheers.

Bobby
 
That will depend entirely on the device's power consumption. Suggest the
manufacturers website as a starting point, www.google.com is another
tool to locate information.
 
How much of a power drain is wireless surfing? Is there a website where I
can compare the relative "draining" features of different
devices/activities?

Cheers.

Bobby
Click to expand...

Relatively speaking, quite low, a few watts consumption and
roughly a couple hundred milliwatts output. Primary
consumers are the drives, board, CPU, video card if
separate, and display. The primary way to make the most
difference and still be able to "use" the system without
worrying too much is to keep background tasks in-check,
don't let anything that consumes too many idle cycles run in
the background. With win2k or xp the cpu utilization can be
checked with Task Manager.
 
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