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Pentium-M Notebook Put To The Test
BedivereW writes "Tom's Hardware has an interesting review of the first Intel Pentium-M (codenamed Banias) notebook. There are a few pieces of information missing, like heat production, but on the whole it is a good review. Intel appears to be moving in the correct direction." I'm looking forward to seeing more info on this one - seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series.
seems to be the x86 response to the PowerBook series
And with a name like Centrino, sounds like a response to the apple Centris series too.
But that was a dumb name that apple didn't keep around for long. I suspect within 6 months we'll see it renamed, and my dreams of a Quadra resurrection will be fulfilled
muahahaha!
The amusing part of this product is how sad the Pentium IV looks. Except on the Bapco benchmarks of course!
It's one of those strange things....802.11g sounded cool becuase it was 54Mbit, but actually it sucks compared to 802.11b because .11g like watching some UHF channel with a coat hangar antenna.
another factor that businesses are concerned w/ is security. tossing a bunch of laptops out to all of your employees with wireless capabilities and no real wireless security solution is not smart or responsible... and wep isn't a solution. all eyes on wpa for that one, hopefully. wifi equipped laptops are currently something of a double edged sword in the business world.
another thing is that intel's onboard solutions will very likely be plain vanilla, featureless and lacking options that you would find in competitors solutions...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Wow, Intel actually made a CPU that runs at a slower clock speed that keeps up just fine with one that is running 600 MHz faster. Tom does mention that this will cause it's marketing folks a bit of backpedaling, but he kinda just glosses over it at that.
Seems to me that the Pentium-M's approach is a bit like the AMD's and the G4's - Do more each clock cycle. As a Mac convert, it warms my heart to hear that Intel is admitting that this approach DOES in fact work.
Let's kill off that MHz myth once and for all shall we?
DaveC
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
I have inside news about the notebook's heat production. With this new M chip the notebook will now fry an egg nicely in less than half the time of our old notebooks.
After all, PB's are all about form and function, and since Intel doesn't make a laptop, all the function in the world won't help if the form sucks.
Reminds me of one time at the last company I worked for (a consulting firm), Intel came to us and said, so, what should we do to make our products more attractive to people buying web servers? After careful consideration we said, umm, there's not much you can do directly. What you should do is send Compaq et al to speak to us, since they control your channel to market. No-one (in the server-buying market) says "I specifically want an Intel processor" they say "I want to use NT (or Linux), where can I get a good system for doing that?".
It's like Guinness. They control the product, but the channel is owned by and large by the major breweries. All their TV advertising won't help if the product isn't competently poured by barstaff who work for Guinness' rivals. An interesting if a little precarious position to be in.
Apart from for the fanboys, there's no real difference between AMD and Intel - all the differentiation comes from the OEM.
You might recall this notebook from a while back. Now, if your make an honest assessment of the features, you may find that at ~$1400 after rebate, this notebook, from a price/performance point of view, might compare favorably with these. Now I'm not talking about originality or color schemes. I'm talking about what you get in terms of functionality for the money that you paid.
Now, the BestBuy notebook has a significant weak point in terms of battery performance. The Pentium-4M processor that it uses consumes more power than Motorola G4s found on PowerBooks but runs somewhat faster. Depending what you want to do, you can still, therefore, make a good case for a PowerBook.
However, you take the Pentium-4M, and replace it with a chip that's this much faster, with as good battery performance as the G4 (notice the fpu performance at 600 MHz, for example), and the remaining advantage of the PowerBooks evaporates.
People may still buy PowerBooks because of style and OS X, but in terms of overall functionality, a Centino notebook will blow away a PowerBook. I'm looking forward to getting my widescreen one six months down the line (and no, I'm not affiliated in anyway with any of the companies involved, I've just been looking into purchasing a notebook lately since lots of my colleagues have gotten PowerBooks).
PowerBooks are GREAT devices, but the Wintel world is fast over taking them due to their reliance on Motorola's G4 processor. Let's hope that Apple gets one of those other processors into their product line real soon.