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Centrino Laptops Reviewed
Jeff Mancuso writes "CNET seems to be the first out with full reviews of the new Centrino Pentium M laptops. The performance looks solid, the features are great, designs are thin and battery life runs up to 4-7 hours on these machines." Yeah, I had hoped that we would make it on the review list, but alas, no such luck. Nice looking machines, though.
The Centrino logo is awful though... God.
1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
The Centrinos are out and I had to buy a Dell Inspiron 8200 with a P4-M 1.80Ghz last Friday. I hate technology ;-)
Probably had to sacrifice power for battery life. This is why I choose an apple portable. I have a powerful chip that is energy efficient so I get fine battery life with no crippled processor. I wonder how hot these things get though.
... why there's no direct link to the article. I mean tomorrow the cnet.com frontpage could have changed completely, couldn't it?
1 .h tml?tag=ld
Anyway here's the 'overview' as they call it:
http://www.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-8-20926222-
Is this a comercial? If so please post the link to the article because I'm to lazzy to browse through CNET.
http://ebgp.net/ccc/
Thanks slashdot for providing a link to this fantastic full review!
For when this article gets moved off Cnet's front page, here's a direct link.
And just so you won't mod me up, here's a link to goatse.cx
For you lazy bastards.
2 22-1.html?tag=ld
:-D
http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-8-20926
Enjoy. Oh, and, to be honest, I'm happy with my new 12" PowerBook G4 - It does everything I want, and then some.
Informatus Technologicus
http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-8-209262 22-1.html?tag=ld
Take it an run, people! :-)
-/-
Mikey-San
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
What the hell happened to Pentiums V through CMXCIX?
~ "When I'm of that age I'm just going to live up a tree."
And next time, I'll:
:)
A) Preview my posts;
2) And use <P> or <BR> tags so my posts are formatted well!
-/-
Mikey-San
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Why hasn't it advanced much compared to just about every other technology in a laptop ? To me, low battery life and low weight are THE most important characteristics of any laptop, I might use, but we had laptops running for 2-3 hours 5-7 years ago, which is still where most laptops are at. Here it seems the Centrino ekes out its long life through advances in the CPU, not through better batteries.
A recent Sony Vaio notebook I just got, while a lovely machine, lasts *maybe* 1 1/2 hours when all the consumption-related options are turned way down. Plug in the wifi card and it's borderline useless.
So why hasn't battery life advanced significantly ? Are we already at a theoretical limit of battery performance ? Or is battery performance improving, but just managing to keep pace with ever-increasing power-consumption ?
It appears the Centrino is a processor that actually could be practical, conserving battery power at the expense of computing power. As such, the market is of people that want more battery time, and are going to sacrifice computing power to do so.
Why do these laptops then contain such battery burning parts as large screens, CDRW/DVD drives, and weigh as much as 7lb?
When I saw the Sony Picturebook with Transmeta Crusoe processor, I was drooling. Not because it was a Crusoe processor, but because it was a computer that could do what mobile people need it to do, and do it for a long time, and be unobtrusive enough to put in my jacket pocket.
If you're going to get a portable computer but you're always going to be plugged in when using it, get a cheap ECS Desknote that doesn't come with a battery. If you worry a bit about battery time, get a normal mobile Pentium IV or Mobile Athlon. If you're insane about battery life, get a Crusoe. I don't see the middle ground between the last two.
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
Wow, these are the first PC laptops to come close (surpass?) to Apple's PB's in a while
I agree. I'm an iBook user instead of a Powerbook user for financial reasons, but this will certainly give me second thoughts next time I purchase a laptop. The only thing that came close to the Mac laptops in battery life and leetness factor was the Sony Vaio, which at the time I purchased the iBook was not enough to grab my sale. This might move Apple from their currently large chunk of the laptop market.
In the long run, we're all dead.
After actually READING the reviews, i just wanted to post a few comments.
first, (as i type this on a G4 PB) it looks like Intel has done a great job with these chips. those battery life stats were just marketing fluff, looks like they're real. (although the 7 hour IBM had a "special" order battery with it that stuck out an inch from the back).
it's good to see the Windows world get some laptops that are actually focusing on what makes a laptop worthwhile, weight and battery life. the alienware machines are OK i guess, but suck as a true laptop IMO.
in any case, these chips look like a real improvement to both performance and to the Intel mindset. i'm happy to see them start working towards real world benefits in their chips over marketing hype and lame numbers games.
This will not get you a review unit any sooner. Review units are sent to news sites that actually test machines; not to a "news" site that would use the machine and then post a three-sentence blurb on, which would be followed by 400 comments about goatse.cx and SOVIET RUSSIA, and one on-topic post complaining about the price of the product reviewed.
Call this flamebait, troll, whatever, but it's reality: slashdot isn't classified in the realm of a legitimate news site. It's a BBS, plain and simple.
In summary: go buy your own fucking laptop, Hemos.
12 new Athlon Mobile models, which will go down to 1 volt core voltage and use not more than 1 watt (!).
Check here
The 1 watt number is from a Heise article.
Bye egghat.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
Fuel cells?
They sound like a good idea, but they also have the potential to explode and inflict damage on the user. Even current batteries can do that as one female owner of a dell laptop found out first hand.
Fuel cells contain hydrogen and I would be pretty scared to carry around a laptop with that much energy potential in it. Suppose you leave it in the sun? what if it leaks.
why is it in reviews that the reviewers can't seem to bother to mention the weights of the laptops? i don't want to be toting around a seven pound beast.
Seems Intel found a way to dramatically lower power consumption and heat without sacrificing too much CPU power.
I cant wait until we can get flex-atx or something like miniitx boards designed for these centrinos.
I want to put together little console-ish media players and gaming machines to plug into the TV, and VIA Edens offerings so far are just a little to gutless, and Shuttles spacewalker boards are great, but screaming CPU and case fans wont cut it.
I wonder how these things would cluster (yeah, imagine a beow...). Possibilities for my own personal little server farm without having to run another 150 amps of service to my PC room, and wont deafen me (a beowulf cluster of fans I dont need).
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-405-2090 6166-2.html?tag=rating
It's not technically a "Centrino" laptop anymore, if you pick that option, just a "Pentium M." But it's the same damn laptop with a Dell 802.11a/b/g card in it instead of the Intel card.
I know I just posted a little blurb about this above, but I want to tell you that the fifteen local computers makers here have started putting branded linux as standard on all their machines (other OS are extra). I'm not talking about a wallpaper here, I mean all new icons with the company logo for the menu bar, hand picked apps with modifications, etc... My recent jaunt to the local hypermarket found all six of the desktops and all three of the laptops sporting some kind of branded KDE with Mozilla, Evolution and Gnome-meeting as defaults on the KDE desktop, with the whole system available in Thai. In fact, Thailand's Ministry of ICT is preparing to announce a Linux distro and an OpenOffice fork as the national OS and Office suite, respectively.
I want to put an article together on all this, and am trying to schedule interviews and translate the necessary articles into English this week.
Put identity in the browser.
Fuel cells contain hydrogen and I would be pretty scared to carry around a laptop with that much energy potential in it.
I dunno if I would worry about it too much. First, fuel cells don't have to use hydrogen. A lot of different hydrocarbon fuels can be used, depending on the design of the cell. I believe that the new laptop fuel cells that have been announced will be using methanol (rubbing alchohol) for fuel. Second, you have to keep it in perspective. How many people carry around butane lighters? There is a significant amount of energy in one of those, yet they seem to be remarkably safe. I've never heard of a catastrophic lighter accident, although I'm sure it happens. No reason to assume that a fuel cell "tank" wouldn't be at least as safe.
I think he meant fool cells
Anandtech also has their review up.
"...I would be pretty scared to carry around a laptop with that much energy potential in it" You can't have it both ways. People are complaining how batteries haven't increased in perfomance significantly in the past few years. The main reason for this is that there are physical limitations in the energy density of a traditional battery. The work around for this is to go from batteries to fuel cells. This is why automobile manufacturers have all but given up on a battery powered car and are working on few cell cars. As is generally the case, the higher the energy density, the higher the *possibility* for danger. If you take this argument to its logical conclusion, the highest energy density occurs in "nuclear" devices, which also happens to be the most dangerous, if not designed properly.
The centrino have been entirely developed in Israel under strict secrecy.
Sigged!
The performance of these machines varies quite a bit. The top performers are described and benchmark results are here.
What accounts for this range of performance. All four machines have the same processor, clock, memory speed, bridge chip, GPU, disk speed, etc.:
Is it all in the firmware settings?
Laptop Makers Don't Want This Intel Inside The new Centrino comes with a disappointing wireless chip
Too bad PC makers don't agree. Dell Computer Corp. (DELL ), Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ), and other top manufacturers are eager to harness the extra power and efficiency of the new Pentium, but they are underwhelmed by Intel's wireless technology, which they say transmits data more slowly than those of rivals such as Broadcom (BRCM ).
What's more, notebook manufacturers perceive an ulterior motive behind Intel's Centrino launch. While Otellini says Intel is combining features in one package "so everything works [well] together," some PC makers fear Intel could boost prices if it were to become the sole supplier for most of a notebook's innards. And even if Intel didn't raise prices, PC makers say they'd prefer to continue buying components from numerous suppliers so they can better set themselves apart from competitors.
I've not part of the over clocking scene, nor the laptop scene, so I wouldn't know one way or the other, but would it be possible to take an already good laptop (battery life wise) such as one of these models with the centrino, and underclock it? I'd love a laptop, but I really only want one to access email and putz around with excel files on the move.
Is it even possible to jimjam with the bios settings, and lower the performance of the CPU? Would that even have an effect on battery life?
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
Apple vs. Mac aside, you've got valid point on the marketing issue. I'm waiting for the day when Computers become marketed like cars, where the raw specs aren't important. The way I see this, we're still in the muscle-car era of computing. Once we get past the point where everyone realizes that having 350 Hp engine isn't required do drive to work, we'll have ultra-cheap and pervasive computers.
I have to say, being a lifelong Windows user (I had a stint with Macs briefly, 10 years ago in high school yearbook class, pagemaker and what not) I was getting quite fed up with my 9 pound, 1 hour, Sony Vaio AMD laptop. So last week I sold it and went out and bought a sleek little 12" ibook. Best purchase I've ever made. After the initial learning curve with OS X (why the heck isnt Ctrl+C working? Wait, what's this weird little symbol key?) I am really digging the ibook. It's so beautiful, has great battery life, and does everything I'd ever need in a laptop. I love that I can ssh into my colo box without having to download putty. Little stuff like that.
Anyways, long story short, if I had to do it again now with all these T&L windows laptops out, I would still go with the ibook.
Why did this get modded to +5 interesting?
/. people were more critical than that...or maybe they were just impressed that he can use HTML formatting and bullets?
I don't find it interesting to read someone's obviously biased opinion without supporting facts.
It thought
Apple free since 1990!
Unless I'm mistaken, the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Association) specifically forbids the transport of methanol in the cabin. I don't know if they have an issue with hydrogen or other hydrocarbons.
There isn't any reason to worry, but there are regulations to deal with...
It's already at that point, just look at the stuntaz who trick out their "b0x3n" with neon and chrome.
Hammer of Truth
"You Mac gayboys really ought to do your research. [snip] I don't sit at my computer all day using Photoshop filters. Look at games on Macs. They're pathetic."
That's a hoot, AC. You sit at your computer all day playing games and have the hubris to call Mac proponents "gayboys" (can you spell loser? Probably not, you'd probably spell it looser).
My guess is that most laptop purchasers buy laptops primarily to do useful work, not to play games. The story is about laptops, isn't it?
Once again, that's "loser" not "looser" or "loozer." It's a word you definitely should get used to hearing!
hi!
The Pentium-M 1.6 beat the P4 2.6, so it's at least equal to the G4 per clock cycle, and yet is clocked twice as fast as the G4 0.8. Oh, and it gets 5-7 hours of battery life. In other words, the G4 is thoroughly obsolete.
"5 hour advertised batter[y] life"
And what is it really? I have a TiPB and it sure as hell doesn't get five hours.
Seems like it could compete with the Pentium-M if/when it comes out.
--The Centrinos are out and I had to buy a Dell Inspiron 8200 with a P4-M 1.80Ghz last Friday. I hate technology ;-)--
I'm still waiting for the Neutrino/X w/ Mr. Fusion inside.
Yes, but cars have much stricter safety tests. Plus use a fuel cell laptop as well as a car and you're increasing the risks.
Using a laptop puts you in closer proximity of danger, if you were to drop the laptop and the cell exploded you could be burnt. If it malfunctions on your knee you will get very serious burns.
Perhaps you should look at the serious damage possible with current technology before you call people "knucklehead".
http://kennethhunt.com/archives/000565.html
- Len Bosack, Founder of Cisco Systems
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Well there is risk in anything. Driving for example is very risky. I think the biggest problem with fuel cell laptops would not be the saftey factor, but if it would be allowed on a plane. Ammonium Nitrate as fertilizer is very safe. By adding a blasting cap and a booster, you can blow things up. The laptop manufactures will have to address that with fuel cells.
In that case I'd like you to put your money where your mouth is and put a match to a balloon full of H2. Tell us how it went.
Methanol is not rubbing alcohol. Methanol == Wood Alcohol Isopropanol == Rubbing Alcohol FYI.
But laptops do get knocked around, a leaking battery is a small risk, leaking fuel cell could be much worse.
You know if someone got really smart, they'd use that excess heat from the PC to generate more electricity in the same way a Hybrid vehicle works. If laptops are hot enough to cook someone's privates, maybe we can put that to some good use.
When I was about 11 years old I found a lighter on the ground. After discovering that it didn't work I threw it back on the ground. It exploded. I was rather surprised, and quite glad that I didn't catch a shard of what was left of it with my eye. That said, I would guess that there will be very safe methods of carrying fuel cells for laptops.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I am waiting on Astro it will be a great day when you can grab update video and CPU drivers for your cube, slate, rig, or serv.
Onward to the Aether Sphere!
re MAC v/s Win for photo applications. Check out:? cid=7-4869-4882
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp
Rob Galbraith runs an excellent site for digital photographers. In January 2002, he ran some real-life photo benchmarks with two high-end systems and two older systems. In most cases the Wintel system smoked the MAC. Excellent reading...
Look at the new Toshiba Protege R100 Only 2.3lbs (that's near enough 1kg), 900 Mhz CPU, 12" screen.... This is the one I buy.
Dell does 802.11a/b/g for the Latitude D600. Yes, all 3 in one.
Now that Intel has good battery life (according to CNET test), what is the number one gripe for Mac zealouts? OS X might be valid... anything else?
i'm just gonna be a pi bitch today and make a note on your sig... your last number is 2 however that number should be a 1 unless you are rounding up. Finally my knowledge of pi pays off ;)
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
I bought a 15000RPM hard drive 18 months ago and it was the fastest disk made for almost a year.
I just bought a laptop. It isn't even here yet. It's already obsolete. *cry*
I got a ultra-low-voltage P3/933 because battery life is paramount. Now they're making laptops ~2x as fast with half again as much battery life. Huzzah for technology.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Interesting stuff. This seems like a pretty nice step up from my current system. Question, would we be able to install linux onto these systems? (Will the generic pentium drivers,
I have done it. It makes a sharp noise, sort of a 'park!' or 'yalp!' when you step on a puppy's tail and it implodes, not explodes.
It was a beaker, not a balloon, however - maybe the air rushing into the beaker to fill the void was what made the noise. Like a whistle, in reverse.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
Well, hard disks aren't getting any lighter, CD-ROMs aren't getting much lighter, keyboards're probably at the ragged edge of weight/reliability, TFT screens only get so light, and so, what's left?
Batteries.
Why's laptop battery life suck? Because as batteries get better they use less of them to make the laptop lighter. Why are laptops so heavy? Because if the batteries were any lighter, they'd have even less power...
I want a nice thick ten or fifteen pound laptop that's got enough battery life to last all day and enough reinforcement under the hood that I can thump users upside the head with it. Lightweight's overrated.
an astounding 77 million transistors
Well it might have been astounding, except that ATI stuffed 107 million into the mighty Radeon 9500 chip, and NVidia crammed 125 million into the phenomenal GeForceFX!
-T
"Yes, but cars have much stricter safety tests."
How do you know that? There aren't any fuel cell laptops available right now, so I'm pretty sure the safety standards haven't been set yet.
Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
Why is burning DVD's needed for a guy on the go such as myself?
I already use UNIX for the masses. It's called Mandrake.
One second - check. Mandrake does that fine.
X11 sucks. There is just no better option right now (remind you of something...)
Firewire why? I don't need it. Adds unnecessary costs, weight, and points of failure.
Please... go on.
yes, DivX/Xvid/mpeg4 plays great on slower cpus. i have an old celeron 333 laptop that it works wonders on. (encoding takes a beefy cpu, but decoding is a breeze compared to mpeg2).
Heh, it surprised me to see the claim that the C|Net review is the first out of the gate: That was posted on 2003/03/11, while Toms Hardware Guide have had this review out since 2003/02/05 !
Admittedly it is a pre-launch review, but I don't see that anything signifigant has changed since - it was a final chip after all.
Later!
-Trav
I should really get around to creating a sig.... Nah - too lazy =)
Centrino is a marketing gimmick and a gimmick only. I'm sure the parts are just fine, but the whole setup is a marketing ploy.
Each of the seperate parts of Centrino are very good. The new processor should do wonders for battery life. The new wireless solution should be halfway decent, but it's a commodity part. The motherboard should be solid, as usual for intel. Individually, these parts are worth more than their sum.
In order to have the Centrino label, the OEM must use the specified Intel mobo, the intel WiFi part, and the Pentium M. If you have a large, paranoid company like mine, you do NOT want the WiFi part. Thankfully, this part is optional, but the computer can no longer be marketed as a Centrino and the OEM loses a certain amount of co-marketing dollars. This is bad for the OEM, okay for the end user (they get what they want), and bad for intel since they don't get to capitalize on all the marketing dollars they spent huckstering the Centrino name.
For a personal user, say that I want 802.11g or a different video subsystem. If I change out the WiFi portion, the product is no longer Centrino. From my understanding, intel is also taking this stance on using anything other than the included intel graphics subsystem, so if I need a more powerful graphics solution (for games, CAD, 3D rendering, etc) I lose the Centrino label. It is also not clear that you can even USE non-intel graphics. The Register mentioned that ATi was denied a license. Once again, this is bad for the OEM, good for the customer, bad for intel.
The only time this pays off for intel or the OEM is if the end user buys a stock Centrino unit. That may be a considerable number of people. But my bet is that there are plenty more individuals or corporate customers that only want a part of the package. Additionally, there will be many individuals that will be confused by the new label and not understand that there are other choices available that will give them either more power, or less if that's what they need.
So, what was the point of putting this package together in the first place? It limits choice, it doesn't pay off in many situations, and it will confuse the customer.
I guess intel figures if they can establish a brand that encompasses the guts of a laptop, they can control the laptop market. People will ask for a Centrino the way that they ask for Pentiums, regardless of their true merits.
Why doesn't intel just slap a chassis and LCD on them and be done with it? They seem intent on making laptops. There will be little or no product variation between OEMS.
Nothing is fully fault tolerant. Unless you believe in "God" of course ;)
Christ, this is not a product review, it's a bloody advertisement. Where's the criticism? Where's the testing? The only person we hear from is the salesperson!
Read jack phelps dot net
Just like MSN, they have a media blitz going on. I chatted with a presenter at the NY Hilton, and he said that that Centrino is a new wireless technology that is based on 802.11.
"Do they have a PCMCIA card yet?"
"No, but they expect to soon."
Then I read this. You can also try out free 802.11 at 10 different McDonald's locations in NYC with the purchase of a Big Mac or McNuggets.
Intelligent Life on Earth
Skrew you guys, I'm going back to my 386.
-=fshalor
I just saw Sony's new Centrino notebook, the VAIO Z1 Series, while wandering around at BestBuy today. I was little disappointed that this wasn't one of the machines in the CNET reviews--I would've been interested in finding out what they thought of the Z1. The Sony Z1 is definitely one of the cooler-looking machines I've seen in a while. (Maybe even cooler-looking than my Ti PowerBook!)
The specs that mattered to me: 14.1" screen, 4.7 lbs, CD-RW/DVD-ROM, 2 x USB 2.0, decent keyboard w/ no obvious layout design flaws.
I'd post a link to the relevant page on the Sony site but the URL had lots of session gobbledygook in the query string.
It took Gateway two years to come up with a Powerbook ripoff?
link.
Apple just called, they want their design back.
Depends on the size of the image. My 400MHz PII-M runs MPEG4 from CD like a slide show unless I have a tiny little window.
I am pretty it's not 100% bounded. Try increasing the CDROM cache and using VIDIX if you can. If you don't hve vidix try XV. Enable doublebuffering. In mplayer, for a DVD and a 433 mhz celeron notebook i'd use something like:
/dev/hdd -double -cache 18000 -framedrop -osdlevel 0 -ao oss -fs -dr -dvd 5 -chapter 1
mplayer -vo xvidix -q
Not much left to do, but you can start the server with minimal overhead, like in "X & Eterm" (no window manager) and see if it helps a bit.
unfinished: (adj.)
This laptop has XP on it and I just installed the DivX codec.
The MHz business isn't about comparing engine horsepower - it's about comparing engine RPMs, ignoring transmission gear ratios. Total power is still important for many applications, though as you point out, not for all of them, and sometimes low cost or low power use or small size are the trick.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
802.11g is _not_ just dual band a/b. It is 802.11a's OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, which is a really good way to send bits without multipath interference problems) at 2.4GHz, the same band as 802.11b. It is backwards compatible with 11b. The draft standard includes some optional modulations, like PBCC at 22Mb/s, which is already used by Texas Instruments chipsets, notably in D-Link's "802.11b+" gear. Thus, TI's 802.11g gear will be able to talk to their b+ gear at 22. (Very little hope of chipsets from other manufacturers doing PBCC, though, so they would only talk to "b+" gear at 11Mb/s.)
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
So is this why I can't find my old 486/33 laptop in the house anymore? Where's it at? :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware