Laptop Pentium IIIs

jued0001 writes "A new Pentium III for Laptops running at 600 Mghtz is being released. Once called "Geyserville," now known as SpeedStep, it runs at 600 Mgthz when running on AC, but drops to 450 Mghtz when running on a battery. "

Comments

Irrelevant for Linux?

[crow]

Doesn't the fact that Linux calls the HALT instruction in its idle loop make dropping the processor speed irrelevant? That should save as much power and heat as possible without compromising performance.

I believe that this is the reason that the heat-sensitive fan on my laptop stays off when running Linux, but goes on with Windows.

Re:Irrelevant for Linux?

[Kris_J]

NT does a HLT too. And I've got an app called CPUidle on my Win98 laptop that does the same thing. It does reduce the temperature quite dramatically, and I'm fairly sure it increases battery life. I have the hard drive powering down after a few minutes of not being used, if the system's on batteries and the screen will switch itself off after a while too. (I've also got closing the unit set to simply switch off the screen, rather than scream at me). Being able to drop the core voltage and speed of the CPU is simply another tool to use to increase battery life that little bit more.

As it happens, I have an Ultralight portable. External battery packs appear to be quite popular with them. I have a bit of info and some photos at my "drop tanks" page. I have been able to pull off 8 hours on battery power, but I wasn't actually doing much. If I'm using the external CD drive to rip and compress MP3s, for example, then battery life halves.

Anyway, haven't Powerbooks been able to do this forever? wasn't it called "clock cycling" or somthing...

I have a P3/500 in my laptop already...

[torpor]

... and frankly, I think its a waste. Sure, its nice to be able to do quick audio editing on the fly out in the field (using Sound Forge on the train or bus to edit just-recorded audio does rock, I'll admit), but for the most part I find it hard to understand why laptop manufacturers insist on putting more and more processing power into portable computers.

I'd be quite happy with a 400mhz laptop with good *connectivity* options - if someone came out with a P2/400 that was fairly simple in the performance ratio department, but had 128k radio connectivity within a 4 to 6 mile radius back to a home base unit I could put on my network, I'd be in total geek heaven.

I don't understand why this isn't more of an issue for people these days - I guess in a nation of commuters (I walk to work every day), this is not as important as having the 'latest and greatest processor' to cart back and forth, but I'm hoping that in the coming year or so we'll start to see more innovation in the WAN department for portable computer users than we will in processor designs...

In fact, if laptops *DEVOLVED* into simple video/screen/mouse interfaces with extremely good spread spectrum radio connectivity back to a home base unit that could be connected to a Monster P3/1Ghz system, that would be *ideal*.

Why bother engineering to take all that luggage with you, when we could just engineer to leave the luggage at home and just take a ... dare I say it ... "window" into that luggage on the road with us...

These new wireless WedPad type devices are more and more becoming an attractive occupation of time and geek attention, in my book... They'll surely evolve to something closely approximating what I described above. Hopefully, anyway.

Well, if Apple are doing it...

[torpor]

... then it must be the wave of the future:

http://www.apple.com/ibook/airport.html

Won't be long before this becomes a commodity in the PC market, and when that happens, as all new technologies that enter the PC realm, it'll become faster, cheaper, lighter, and more and more powerful within a very short period of time...

So :P

:)

Re:Rah, laptops!

[UncleRoger]

I'll go ahead and guess that laptops will start to die off by the end of the year.

Wanna place a bet on that? Portable computers have been around for over 25 years -- I don't think they're going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, my experience has been just the opposite -- they are replacing desktops like crazy.

I think the days of using your laptop for a primary system are over. (Not that they were ever really here to begin with) The high end desktop CPU's are already pushing 800mhz, 450/600 just doesn't cut it, especially considering they cost so much more.

Well, not everyone does 3-D rendering all day; you might be surprised to find that 90% of the population can get by just fine with a 450mhz processor. Meanwhile, portability -- being able to work where ever, whenever you want -- is far more important than cutting a few milliseconds off that spell check.

As for cost, the relative price of a laptop to its comparable desktop counterpart is much closer than it was 10 years ago, and it continues to drop. In a few years, the price will be very nearly the same (but your desktop computer will come with an LCD screen.)

Wander down to the airport some time and check out how many folks you see waiting for flights with their laptops out. Take the bus some time during the rush hour and look around. Have lunch in Palo Alto or Mountain View and see what's on the menu. Heck, take a look in a CompUSA ad some Sunday and count the number of laptops versus desktops shown! I think you'll find that laptops are definitely not disappearing.

I'm sorry, but I just /have/ to ask...

[Kaufmann]

When did "Mghtz" become a widely accepted abbreviation for "Megahertz"? The standard is "MHz".