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.

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

:)