Centrino Laptops Reviewed 236
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.
Logo (Score:1)
Re:Logo (Score:2)
Even more disappointing was the marketing spiel. I mean if you're gonna give an interview to ZDNet on the new initiative on which your company is betting its mobile division, you'd think they'd give him someone that can answer his questions in a clear, articulated manner, and not just continually steer him back to her marketing presentation on every question and comment.
I am not impressed.
Damn it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Damn it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Damn it (Score:5, Funny)
"anywhere from 256MB to a big 2GHz of speedy 266MHz DDR SDRAM"
Whoa, 2GHz of RAM? So big and new, they had to change the units of measure
"It's never a good day to buy a computer" (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Damn it (Score:2, Funny)
Am I allowed to call him an assclown?
Battery Life and Heat (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Battery Life and Heat (Score:1)
Re:Battery Life and Heat (Score:1)
Re:Battery Life and Heat (Score:3, Interesting)
I wonder (Score:1, Informative)
Anyway here's the 'overview' as they call it:
http://www.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-8-20926222-
comercial? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:comercial? (Score:2)
Slashdot is hardly unbiased, but at least it doesn't shill for hardware companies... yet.
link? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:link? (Score:2, Interesting)
Centrino Is a Showstopper [pcmag.com]
Centrino Special Report [eweek.com]
That link won't make sense in the future... (Score:4, Informative)
And just so you won't mod me up, here's a link to goatse.cx [goatse.cx]
Article Link (Score:5, Informative)
http://computers.cnet.com/hardware/0-1027-8-20926
Enjoy. Oh, and, to be honest, I'm happy with my new 12" PowerBook G4 [apple.com] - It does everything I want, and then some.
Re:Article Link (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Article Link (Score:2)
For those who actually want a LINK TO THE STORY .. (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:For those who actually want a LINK TO THE STORY (Score:1)
A) Preview my posts;
2) And use <P> or <BR> tags so my posts are formatted well!
-/-
Mikey-San
Pentium M? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Pentium M? (Score:2)
Re:Pentium M? (Score:2, Interesting)
Battery life (Score:5, Informative)
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 ?
Re:Battery life (Score:5, Interesting)
Out of that list, the three that you could most obviously increase the power efficiency of are the ones where the masses want the latest and greatest. You could make a machine that runs for hours and hours, but it'd have a crappy little i810 graphics chip, and a p3, and a smaller display, which, honestly, is last century's technology, and not as appealing as the new gigahertz monsters.
My VAIO (6 month old GRX), when running at the "slow" speed of 1.1 Ghz with full backlight and 3Com WiFi X-jack card, runs for 2.5 -> 3 hours, depending on how many packets I fling out to the base station, and how much I pound on the hard drive.
If you want to know where your battery's going, it's the new "space warmer" feature that comes standard with most laptops.
Re:Battery life (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Battery life (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
I'm guessing AMD's new offering might do better. We'll see. If we can get the focus away from performance and to longevity, we'll have great machines. Some year now, it'll happen. My prediciton is that once a device the size of your cell phone can take dictation and parse it into text, we'll start working on power consumption.
Re:Battery life (Score:5, Informative)
There are two reasons that battery life isn't getting better. One is that there's an inherent competetion between improved battery life and improved features. Whenever somebody comes up with an improvement in energy storage, it can be used either to give you more time or to feed more cool stuff, like more powerful processors, extra storage devices, or a nicer screen. The competetion from cool stuff has a tendency to keep the life from improving as much as you might like.
Equally important, there are serious physical limits to the amount of energy that a battery can hold. For a given mass of battery, the total energy storage is limited by the chemical properties of the materials you can use in the battery. Since those properties are reasonably well known, and people have been making batteries for a couple hundred years now, most of the possible advances have already been made. There just isn't much space for improvement once you've switched to the highest energy materials available. The only way to get radically higher energy density than is currently available is by switching to something other than batteries, like fuel cells.
Re:Battery life (Score:5, Informative)
In essence, batteries use well known chemistry/physics which we know a lot more about than making CPUs. Added to this, there are certain hard limits in this based on the chemistry/physics involved. We're probably already fairly near them using current battery techniques. The advances above may help out, but until they've delivered, we're stuck at current battery technology.
To be honest, another approach should be to make CPUs equivalent to 500MHz PIIs; it's enough for most things (word processing, email) and should be able to be designed at a very low power consumption.
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
Fuel cells. Just pee in the catheter once in awhile to keep it running...
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
No, that's the watercooling option.
Re:Battery life (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
More bitblt activity and multimedia display, more energy burned.
More pixels on screen, more energy burned.
More radio signal activity, more energy burned.
When people realize this, laptop speeds will go down to usable levels (1GHz will play DivX movies fine, and that's probably the most intensive thing you could possibly do well on a laptop). Until then, expect those laptops to continue tacking on more battery burning "features."
Re:Battery life (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, what about people who do realize this. They realize that is what PDAs are for and such, and for a laptop they do want a powerhouse. I want a laptop that can run my entire development environment, quick compiles, while listening to mp3s and when I'm finished, reboot into windows and play some warcraft 3.
Remember, not everybody feels the same way as you. This is why their is market diversity.
Underclocking? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Underclocking? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Underclocking? (Score:2)
In terms of minutes that a computer can be turned on, sure.
In practical terms, however, a 100% performance decrease effectively decreases the usable battery time by 100% too, because the battery will be depleted by the time any computation can be completed.
Re:Underclocking? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Battery life (Score:4, Insightful)
As for battery technology, slashdot has had several articles on fuel cells. (Whether these can strictly be called "batteries" we'll leave to the pedants.) Those are supposed to hit the market within a year.
Re:Battery life (Score:3, Interesting)
My new Fujitsu Lifebook P-2000 notebook is a wonderful machine. With the extended main battery I was able to watch all of the Two Towers (single disk 3 hour version) before the battery died.
Take out the DVD drive and put in the second battery and I can listen to MP3s for 10 hours on battery.
Ok, so its not the most powerful processor in the world, but it does allow me to play games, so far I've played Civ III for 2.5 hours and still had 50% battery life left. I'm going to try out Homeworld soon, I'll let you know.
Re:DivX - works great (Score:2)
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.
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
Re:Battery life (Score:2)
Because the marketplace is not dominated by the low-weight/small crowd. The marketplace wants cheap, powerful and reasonably luggable. If the market cared as much about weight and size as you do, Transmeta would have actual hope.
These notebooks support only (Score:1)
They will have 802.11g which is both a+b (a is faster speeds) in June according to stuff I've read before.
So if you're interested, remember that.
Except the Dells, where 802.11a/b/g is an option (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Except the Dells, where 802.11a/b/g is an optio (Score:2)
Re:These notebooks support only (Score:2)
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?
Re:These notebooks support only (Score:2)
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.
Re:These notebooks support only (Score:2)
Re:These notebooks support only (Score:2)
Target market dissonance? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Target market dissonance? (Score:2)
Re:Target market dissonance? (Score:2)
Re:Target market dissonance? (Score:3, Informative)
I think the middle ground between the Pentium 4 and the Crusoe is high performance and reasonable battery life. By one speed test I read about (I think PC World's), a 1.6 GHz Pentium M-based notebook surpassed a 2.5 GHz Pentium 4 desktop in some benchmarks.
The Pentium M is really just a much-improved Pentium 3.. 400 MHz FSB, 1 MB on-die cache, and the P4's better branch prediction. All with a better life of up to 7 hours. If you want real performance and can do only 5 - 7 hrs instead of 10 - 12, the Pentium M is much more appealing than anything Transmeta has out right now.
I think once PC manufacturers "get it," we'll start seeing more small, 1" thick, yet powerful notebooks, like IBM's new T, with 4 - 5 hrs battery life. Apple's huge hardware lead in the mobile market will be significantly diminished by Intel's (and AMD's, for that matter) new offering. Fortunately, I prefer my iBook for other reasons, like the OS.
Re:Target market dissonance? (Score:3, Insightful)
Business users? I can't see them using more than a Bluetooth connection to a VPN, doing email and word processing. Crusoe will fit their bill just as well as anything AMD or Intel can make right now.
Gamers? Centrino isn't the answer, a blazing (in more than one sense of the word) fast desktop processor on a lap with a mobile 3d accelerator, if any laptop could suffice.
A portable MP3 unit with a little bit more intelligence? Go get a Transmeta Crusoe, it'll save your shoulders more in the long run.
Nice reviews (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Nice reviews (Score:2)
I want enough balls to run JDeveloper, an Oracle instance and JBoss doing a full compile/run/debug cycle for 10 hours without complaint. That, and several other common apps in the background, a LOT of disk and RAM and a CD burner. 99 days out of 100 the longest I actually carry the thing is from my office to the back seat of my car. I do this every working day and I could care less if it weights 7-8 pounds. The only time I need the battery is while traveling or stuck in a meeting. Real computing on a plane is hopeless unless you're in 1st class and meetings don't last long enough to kill the batts.
Too heavy? PDAs do email just fine.
I really don't get these people that whine about weight/size. There are thin 2-3lb laptops all over the place. I won't have anything to do with them but I see them often enough. What is the problem? Does it surprise you to discover that
Hey, stupid! (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Hey, stupid! (Score:5, Funny)
AMD's answer: Mobile athlons with 1watt(!) (Score:5, Informative)
Check here [amd.com]
The 1 watt number is from a Heise article [heise.de].
Bye egghat.
Re:AMD's answer: Mobile athlons with 1watt(!) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:AMD's answer: Mobile athlons with 1watt(!) (Score:4, Insightful)
When the processor uses say 1 watt at 1 volt at 750 MHz and my notebook can support this: Hooray. If it uses 25 watts while running at 1500 MHz and 1,4 volt when the power cord ist plugged in: the notebook battery couldn't care less
Bye egghat.
weight? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:weight? (Score:2)
Re:weight? (Score:2)
Do you know how to read?
"How does seven hours of battery life, great performance, and a 5.4-pound weight sound to you? That's what we thought." [cnet.com]
Re:weight? (Score:5, Funny)
*cough*
i am a woman.
and yet i fail to see what bearing that has on my desire for a 3 pound laptop.
Re:weight? (Score:2)
Re:weight? (Score:2)
On a plane with all your other luggage? Every pound counts when you are airport hopping. If you are in four different airports in a single day, it gets tiring preparing for your presentations and meetings while lugging around all your equipment. Shave a few pounds here and there and you aren't quite as exhausted at the end of the day. It really does make a difference. Yes, a good bag helps, but in and out of planes and taxis it really doesn't matter what bag you have. You get tired.
Re:weight? (Score:2)
Centrino looks great (Score:4, Interesting)
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).
anandtech review (Score:5, Informative)
Little known fact (Score:2)
Re:Little known fact (Score:2)
You can disaprove of Israel's actions and policies without wanting Arabs to destroy it! Israel is a modern democracy, and Israelis by and large are not too brainwashed or dogmatic, so it makes sense to try to influence them. Changing Arab opinion is not easy, because parents keep bringing up their kids to hate the "great satan" and all that stupid consp
what accounts for the performance differences? (Score:3, Informative)
The performance of these machines varies quite a bit. The top performers are described and benchmark results are here [cnet.com].
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?
Re:what accounts for the performance differences? (Score:2, Insightful)
I've noticed similar practices on ZDnet. These guys will subtract 3 points because they don't like the media player (or CD writing software, or MP3 manager, etc.) that the notebook ships with. They seem to forget that they're judging hardware, not software.
BusinessWeek on the new Centrino (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
ibook vs these new guys (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Astro (Score:2)
Seems like it could compete with the Pentium-M if/when it comes out.
installing Linux on these systems (Score:2, Interesting)
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,
Laptop comment metareview (Score:4, Funny)
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.
It's a gimmick (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Advertisement! (Score:3, Insightful)
They're all over NYC today (aka WTF) (Score:2)
"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 [mcdwireless.com] different McDonald's locations in NYC with the purchase of a Big Mac or McNuggets.
Re:Maybe I'll buy one of these (Score:2)
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.
Re:Fule Cells (Score:2)
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.
Re:Fule Cells (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Catastrophic lighter accident (Score:2)
Re:And yet... (Score:2)
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
Re:Fule Cells (Score:2)
Hydrogen pop (Score:2)
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.
Re:Hydrogen pop (Score:2)
Re:Great news for Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Powerbook G4, irony (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Powerbook G4, irony (Score:2)
Marketing based on case color and cuteness (Score:2)
The MHz business isn't about comparing engine horsepower - it's about comparing engin
Re:Powerbook G4, irony (Score:2)
The Pentium-M 1.6 beat the P4 2.6 [anandtech.com], 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.
Re:Powerbook G4, irony (Score:4, Funny)
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!