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Intel Hardware

Centrino Duo, Buy or Wait? 251

Posted by Zonk from the choose-wisely dept.
pillageplunder writes "BusinessWeek Columnist Steven Wildstrom answers a readers question on whether or not to buy a laptop with the new Intel Centrino Duo processor. The reader wanted to know if the new chip would be up to handling the Graphic requirements of Microsofts new Vista OS, and whether or not it would cost more. His take? Regarding price, probably not, about performance, right now there is no real way to know for sure. He does a decent job of outlining bug issues with new chips, and what the various vendors say/feel about this chip."
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Centrino Duo, Buy or Wait? More

Centrino Duo, Buy or Wait?

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  • Will it last long enough to see vista? (Score:5, Funny)

    by woodsrunner ( 746751 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:53AM (#14635133) Journal
    The real question is, will it last long enough to see vista? Given that the average laptop dies a natural death in one to three years, it's anyone's guess...

    • The real question is, will it last long enough to see vista? Given that the average laptop dies a natural death in one to three years, it's anyone's guess...

      I own 3 laptops:
      - Dell Inspiron (1998)
      - vpr Matrix (2002)
      - Apple PowerBook (2004)

      The oldest (Inspiron) had to make a daily commute back-and-forth to my school in Newark, and even back-and-forth to work for a while. Sure, there's the occasional scratch or skuff mark but otherwise it's fine. The only problem is the battery on the Dell Inspiron is toast,

    • Jesus, if people have to ask if a dual-core Yonah chip that competes performance-wise with an Athlon64 3800+ X2 will be able to run Vista, Vista must be the most bloated and slow operating system on the planet. I've heard the recent leaked builds aren't THAT bad, but I've never used one personally. Can anyone else comment? I have a feeling all those version 1.0 managed .NET APIs wrapping on top of Win32 will be slow and painful and little-used as people just continue compiling natively for best performan
      • He wasnt asking about the processor, but the chipsets integrated graphics, which all Centrino laptops use. Businessweek quoted Intel as saying the Centrino Duo chipsets graphics should be sufficient for Vista. Vista [wikipedia.org] includes the Aero graphical user interface which puts most of the work on to the graphics chip. Currently [wikipedia.org], a reasonable mid range graphics card is required and integrated graphics tend to be quite weak so he was worried it may not be enough.
    • Actually, a new laptop will last quite a while. What I couldn't swallow was the idea that laptop users will upgrade their O/S. IOW, the whole 2nd part of the article was nothing more then fluff and FUD.

      Laptops often use custom chipsets that require particular drivers. Often drivers that never get updated for comaptibility against newer O/S's. Upgrading the O/S in those cases becomes a fool's errand.

      I'm still using a Toshiba Tecra from 2002 (4 years now). It has an upgraded hard drive and a full loa

  • Requirements (Score:5, Informative)

    by cosmotron ( 900510 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:56AM (#14635166) Journal
    According to Microsoft [microsoft.com], you will need around the following:

    System Requirements:

    Minimum system requirements will not be known until summer 2006 at the earliest. However, these guidelines provide useful estimates:

    512 megabytes (MB) or more of RAM

    A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support

    A modern, Intel Pentium- or AMD Athlon-based PC.

     So, I am guessing that a Centrino will fly.
    • But the headline is wrong (Again). The question is not whenever the duo chip is fast enough. Obviously it is. The question is: Are the onboard gfx which the chipset includes good enough. And the answer is: Nobody knows -(

      ps: Anybody seen review of a total silent desktop pc based on the duo chip?
       

      • Re:Requirements (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Golias ( 176380 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:47AM (#14635593)
        The answer to the actual question the headline is asking ("buy or wait") is the same answer as it always is, no matter what:

        If you really, really need a new computer now, buy one now.

        If you don't, don't.

        No matter what, there will be something new computers can do next year that the one you buy today can't do. C'est la vie. Don't buy computers you don't need, and this will never be a problem.
      • No, that wasn't the question either... he asked, jokingly, if a laptop purchased today would still be in operating condition by the time Vista ships. Answer's still the same though -- Nobody knows ;-)

    • Vista would have been developed and tested on hardware that's less capable than what will be released today or tomorrow, so why is this even a question?
    • 512 megabytes (MB) or more of RAM

      Am I the only one who is really bothered by this requirement from an OS .

      • Re:Requirements (Score:4, Funny)

        by networkBoy ( 774728 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @01:03PM (#14636155) Journal
        I'm not so much bothered as I am terrified.
        -nB

    • The issue is not the processor but the graphic capacities of the i945M chipset (with integrated graphics and shared memory).

      Given the fact that Vista supposedly use CG and advanced graphics a lot, the guy wonders whether the 945M will be able to give you a "full vista experience" compared to a standalone graphic card.

      • Given the fact that Vista supposedly use CG and advanced graphics a lot, the guy wonders whether the 945M will be able to give you a "full vista experience" compared to a standalone graphic card.

        And my question is still... what would possess a fellow to upgrade the Windows O/S on a laptop? There are no must-have features in Vista (nor were there for WinXP). These aren't Macs where it's cool to constantly upgrade to the latest version of OS X.

    • Remember that MS said XP would run on a P2 300 with 128MB RAM. Of course, no sane person has a system like that today unless they've tweaked it down.

      I don't see which Vista feature is going to push me from 2000 / XP to it.

    • I wonder what percentage of laptops sold today have a dedicated DirectX 9 capable video card. Most are using integrated graphics. I just bought a $1200 laptop that has decent specs (1.73 GHz Banias, 512MB 80GB, USB2&Firewire), but dedicated video wasn't on the list of things I could get in that price range.
    • A graphics card with DirectX 10, and less than 256 MB ram will not run the full "Aeroglass" "Avalon" experience.

      Does that still count as flying?
    • But doesn't centrino refer to the combination of chipsets by Intel? Ergo the laptop would have Intel wireless and Intel graphics. Do Intel graphics support directx 9? In my experience (my current laptop), their onboard graphics are really weak (as in I'd prefer a tnt2).

      I also used a newer gateway recently with a dual-core intel desktop chip and onboard intel x-treme graphics. It was so xtreme it crashed trying to run openGL screen savers (really slick screen savers).

    • A dedicated graphics card with DirectX® 9.0 support

      That is only a requirement if you want to run the Aero user interface (it must also support Windows Display Driver Model). I can't believe I haven't seen any "Score:3+" comments mentioning Vista's "Classic" UI mode, which doesn't require a powerful GPU. In fact, it looks a lot like Windows XP with its "Luna" interface deactivated [wikipedia.org]. According to that Wikipedia article (don't use as a final source), Vista's "classic mode" only has the same graphics c

  • New Duo Prices for Dell (Score:5, Informative)

    by berboot ( 838932 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:57AM (#14635171)
    Dell left an internal directory open to google's bots and accidentally leaked [coreduonews.com] their upcoming Duo Core prices. Interesting how similarly priced they are to their single core brethren.
    • Speaking of price, I was hoping I would be able to say "See, Apple's are about the same", but doesn't look it. Maybe once the MacBook can get Windows installed on it, it would be a good system for Vista. But at this rate, with a direct comparison being able to be made, Apple may end up loosing a lot of customers unless they lower their prices...... A CNet article (The link didn't work) said I think ~$900 - $1500 for Core Duo from Dell. MacBook is $2000 w/ standard configuration.
      • Yeah, I found exactly the same thing. The Apple laptop with extended warranty, etc. etc., was a little over $3600 Canadian. A comparable Dell was closer to $3000 Canadian, a 20% price premium. It's somewhat confused, though, by the Dell warranty being clearly superior, the Dell laptop having a dual-layer burner, a better battery, and a much better video card, and the Apple hardware overall being higher quality. And of course, the Apple operating system is clearly superior.

        I'm actually hoping to get a la
    • Dell has a deal (through the small business portal) if you spec out an inspiron over $1600 and they take off $400.

      I went through and spec'd a 17" inspiron, duo core, 1 gig of high speed memory, and 60 gig hard drive & DVD burner. After the $400 off it added up to right at $1300. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

  • Centrino Duo: Buy or Wait? (Score:5, Funny)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @10:58AM (#14635179) Homepage Journal
    Short answer: Buy
    Long answer: Wait

  • Bad Move (Score:2, Informative)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 )
    Bad move to buy a 32-bit chip in a world that's rapidly moving to 64-bit processors.

    • Re:Bad Move (Score:2, Informative)

      by aSiTiC ( 519647 )
      Radidly moving to 64-bit? Even with all the pumping up of AMD64 I've yet to see a killer app for 64-bit. Even with Windows Vista support for 64-bit in late 06 or early 07 I don't see 64-bit being a must have until mid to late 2007. Sure AMD beat Intel to 64 bit x86 instructions but I don't think it was really needed on the consumer desktop.
      • I've yet to see a killer app for 64-bit.

        And when it comes, there'll be a mad rush for 64-bit boxes, and everyone'll be wishing they'd made the jump sooner. Face it, it's only a matter of time, and time runs pretty fast in this business. Might as well get your bitness on now, so you can complain about how slow your computer runs the newest stuff, instead of complaining about how it won't run it at all.

      • Re:Bad Move (Score:3, Interesting)

        by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 )
        The closest thing to a "killer app" for x86_64 is any kind of encoding or compression on a 64-bit linux, or anything with lots of floating point calculations:

        http://www.linuxhardware.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/ 24/1747228&mode=thread [linuxhardware.org]

        On AMD processors, Povray seems to experience a 25% performance improvement by going 64-bit. If you were rendering lots of complex scenes, a 25% performance improvement merely by switching from a 32-bit to a 64-bit OS is incredible.

        Especially if you are a POV-ray buff; the 64-

    • Re:Bad Move (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )
      Bad move to buy a 32-bit chip in a world that's rapidly moving to 64-bit processors. ...in a world that's rapidly standing still on 32-bit OS's. If there had been any major advantages in moving to Win64, we would have seen movement despite the poor driver support. I have an Athlon64, but at the current rate I wouldn't be surprised if it was replaced by a newer dual-core processor by the time I move to Win64. Or Linux, depending... it's not the OS that I miss, it's all the apps I know and love. I run a Linux
      • If there had been any major advantages in moving to Win64, we would have seen movement despite the poor driver support.

        Win64 is not the only 64-bit operating system out there.

    • I agree with you... yes, they're right that the move to 64 bit isn't exactly "rapid", but do you really want a chip that won't be able to run the more powerful version of the next OS? Buying a 64-bit chip costs around the same and allows you to run 64-bit applications now... I think it'd be dumb for anyone to buy a 32 bit chip at this stage, even if everything is still 32 bit.
    • Bad move to buy a 32-bit chip in a world that's rapidly moving to 64-bit processors.

      Which world would that be? Personal computers are moving to 64-bit at about the same rate that IPv6 is being adopted right now: glacially.

      • Which world would that be?

        How about this one? By 2H2006 it appears that virtually all of Intel and AMD's processors will be 64-bit, and likely with virtualization technology.

        And the major security feature of the NX bit doesn't seem to be being backported to 32-bit archtectures.

    • Re:Bad Move (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ciroknight ( 601098 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:15PM (#14635827)
      Rapidly? Wow, I'm blindsided by this. As long as I've been alive I've ran a 32-bit Operating System, and I saw Alpha claim the 64-bit crown, I've seen Sun's offerings claim to be the best thing since sliced bread, and I'm now seeing AMD do the same thing. Guess what?

      RAM will be the deciding factor for when we move to 64-bit processors.

      Don't believe me? Ask yourself this: why is it all of the big room server clients wanted a 64-bit chip years and years ago? So that they can saturate their servers with multiple gigs of ram; CPU archetectures might change day to day almost, but RAM archetectures usually last a long, long time, and as time passes, prices go down. So that big iron server that you purchased with 4GB of extremely expensive ram at the time, you can now saturate with 16GB of dirt cheap ram and still be in the top 80% performance bracket.

      How does this translate to home users? When home users hit, and can no longer exceed the 4GB limit, then and only then will we see a desktop push to 64-bit. And we've still got a lot of ground to cover until then; some top end computers are running 4GB now, but by and large 512MB is the standard, with 1GB now being the recommended ram total. Ram scaling-wise, I predict we won't hit that "need for 64-bit" number until 2009, but by 2008 or earlier, all desktop CPUs will be 100% 64-bit anyways.

      How does that tie into today's discussion? Perfectly; by 2008, your laptop will be obsolete, that's a given. So that means purchasing a system now will likely carry you until the 64-bit revolution. All and all, this means that 64-bit is a non-selling point to a Laptop consumer at this date.
      • (Would have loved to mod your comment up, but out of points right now.)

        But yeah, precisely. Despite all the hype over 64 bit, it doesn't necessarily make code run any faster than it can on a good 32-bit CPU. The only "tangible" advantage is the ability to manage more system RAM. As developers have said repeatedly, 64-bit applications require shuffling around larger numbers, and only in specific instances does 64-bit give you a speed advantage with your code.

        I also predict that before we start seeing the
      • With Microsoft saying that 512MB of RAM is a bare requirement and they wouldn't recommend running Vista at all on any PC with less than a full GB, I think we will be hitting that 4 GB mark sooner than you realize.
        • But a typical user buying a typical notebook will get Windows XP on it.

          That user is unlikely to change the O/S on that notebook in the next 2-3 years.

          Users who change O/Ses on notebooks are more likely to be tech literate and unlikely to pick Vista to run on an old notebook.
      • Unless your laptop is pushing the edge of what is possible a 32bit laptop is still going to be perfectly serviceable in 2008. Heck, that's why we stratified our users into "power", "average", "light" categories. We also make sure to absolutely max out the RAM that any laptop will support.

        Power users get a new laptop every 2 years or so. Their old one gets reassigned to an average user and the average user's laptop gets handed off to a light user.

        That "light" user's laptop can still handle basic docum

    • Re:Bad Move (Score:5, Informative)

      by Overly Critical Guy ( 663429 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @01:16PM (#14636252)
      Others have pointed out that you're wrong, but I wanted to explain why. The world is not rapidly moving to 64-bit except in the server space where memory is a concern. However, Intel chips since the Pentium Pro have supported 36-bit memory addressing which breaks the total 4GB barrier anyway. The reason 64-bit is not rapidly taking off is that 64-bit introduces a bigger pipe but offsets the gains with bigger pointers and more cache bloat. Most of the performance gains you see in benchmarks comes from the fact that in 64-bit chips, SSE3 is a baseline and so you can target it in your code, as well as the extra registers which are added by the vendor and not related to being 64-bit.

      In 32-bit code where SSE optimization is implemented, a lot of 64-bit gains disappear. This is particularly interesting for the Mac since their baseline Intel spec will always have at least SSE3, so all apps can target it from now on. Doing 64-bit math doesn't require a 64-bit chip either, as SSE goes up to 128-bit. The real reason you'd want 64-bit is if you're running a server that needs a very high amount of memory.

      64-bit gaming has been the most amusing to me, watching as CryTek and AMD teamed up to sell more chips and desperately advertised 64-bit Far Cry as better than its 32-bit version by adding higher-res textures here and there and tweaking the visuals, even though absolutely none of that has to do with being 64-bit and everything to do with your video card. 64-bit Half-Life 2 is actually slower than its 32-bit version according to the benchmarks. Slashdot has an article in its archives about how 64-bit gaming has been overhyped to gamers.

      There are times I wonder if 64-bit will die as a fad this year and become an unused set of instructions that only server admins use. It's certainly got all the makings of a tech fad. I think the novelty is wearing off and people are realizing 32-bit is just fine and that there is nothing inherently better about being 64-bit, other than giving AMD and Intel a marketing reason to sell you new chips. I can't think of any reason a desktop computer user today needs a 64-bit chip. Microsoft, of course, is very vocal about wanting to put everyone on 64-bit chips, and the reason for that is that the majority of Windows sales come from pre-installations on OEM computers, so if they can convince people to buy new computers that have new chips in them, they sell more copies of Windows. I think they'll have as much success with that as they did with the XBox 360 launch. Ahem.

      As a sidenote, Apple handled 64-bit in OS X Tiger by keeping the GUI 32-bit, but allowing 64-bit processes to be spawned in the background. This means your app is 32-bit but you communicate with a spawned 64-bit console process (it has to be a console process because the GUI libraries are still 32-bit code). It's so little used that it took a while for anyone to notice when one of the 10.4 updates accidentally disabled 64-bit support...

  • It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista (Score:3, Informative)

    by Brian Stretch ( 5304 ) * on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:01AM (#14635205)
    It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor. Buy an AMD Turion laptop with an ATI (or nVidia, whenever they get some Turion design wins) GPU if you want to be Vista-ready. Or if you want to run 64-bit Linux now. Hardly anyone who is going to go through the nuisance to upgrade the OS is going to bother with the 32-bit Vista "PHB Edition". (Unless the Pointy Haired Boss makes such technical decisions at your company... hmm...)

    Rather glaring ommission by BusinessWeek.

    • Re:It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista (Score:4, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:37AM (#14635509)

      It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista and the Intel GPUs the Centrino Duo notebooks usually use are very poor.

      Nothing can run 64-bit Windows because the existing versions suck so badly with driver and software incompatibilities. No one I know with a 64 bit processor is running a 64 bit version of Windows on it anymore. Everyone has given up and switched back. Vista will support 32 bit for longer than most laptops will last and I don't see any reason why someone would switch in the foreseeable future for their laptop.

      As for graphics, what the hell are you talking about? There are a handful of Centrino Duo machines for sale right now and looking at the selection I see both ATI and nVidia graphics cards in them. Acers ship with ATI and Sony with nVidia.

      Do you enjoy misleading people by making crap like this up, or are you just very misinformed?

    • "It can't run 64-bit Windows Vista"

      Who cares, who has a retail copy of 64-bit Windows Vista laying around. Oh, who's that? Nobody? Well then. And who will have a copy in a year? Who's that? Hardly anyone? That's right. Face it, 64-bit will be slow to adopt until we truly hit the 4GB ram barrier (right now we're averaging right under the 1GB mark; most PCs ship with 512, most recommend 1GB), and Vista will help that push, but we won't likely see a need for 64-bit Windows/OS X arrive until 2008 or later, w
    • The Core Duo competes performance-wise with the Athlon64 3800+ X2 while consuming less power at 100% than the Athlon does at idle. It surpasses the Turion in both performance and power usage. It would be silly to avoid the Core Duo in favor of the Turion just for the pointless excursion of 64-bit.

      As someone else here also mentioned, all the people I know who were running 64-bit Windows gave up and now run the 32-bit version. Guess what, it's faster for them and runs better. There is little inherently be

  • Intel integrated graphics RAM usage? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PeterHammer ( 612517 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:01AM (#14635210)
    How do you justify the closing statement of the article? While not technically wrong it seems vastly misleading. If the new Intel Graphics Adapter uses 128Mb (or let's say even 256Mb for arguments sake), wouldn't a simple corresponding increase in main system memory suffice? Why push a 1Gb memory upgrade for the purpose of better graphics then. Sure you can break a "windows" with a rocket launcher. But wouldn't a baseball bat suffice?

  • Merom (Score:2, Interesting)

    by feranick ( 858651 )
    With Merom behind the corner, I wonder if the current Core Duo (basically Yonah) will be obsolete soon...
  • The reader wanted to know if the new chip would be up to handling the Graphic requirements of Microsofts new Vista OS, and whether or not it would cost more.....One thing to remember about integrated graphics is that Intel's Unified Memory Access technology means that the graphics adapter shares the computer's main random-access memory. This makes a full gigabyte of RAM the absolute minimum for a system running Vista on unified graphics, and 2 GB is better.

    Sure it will be able to handle Vista, but it w

  • Posting from (Score:3)

    by GweeDo ( 127172 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:05AM (#14635244) Homepage
    I am posting this from a Dell Inspiron 9400 (core duo at 1.83ghz). If Vista doesn't fly on this laptop then MS has done something wrong, not the hardware boys.

  • 6 months (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bmongar ( 230600 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:05AM (#14635247)
    My answer to anyone who asks if now is a good time to buy x in computer hardware. My answer is always can you wait 6 months? IF you can wait then do if not then buy now. Things will always be better/cheaper in 6 months so if you can wait you get a better deal.
    • Do you give them the same advice again once the 6 month mark rolls around? Don't buy until you need it?

    • Re:6 months (Score:3, Interesting)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )

      IF you can wait then do if not then buy now. Things will always be better/cheaper in 6 months so if you can wait you get a better deal.

      I found the opposite with CRTs a couple years ago. My 19" $150 monitor died after a year, and was now going for $200. No sales or rebates involved. I thought it was maybe just a fluke, but other monitors of various sizes all went up around $50 as well.

      More recently, I've been looking for a DVB-S card (satellite). It's incredibly annoying to read a post from 2 years ago a

  • Do the right thing. Find a machine with the correct graphics chipset solution that your software currently likes. The dual-core machines don't help that much unless code is written for them specifically; there's precious little code that can really whup a dual-core just yet. So, buy lots of memory, and watch for cogent compiles of your favorite stuff. Otherwise, buy a big disk, known chipset with drivers for your favorite OS, and a display that won't blind you.

    Then, be prepared to put it on the inheritance

    • Re:Sage advice says: (Score:3, Informative)

      by rjstanford ( 69735 )
      The dual-core machines don't help that much unless code is written for them specifically; there's precious little code that can really whup a dual-core just yet.

      Yeah, if only we had something that let us work on two different programs at the same time. Oh, right, we do, its called a multitasking OS. Even if you don't do anything like ripping CDs, chances are good that you're running multiple widgets, all doing their things at the same time. You're checking emails, running an RSS gatherer, indexing your
      • I thought of a better example. Sorry, I really should be going to lunch now, and I'm obviously distracted.

        Think of your processor as a road, with each core being a lane. On an empty road, you're limited by the speed limit (theoretically). Adding a lane does nothing whatsoever for you. Now add one guy turning left in front of you; on a 100 mile trip, its statistically insignificant, but a two lane road would have meant that you wouldn't have had to slow down at all and a single-lane road might have broug
        • First, let's say the OS is well-organized to be able to handle the demands, rather than FIFO'ing them. Then let's say that the OS will assign reasonable task queueing. Let's also say that all of the cache among the CPUs has coherency, and one process doesn't hang an adjoining CPU.

          It's a beautiful day.

          And NOTHING guarantees this at all. Indeed job queuing is pretty much random unless the OS has native tendencies. You won't get a stochastic job distribution among the processors, except by luck, and perhaps ph

  • Wait (Score:2, Interesting)

    by tom8658 ( 899280 )
    When the Meroms come out, the price on the current gen of Centrinos will fall. Snatch up a nice Thinkpad for $1000.

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:12AM (#14635303)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Bah (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jridley ( 9305 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @11:26AM (#14635422)
    As long as it'll still run Windows 2000 and Linux, I'm good. I haven't needed anything Microsoft put out since W2K, and I haven't had any need for anything faster than about 1.2 GHz. A bunch of people at work bought tricked-out new 3+ GHz machines in the last couple of months, and I asked them, "Why so fast" or "Why did you buy the $300 graphics card update?" Basically people have become so conditioned that they HAVE to buy the FASTEST and BEST thing out there or their computer is already obsolete before they even start. It's a bunch of crap anymore. Most of these people are just browsing the web, doing email, writing documents, editing photos. A $400 PC or Mac Mini would have been plenty for them. They spent $1500, and threw away a bunch of money.

    I had someone say that a Dell rep told them that they really should get that Hyper-hot $350 GeForce ultra-platinum video card, because she'd need it to retouch photos on the computer. That's pretty reprehensible IMHO. A $30 graphics card or mainboard graphics would have done just fine. I say they practically stole $300 from her.

    Sorry for going OT.
  • Clearly the only rational solution is to buy a Mac.

  • Second core doesn't help much (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 0xABADC0DA ( 867955 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:04PM (#14635747)
    I've got a dual-core and it doesn't really help much since pretty much all the software I use regularly is single-threaded. Occasionally the disk io happens in another core from other processing, so for example rar'ing might be say 5% faster than on a single core. It is nice that I can rar huge file without impacting performance of the 'main' thing I am working on, but that doesn't happen very often.

    Overall, the only thing I've really noticed that is significantly faster is Java. Most Java apps use threads, and if nothing else the GC seems to run on the 2nd CPU. For example, the graphics demo takes 100% of both cores if you set the delay to 0ms between frames. That's about the only program I've seen actually use both cores.

    As a side note, I predict with more cores we will see greater use of things like Java. It may run at say 80% C speed, but 80% + 80% is still much more than 100% on one cpu and 0% on another.
    • Not a big multitasker eh?

      It's night/day with me. A dual core system feels so much more responsive, effortlessly gliding from one application to the next as one is entirely isolated to one CPU and the other to the other.

      Of course, I don't own a DC system anymore; the last dual processor system I owned was a dual proc 500mhz pentium III system (might've been xeon, I can't recall; it was my Dell) and I miss it. If it could run today's applications at any kind of speed I would still have it as it was such
      • That's the big reason that I'm drooling over the Thinkpad T60s. It's all about responsiveness (well, mostly).

        I have a pair of Opteron systems at my desk (in addition to the laptop). The dual Opteron 246 unit almost never has responsiveness issues, the Opteron 148 is constantly waiting.

        Just wish the prices on the 265/270s would drop to something reasonable (say $200 each)... I "want" to upgrade my dual 246 to a pair of 270s.

  • Vista Reqs (Score:3, Informative)

    by ghost1911 ( 146095 ) on Friday February 03, 2006 @12:05PM (#14635750) Homepage
    If you want to run Glass (the GUI) you need to make sure you have a compatible video card. I have found in Vista that the biggest perf issues stem from low memory or not having a compatible video card. Here [nvidia.com] is nvidia's list of supported video cards, note that there are no notebook cards on it right now. Here [ati.com] is ATI's list of supported video cards. If you want the slick UI, just make sure you get a laptop that supports LDDM.
  • ..otherwise you'll end up waiting for eternity to buy as each new technology coming out sounds more promising.

    And once you do buy something, don't check prices.
  • I'm struggling with a decision about which laptop to buy. I'm going to be buying one in the next week, although I might be able to wait a little.

    I want to run FC 5 on it, although I haven't figured out whether linux kernel is ok. Anyone know?

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