Intel Centrino/Pentium-M Notebook Roundup: Dell, FIC and IBM Examined
by Matthew Witheiler on March 12, 2003 11:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Mobile Performance
The true potential behind the Pentium M processor and the notebooks we are looking at today lie in the battery performance that the systems can offer. Before we get to battery life, let's see how the systems performed in relation to each other while on battery power. Remember that no performance should be lost when going from AC to battery since SpeedStep technology takes over and controls processor speed while on battery, throttling the system up to the full clock speed when necessary and decreasing the clock when the system is idle.
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160For the first (and not last) time the Dell Latitude D800 comes to the top of the performance charts, out performing the IBM T40p by 6% on battery. All the systems perform within 10% of one another, meaning that the Dell Latitude D800 was about 10% faster than the FIC Centrino system. Note that even with 256MB less memory, the IBM T40 is able to perform identically to the FIC Centrino system.
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Here is where things get interesting. The whole principal behind the Pentium M processor and Centrino technology is longer battery life. Intel plans to change "where you work" by removing you from the desk that typically ties notebook computers down. As our MobileMark 2002 battery life scores indicate, the Pentium M based notebooks are doing just that. The shortest lasting system was the FIC Centrino unit, which was able to last for 3 hours and 46 minutes on battery power. This is a run time previously unheard of in a thin and light solution and this isn't the most impressive result of the test. By far the number that blew us away was the 6 hours and 19 minute run time of the IBM ThinkPad T40p. That is 6 hours and 19 minutes of battery life with a 14.1" display, Pentium 4 2.4GHz equivalent processing power, and high performance 3D graphics. This trumps our previous battery life king, the 8+ pound Dell Inspiron 8200 with two batteries which lasted 5 hours total; not nearly as impressive in comparison being that the Dell Inspiron 8200 is nearly twice the weight and much more unwieldy.
With the standard battery, the IBM T40 ran for 4 hours and 53 minutes meaning that the high capacity battery increased battery life by 1 hour and 26 minutes. The Dell Latitude D800, with its massive 15.4" WUXGA display was able to run for 3 hours and 55 minutes on battery power.
If the notebooks examined here are an indication of where the Pentium M processor is leading notebook computing we could not be more excited. The incredible battery life offered by the thin and light IBM ThinkPad T40p is nothing short of breath taking: it provides almost enough power to run a full day of work away from the desk. Also impressive is the long battery life offered by all the Pentium M solutions examined. Again, even the 3 hours and 46 minutes offered by the thin and light FIC Centrino notebook represents a large step forward in mobile computing.
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builda - Thursday, February 2, 2006 - link
There appears to be a wide spread fault with the Gigabyte NB-1401 model notebook, where it reports having system disk errors or cannot find the hard disk. We have 7 of this model notebook and now 6 of them have reported the same problem. After running chkdsk to temporarily repair the errors that had been caused on the harddisk I found the problem returned the escalated to the point the harddisk could not be found. I further checked using Hitachi drive fitness testing tool which reported a cable error on each machine. Originally I returned 3 of these for repair as they were just outside the warranty period and the supplier checked with Gigabyte with the fix being to rub the cable all over with an eraser!! This worked for a short period but the problem has returned a couple of months later and has spread (like a virus) it now affects 6 out of the 7 notebooks. The supplier has just gone into administration and my next step is to approach Gigabyte who's support service has been found to be extremely unresponsive in the recent past.dbiberdorf - Tuesday, July 27, 2004 - link
I beg to differ with the reviewer. The keyboard on this unit is mediocre, and the track stick buttons are an abomination. They sit too low in the case and have too much travel. It makes my thumbs hurt after a while, and I often have to press them with a finger to get them to activate fully.The most powerful notebook in the world loses big points in my book if they built-in keyboard and pointing devices are weak. Certainly it's the case here. Dell, please figure out how to buy good keyboards for your machines!
Finally, the power adapter, while featuring convienent wrap-around cabling, is phenomenally large. My cordless phone at home is smaller. With the large profile of the machine, the adapter has to go in a side pocket of the carrying case, adding a little more bulge to your day.
visibilityunlimited - Thursday, October 30, 2003 - link
Screen resolution beyond SXGA+ would be unreadable using Windows for example while being more readable using Linux.Both the Linux text console and graphics mode X-windows-system screen drivers can be fully customized to display text at any resolution. The text characters could easily be displayed with current software at 1200dpi or more (if only the graphics processors and monitors could operate at that speed) and still retain the current character size. Text can currently be generated from vector based Type I and TrueType fonts for rasterizing at any resolution. Image scaling is a different and very easy problem.
The Windows OS is the real culprit holding back general usage of higher resolutions and typeset quality displays because of the OS being handicapped by the inertia of antique display modes. Darn. I want 3200x2400 or more!