In comp.sys.laptops Whelan wrote:
: Is the Centrino the smart choice for all of us who are buying a laptop these
: days?
: Does it make a laptop purchased today with an older processor obsolete
: before its time?

: Or is it just appropriate for the Mobile segment of the market, not the
: Desktop Replacement segment?

: I'm confused.
: I got conflicting advice yesterday from Gateway. I stopped in a store to see
: their models and a salesman said I didn't need Centrino -- that was just for
: travelers. He may have had an inventory there to sell. I came home and
: looked up the model (500) on their website, but it's gone, replaced by a
: similar model with a centrino. Gateway's Online Chat sales rep recommended
: centrino.
: Along the same lines, 12 days ago I ordered a Dell 8500 -- then right after
: it shipped I noticed that it no longer exists in their Sept & Oct
: catalogues, replaced by the 8600 -- same chassis with centrino.

: What is a smart purchase today?

A smart purchase is one that fulfills your needs *TODAY*. It's silly
to think about your future possible needs because the value of a
laptop sinks so quickly no matter what you do...

So, what do you need today? Will you ever use your laptop on the
road? Will you ever use it when you need the battery to last a long
time or when you will have it on your lap (some P4-based laptops get
really hot)?

As you must know, Centrino's big advantage is the low power
consumption of it's Pentium M CPU, which allows much longer battery
life and a cooler design. The first Centrino machines were expensive
but are starting to come down - probably much more after Christmas.
It didn't make sense at first to get Centrino unless you really needed
the battery life, but soon it won't make much difference.

I tried an early Toshiba Centrino laptop in April (and by now that
laptop would be about as obsolete as the much cheaper Celeron machine
I got instead). The biggest problem I had with it was that it was
very slow in converting RAW images from my Canon digital camera. I'm
willing to concede that this early machine may have had problems
unrelated to basic CPU speed, because most Pentium M benchmarks show
it performs well compared to a higher-frequency Pentium 4. But this
task (RAW image conversion) was important to me, and my 2GHZ Celeron
converts the images much faster than that 1.3GHZ Pentium M/Centrino
machine did.

I do use my Celeron laptop in coffee shops with WiFi all the time, and
even though the battery life is only about two hours, I can usually
find a power outlet anyway. Places like Starbucks seem to be aware of
this and thus have gone out of their way to add power outlets in their
stores. A Centrino would certainly be more convenient - I hope my
next laptop will be a Centrino, provided my RAW conversion tests show
it works fast enough at that time.

Andrew
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