X-bit labs

March 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 15)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 03/15/2004 | 02:11 AM ]

Unfortunately, power elements as the power source are not yet written into these trends. There is too much work to be done in this field yet, although Intel introduced one concept at IDF, too. A 100ml cartridge gives a power of 12W and that’s quite enough for a PDA, but insufficient for a modern notebook. Moreover, notebooks experience power surges up to 50W. So this concept will be under consideration until 2007.

The new generation Centrino platform, called Sohoma, on Dothan core, will come out earlier, of course. If no problems arise with the 90nm process, we will see it in April-May. Good news – it’s probable that two chips, 1.7 and 1.8GHz, will come out. Until then, notebook makers have to consider Prescott: they made notebooks with the 130nm Northwood, so why can’t they do the same with a 90nm Prescott, even without waiting for the mobile version of the processor? Of course, when working with such a notebook, you shouldn’t go far from the wall outlet.

First models are scheduled for May and should be selling at a relatively low price: desktop processors are always cheaper. By the way, the very appearance of Prescott made the prices in this market go down: the official price cuts affected the Mobile Pentium 4 (on the Northwood core, of course) and quite severely: from 14% to 32%, so the 3.2GHz chip got cheaper from $433 to $294 in a jump. The Mobile Pentium 4 on the Prescott core, just like the Pentium M on the Dothan one, is likely to arrive in the second quarter. Intel didn’t stop on the Mobile Pentium, but continued with the Mobile Celeron, although the price cuts were lower here, by 10-14%. In the opposite camp, AMD was reducing the prices for the Athlon XP-M, announcing a new model on the way, the Athlon XP-M 2600+. Compare: the Athlon XP-M 2600+ for $99 against the Mobile Celeron 2.2GHz for $96.

There have been certain advances in the mobile graphics area: NVIDIA Quadro FX Go1000 is only used in the same Dell Precision M60 as its predecessor, while the ATI Mobility RADEON 9700 is a more democratic and interesting solution, although not quite low-end. In fact, this chip is not a hi-end, either, as it’s just the mobile version of the RADEON 9600 XT, but this chip is not bad for mobile computers itself. That’s most important, notebooks with this GPU are already available in shops.

Overall, the notebook market is expanding. Notwithstanding 10% poorer quarterly shipments from Taiwan (because of the disastrous January), the quarter is going to be 10% better than that of the previous year. And the manufacturers hope for a strong demand in March.

As for particular models, Centrino platform is experiencing a boom. In February, IBM offered two X’s: the ThinkPad X31 (a new version of the old model) and X40 (an extension of the X31). The result is nice: 1.3kg weight, small dimensions, up to 7.5 hours battery life, and integrated Gigabit Ethernet. This is a good business machine costing you $1499 for a configuration with a 1.3GHz Pentium M.

Toshiba Tecra M is another variation of the same theme: a business computer with a 14.1” screen and 1.4-1.7GHz Pentium M, with GeForce FX Go5200 graphics and (optionally) Gigabit Ethernet. The last feature may not be very useful, but that’s something new. Other things like 2GB PC2700 DDR and 40-80GB HDD are too trivial to be mentioned. The price is similar to that of the X40: starting from $1,500.

Some people like it heavier and cooler like the Klondike Referent 200 and Dell Inspirion XPS, although these two have different weights. The former has a heart made of the desktop Pentium 4 1.7-2.6GHz or Celeron, a 15” screen and ATI Mobility RADEON 9000. The second is a monster on the 3.4GHz Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with ATI Mobility RADEON 9700, all imaginable ports and connectors, an appropriate HDD (up to 80GB capacity, 7200rpm speed) and so on. The price is biting, though, starting from $2600, and you’d better not think about the time of autonomous work. If you need an easily transportable desktop computer, that’s the solution for you.