Sony or Dell Laptop

[joshwa]

Hello,

I've got the choice of a brand new £400 dell (1.5ghz celeron-M, 15.4", 512mb, 40gb, DVDRW) with 90day warranty, or a £400 Sony (1.8ghz P4-M (not pentium M), 16.1" 1600x1200, 512mb, 40gb, CDRW/DVDrom) with a 21/28day warranty...

What should I go for? What would you go for?

[nvening]

The dell

[directhex]

i like my dell

and i'd definitely pick the celeron-m over the p4-m

which is the lighter laptop?

[joshwa]

Sony: 3.8kg
Dell: 2.9kg

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6100 (15", 1.8ghz p4m, 640mb, 30gb, DVD/CDROM, wifi) - but this has a faulty motherboard and just switches off whenever it feels like it. Because it's out of warranty it'll cost me who-knows how much to to get it fixed... it's common for this laptop, so common, i just had to say one thing, and the tosh tech support knew it was the system board that needed replacing... and there's about 8 on ebay that are faulty...

(12 out of 12 failed here - lawsuit won against toshiba in the US regarding this laptop: link)

[[GSV]Trig]

Dell

[nichomach]

Dell. P4Ms are cack; the Celeron-M'd have it for breakfast.

[FatalSaviour]

Dell. P4Ms are cack; the Celeron-M'd have it for breakfast.

Agreed

[vrykyl]

Dell

[joshwa]

sweet, just ordered the dell for £334 !!! inc vat and postage!
Toshiba quoted £520 to repair my dead p4m !!!!!

[Rack]

Can someone please elaborate on the P4-M being worse than Cel-M? Is the P4-M different to the Pentium-M?

~Rack

[nichomach]

Very, very different. The P4M was a "mobile" variant of the Pentium 4. It had slightly lower power consumption, but battery life of P4M equipped notebooks was significantly worse than PIII notebooks. They suffered all the downsides of the P4, notably low instructions-per-clock-cycle. The desktop variant was able to a certain extent to offset that by ramping up the clock speed, but at the cost of increased heat output and increased power requirements, an option that was not available to notebook manufacturers. We have a couple still in service and they are VERY poor performers compared to any of the Pentium-M or Celeron-M line. The latter have a significantly higher IPC and lower power requirements and heat output. They're a completely different processor and a much better one.

[joshwa]

The 1.8ghz P4-m would do "Boinc seti" in around 18,000 seconds
The 1.8ghz Pentium M would do Boinc seti in around 8,000 seconds
(a 1.46ghz Athlon XP (rating 1700+) does boinc seti in around 18000 seconds as well)

Both using un-optimised clients. Pentium M is more than twice as powerful as the P4-m.

The Pentium M at around 2 ghz beats 3.2ghz+ Pentium 4s. It simply rocks, and is what the new dual core / single core Intel chips are based on that are now in those Macs.

[Breeze]

Well i've learnt something new, always though a P4-M was better then a Cel-M.

Good read!

[Rack]

yeah, thanks, I wasn't too clear either. I knew the P4 was clock-hungry, and the Pentium M was a great low-clock core, but I wasn't aware of the P4-M... what a stupid idea! WTF were Intel thinking? That's marketing for you...