Non Speedstep notebooks selling like hotcakes

Notebook Pentium III processors use a technology called SpeedStep which saves battery life by regulating power settings on machines, but it seems many vendors are taking advantage of the low thermal characteristics of desktop Pentium IIIs and ignoring the SpeedStep abilities.

One source told the INQUIRER today: "This practice is widely spread and established. In Spring this year, some models using the FC-PGA [socket] from well known top motherboard companies made a sudden appearance in the marketplace, only to quickly and mysteriously disappear after just a few weeks". The source said that he believed Intel had put pressure on the firms to withdraw the motherboards.

But the practice is far from over, he said: "There are a couple of barebone designs, made in Taiwan, which work just fine and are enjoying great popularity in Europe.

"The design is pretty cool and includes all top end features, like a 14-inch screen, built-in FireWire, DVD, modem, infrared, LAN, and up to 32Mb of shared memory using a SiS chipset."

He said: "All you need to do is to just select the FC-PGA chip of your choice, from 866MHz to 1GHz, the hard drive, the memory you like, and voilà."

He added" No-one care about SpeedStep. This gives you a damn good machines, which is stable, reliable and costs much much less. The battery life is just about average with the good LitIon battery provided."

Most consumers who buy the machines realise they're not using the SpeedStep version but don't care because of the price benefits, and even corporate customers are cottoning on to the advantages of not using SpeedStep-enabled chips, he claimed.

One machine he pointed to included a 1GHz processor, 512Mb of memory, a 20GB hard drive, DVD, a 14-inch screen, all at a price tag of €2,000, including tax. (approx $1,833)

We wonder if the unnamed mobo makers are preparing platforms to take these fast little Tualatin Pentium IIIs that are currently available.

Intel could not be contacted for its comments at press time. µ

See Also
Beware desktop chips in notebooks
Worries persist over Dell and SpeedStep
Dell cocks up power management
WinXP sidesteps SpeedStep
Dell replaces non-SpeedStep machine