Which notebook to buy, now Centrino's here?

READERS WHO FLIT in here from time to time will remember that I needed a new notebook in January - so if you want to see goods here in display in London, that's a trip down Tottenham Court Road.

At the time, even though I was well aware that Intel would launch its "Centrino" family in February, I plumped for a 1.2GHz Pentium III-M processor and typed my story about the launch of the family in the conference hall, on my new Sony, courtesy of an 802.11a connection provided by Intel.

I had some initial problems making the Intel 802.11a card work in the press room,. but a very nice woman helped me out and she too was impressed by the lightness and the look of the machine. I'd forgotten to switch off the inbuilt wi-fi facility - Steve "Surly" Spence from PC Zone just reached over and switched it off, making bob my uncle, and fanny my aunt. Thanks Steve!

I'm not at all unhappy with the choice I made - when I used this machine at CeBIT in March I managed to go a whole day without needing to plug it into a power socket. It wasn't on all day, of course, but the battery life is super without the base station attached, it's light and it's got everything I need except it doesn't have infrared or Bluetooth.

Last week I was down Tottenham Court Road again, looking for a USB keyboard for my notebook, so took the time out to see what had changed over two months.

Which notebook? Help!
You can buy Centrino machines in Totters Court Road. In fact, the whole long street is plastered with ads from Toshiba and Sony singing the praises of the platform, which Intel is boosting by running endless TV ads here in the UK.

You have to remember a couple of things about the Centrino notebooks if the $300 million is beginning to get to you.

First, these notebooks do not yet support the "wi-fi" 802.11a standard, so you'll need to buy an extra card if that's the kind of network you're playing in. The 802.11g "standard" is backward compatible with the 802.11b, but Intel doesn't support that yet.

Further, as we pointed out last week, just because there are a few wi-fi "hotspots" doesn't mean, as the Tosh ad risibly attempts to show, that you'll be able to read your email on the Atlantic Coast. Hotspots are few and far between and they're very rarely free. Expect to pay quite a premium if you choose to use your Centrino in a wi-fi Starbucks. And don't expect to sit there with only one cup of very expensive frothy coffee in your two hour smurfing session - the staff will probably begin to view you with some suspicion if you stop buying their bevs.

The other thing about Centrinos is that they don't chime with Intel's Megahurts Madness. A 1.3GHz Pentium M Samsung X10 XTC will cost you £1,600 for a machine with 256MB of memory, a 30GV gard druvem and a 14.1-inch screen. Micro Anvika, one of the Tottenham Ct Road shops, offers a 1.5GHz Pentium M at £1,800 and a 1.6GHz Pentium M machine in the same range at a staggering £2,199. A Sony Vaio Zisp uses a 1.5GHz Pentium M with 512MB memory but that will cost you £2000. The claim is this machine will last for up to six hours without recharging. That's a big big claim and we'd want to see it justified.

The same shop offers a Vaio which uses a 2GHz Pentium 4M processor for £1800, but that's only got a 12.1-inch screen.

Compare this to another AMD based Sony Vaio in the same shop which uses an XP2000+ chip, has a 14.1-inch screen and costs £1000. A machine which uses a Pentium 4 2GHz CPU, another Sony, costs £1200 and has a 15-inch screen and the usual bells and whistles.

We can't think of any compelling reason why you should necessarily buy an Intel based notebook chip over an AMD based notebook chip for this category of microprocessor. We chose a Pentium III-M machine for ourselves because this is a fine little microprocessor that doesn't deserve to die in favour of the lumbering and hot Pentium 4M. Never mind the lumbering and very hot Pentium 4. But die, sure enough, the Pentium III-M will, although much of its design appears to have gone into the Centrino.

Help! Help!
What is a buyer to do? Does she or he go for a Centrino machine (expensive, hyped up), an AMD machine (inexpensive), a Pentium 4M machine or a Pentium 4 machine? The Pentium III-Ms are proving hard to find.

We tried asking staff at the shop what were the differences between the machines, apart from screen size. Truth to tell, they seemed a bit puzzled themselves. All claimed that the Centrino gave better battery life than the other, but when he asked about the difference between a Pentium 4M and Pentium 4 desktop, few could tell us.

We also asked why a machine with a 2000+ rating was so much cheaper than a Pentium 4M and a Pentium 4. Again, the staff at different shops looked at us as if we'd asked them what the measurement of their inside leg was.

What to buy, when to buy?
If you are thinking of buying a notebook, we'd advise you to be aware of the fact that Intel, and to an extent AMD, produce ever faster chips at ever swifter intervals, and that this doesn't really matter to the average user very much at all.

We're not convinced that spending several hundred pounds more for an additional hour or two of battery life is particularly important unless it's particularly important to you.

That is to say, if you think you're going to be away from power supply and that an additional hour will really make a difference to you, then probably you're not the average Centrino user. She or he, we think, is likely to be found in business lounges where there may well be a wi-fi link - in business class cabins where there may well be a power supply and soon a wi-fi link, and not scrabbling around in a CeBIT hall with a disembodied female voice telling her or him that your battery is reaching a critical stage. (Our Sony notebook has this really annoying but switchoffable feature).

The weight of a notebook is important to some people, but consider this. We've used a notebook machine continuously for the last 15 years, and however small and slim the notebook gets, the bag on your shoulder always seems to stay just as heavy. That's because you've got your notebook in your bag, your power supply, your peripherals or base station, maybe your digital camera and nearly always a heap of paper from your current or your present trip, as well as plugs to fit any idiosyncrasy any country can throw at you.

If you're using a notebook at home, these considerations are not that important, and even using a non-standard Pentium 4 in your notebook at home might be just fine, although we'd recommend you stick a heat resistant shield under it.

Comparisons are Odious
They are. But don't expect the vendors, or the chip manufacturers to give you much guidance. If you ask the outright question to Intel about why it doesn't think Megahurts matters for its notebooks any more, as we have, you may well detect a slightly hurt look in the eyes of the poor soul. This is, we suspect, because Intel doesn't know the answer to this either.

The Centrino is a young "platform", and in due course we expect it to displace the Pentium 4M. Might be worth hanging onto your hard earned shekels until the prices start tumbling, as they inevitably will. We have reason to believe this notebook chip is a fine little chip - see our own review, linked below. µ

* A PORTEGE 3500 Tablet PC costs £2100 and uses a 1.33GHz Pentium III-M chip. Can this really be worth it?

** A PESKY Desknote, with a choice of processors is only a mere €700 - a very cheap machine, but don't expect too many bells and whistles.

See Also
IBM's T40 Centrino Stinkpad
Intel's notebook strategy causing terrible muddle all round
Intel confirms clock speed irrelevant for notebooks
Intel pours third of a billion into notebook push
Intel hoist by Megahurts Madness petard