First AMD Turion laptop on sale

NOTEBOOKS Using AMD's Turion chip were expected to appear in April and it seems that they are right on time. Even if information on Acer's global and British websites has not been updated, it seems that the first Turion laptop has been launched in UK.

According to the Computer Shopper May 2005 Edition that hit my mail box yesterday, the Acer Aspire 5002LM should cost no more than £493+VAT, that's exceedinly cheap for a laptop that comes with 512MB memory, 60GB hard disk and a dual format DVD writer.

The interesting bit is the AMD Turion ML30 which powers that laptop. It comes with a full 1MB L2 cache, is clocked at 1.6GHz and should not dissipate more than 35W of heat compared to the 60W or so dissipated by the other mobile Athlon64.

Of course, it will feature PowerNOW technology, AMD's coveted 64-bitness as well as Hyper Transport and that funny thing called Enhanced Virus Protection Technology.

Other features include a 15-inch TFT XGA screen, a SIS chipset and graphics driven by up to 64MB of memory shared, a LiION battery, 56K modem, three USB 2.0 ports wired and wireless 802.11G ethernet but no floppy, SVideo or Firewire.

The price of the laptop undercuts substantially similarly priced any other Intel Centrino based laptop. It remains to be seen whether the ML series will be pin compatible with desktop motherboards and will prove to be the rightful successors of the XP-M series. More importantly, how much battery life will they be able to squeeze is also a matter of concern. µ