PC firms in dash to sell current Intel notebook machines

AS INTEL RELEASES its first "Banias" mini-notebook and subnotebook chips in March - that was confirmed by senior VP Paul Otellini last week - there's an understandable rush by PC vendors to sell their existing highly engineered machines before the launch of the Centrino notebooks.

For example, JVC took out a full page double spread colour advert today in the Independent on Sunday for its Mini Note PC - the MP XP7210. A nice little thing, this A5 notebook includes the "fastest Pentium III-M 800MHz" ultra low voltage chip.

Previous versions have got just great reviews from the like of print magazine PC Pro, in the UK.

Intel formally announced that chip last week -- it costs $144 in quantities of 1000 and has 256K of cache onboard.

JVC -- again, just as an example -- claims a 5.5 hour battery life for the machine, which has a nine inch TFT screen. Pretty impressive stuff.

Launched on the very flashy JVC Futurevision site, the mini notebook certainly looks, on the face of it, as though it might give Transmeta a run for its money, even though the chip technology will be two generations behind the Banias/Dothan microprocessors.

You have to go to the less flashy JVC UK site to find out where you buy this baby, though. You can buy it from Ingram, from Dabs, from Technomatic and from Hugh Symons - of past memory.

Dabs lists this ultra-low 800MHz Pentium III at £1,467.57, including local tax.

Presumably, most of the major notebook manufacturers will be selling Banias-based notebooks come March/April. The Banias 1.10GHz low voltage chip will cost $262, while the ULV (ultra low voltage) 900MHz will cost $241 - again in quantities of 1000.

So should we buy a notebook with 800MHz ULV 800MHz Pentium III-Ms in, or wait for the higher performance Banias machines, when they launch?

On this, you can expect little advice from the chip or the notebook manufacturers - which, after all, are in this business to make money. We expect "Centrino" machines to cost that little bit extra... µ