More than 64M of SDRAM is overkill for most notebooks.
If you buy a notebook with a 266-MHz Pentium II CPU today but want to swap it for a
300-MHz CPU when they come out, you probably wont have to send the system back to
the maker. A 240-pin IMM Minicartridge design is available for thin and ultra-thin
notebooks.
Most new Pentium II notebooks will also support Intels Wired for Management 1.1
specification, which calls for common sets of internal options in notebooks, greatly
reducing the cost of operating and maintaining fleets of notebooks within a single
department or agency.
The Mobile Pentium II chip isnt quite perfect. Although it operates at a low 1.7
volts, its cooling system requires more power than the 266-MHz Pentium MMX. You can expect
less battery life from a Pentium II notebook than from a comparably equipped Pentium MMX.
A Compaq Armada 7800 running Microsoft Windows 95 and Office 97 provided about two
hours of battery run time. With different applications and use of the CD-ROM drive, the
time could change significantly up or down.
Take the double-the-raw-performance claims of the Pentium II CPU vs. the Pentium MMX
CPU with a grain of salt. Other components, such as CD-ROM drives, graphics accelerator
cards and hard drives, also contribute to a notebooks overall performance. You
wont get a 2-to-1 performance boost, but the 266-MMX Pentium II will probably result
in a performance improvement of at least 20 percent.
You should consider other factors when youre seeking a high-performance notebook.
Take a close look at a notebooks backplane for an inventory of its ports.
High-speed serial and parallel ports should be a given, along with PS/2 ports for mouse
and keyboard, an external monitor, audio and video devices, and Type II and Type III PC
Card slots.
An infrared port for wireless connection to another computer or printer should come
standard with a high-end notebook.
One or even two Universal Serial Bus ports should be somewhere on the notebooks
backplane. When its fully implemented, USB technology will provide 12-Mbps speed
between devices, allow daisychaining of up to 127 devices and enable hot swapping.
The Armada 7800 Pentium II notebook has an Accelerated Graphics Port for advanced
graphics processing More notebooks will include it as AGP, like USB, catches on.
If youll also use the notebook as a desktop PC, look for an elongated 100- or
120-pin port on the back of the unit. Its for a docking station or port replicator,
which provides a permanent parking place for monitors and keyboards.
If a 266-MHz Mobile Pentium II CPU is your notebooks V-8 engine, its chip set is
the transmission.
A CPU is designed to make the notebook run as fast as it can, but it cant do it
without the help of a chip set to synchronize functions such as managing the systems
RAM controller and hard drive controller, and synchronizing its real-time clock.
Building on its older 430MX and 430TX capabilities, Intel has optimized its newest chip
set, the 440BX PCI, for the Mobile Pentium II. The 430MX helped bring 32-bit PCI bus
architecture to notebooks. The 430TX brought support for MMX and the Concurrent PCI bus
enhancement that resulted in smoother audio-visual performance than the 430MX.
It also supported USB and synchronous dynamic RAM, the fastest memory available in
Pentiums.
Without the 440BX, or one of similar design from a third-party maker, your notebook
wont be able to take full advantage of the Mobile Pentium II CPU. The 440BX is a
good power manager; it features the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface that lets
notebooks power up from sleep states much faster than did earlier chip sets.
The 440BX optimizes the Pentium IIs Dual Independent Bus architecture, which lets
the CPU and chip set execute multiple transactions simultaneously.
With the 440BX PCI chip set, notebooks are a hairs breadthand AGP
supportaway from providing all the bells and whistles of desktop PCs.
J.B. Miles writes about communications and computers from Carlsbad, Calif.
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