Fast notebooks

By John McCormickSpecial to GCNIt's axiomatic that computer technology is progressing at a rapid pace, but recent advances in notebook PCs are astounding. Just a few months ago I wondered whether there would be any Pentium III notebooks to list in this Buyers Guide. By the time I compiled the chart, I could have filled it exclusively with Pentium IIIs.But speed isn't everything, and for many users the most striking feature of these high-end powerhouses will be the size of the screen, not the newest processor.It used to be that you rushed to connect your notebook PC to a 'real' monitor when you got into the office. Today, a notebook might have a larger usable screen size than your office PC, especially if the one on your desk is an older model.Unlike a CRT monitor, where the usable screen size is smaller than the advertised measurement, a flat-panel screen is actually the size it's supposed to be. If it is advertised as a 15-inch diagonal display, that's the screen size you can use.Because most of these notebooks have a screen of 14 inches or larger, they are the equivalent of a 15- or even a 17-inch desktop CRT. That size makes them more difficult to carry but a joy to use.Weight for a portable is a crucial factor. The configurations on the accompanying chart show that some ultrafast notebooks can weigh twice as much as some of the slim models.But performance depends on processor speed, not weight, so it's important to consider how a notebook PC will be used as well as how often it will be carried.If the notebook will be a substitute for a desktop PC, a heavy one with all the bells and whistles would probably be the best choice.If it is to be shared by many users for a few hours at a time, legacy ports, a floppy drive and a CD-ROM drive may be unnecessary.And if a notebook PC is for traveling, especially by air, weight will matter, as will the ability to swap devices such as a floppy drive, or a second or even third battery.Faced with all the options, you might be tempted to order the fastest notebook, with 128M of RAM, a big hard drive and the fanciest optical drive you can get, either a DVD drive or even a CD-RW.But the buying rules are different for computers that will be carried through airports than from computers that will sit on sturdy desks. Even if money is no object, weight and battery life always are.Some choices are easy. A 12G hard drive is almost always a better choice than a 6G drive because it won't really weigh more.Memory size and the power it uses also are important. An extra 64M of RAM doesn't weigh much, but it will cut your battery life, so you should choose an operating system and applications that will use the least amount of RAM.For processor speed, it's important to remember the old saying, 'Speed kills!' For notebooks, higher clock speeds kill battery life.If you max out on power-hungry options, even those that don't weigh much, it might mean carrying an extra battery, and that's a lot of extra weight.Screen size isn't an easy choice, either. Everyone loves a big screen, but it can make the notebook's footprint so large that it won't fit in a suitcase. So, biggest isn't always best.Many notebooks offer similar performance and features. Your purchase decisions could come down to vendor reputation and the bundled software. The latter is negotiable, so some systems in the chart are listed with extra software and, because many agencies will install their own licensed programs, some aren't.With all the rapid innovations in notebook PC technology, some things don't change: Short battery life has always been a major complaint.There hasn't been much improvement in run times because, as batteries get better, performance, and thus power consumption, goes up just as quickly.Lithium ion batteries perform best. But when considering your choice, look at milliampere-hour and voltage ratings and not at vendors' estimated run times.Meanwhile, chip makers are reducing power consumption with innovative processor designs.Intel's SpeedStep Mobile Pentium processors, introduced in February, run at a slower clock speed on battery power to extend battery life. The lower speed is 550 MHz for 700-MHz processors and 500 MHz for 650- and 600-MHz processors.Whether this is useful to you will depend on how you use a notebook PC. Although a lower speed cuts a CPU's power consumption by about half, it is only one component that uses battery power. A large screen, memory, and any drive access consume a considerable amount of power. As a result, reducing processor speed by 20 to 30 percent extends run time only about 10 percent.Because basic tasks such as word processing don't tax a Celeron, let alone a Pentium III, there is uncertainty about whether users who need a fast notebook want one that is only fast when it's plugged into the wall.The clock speed reduction can be turned off, but then you lose the extended battery life.The bottom line is that mobile Pentium III processors are a bit faster than a Pentium II with the same clock speed, but not by much.For example, Intel Corp. officials said the new 700-MHz SpeedStep processor is up to 189 percent faster than a 400-MHz Pentium II notebook processor. But moving from 400 MHz to 700 MHz alone is a 175 percent increase even without any of the 70 new Streaming Single Instruction Multiple Data instructions or 256 Kbps of full-speed Level 2 cache that are part of the SpeedStep chips.The most important feature of the new Intel mobile processors is the small chip size that makes it easier to cool the CPU.The SpeedStep is the first technology to the market. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. of Sunnyvale, Calif., and newcomer Transmeta Corp. of Santa Clara, Calif.'with headline executive Linus Torvalds'have similar technologies in development.AMD's Gemini chips aren't even mentioned on the company's Web site, but reports say they will be similar to the SpeedStep, with a step-down speed lower than Intel's. AMD has announced that a mobile version of its fast Athlon chip will be available by this fall.Transmeta is pushing the Crusoe chip, which steps back from the ever-growing transistor count of other CPUs. Crusoe puts more features where they don't use any power'in software.Whether Crusoe can deliver on its promise is anyone's guess, but Transmeta's claim to being able to adjust power according to the needs of the application would have incredible potential.The company, on its Web site at , reports a 30 percent power saving with only a 10 percent performance drop.Transmeta spokesman Frank Priscaro said computers using the chip would not ship until September.XXXSPLITXXX-XXXSPLITXXX-XXXSPLITXXX-XXXSPLITXXX-