Intel Centrino/Pentium-M Notebook Roundup: Dell, FIC and IBM Examined

Conclusion

With a Pentium M processor at the helm, Intel is guiding notebooks in just the direction they need to go. The chip is a high performance part that requires little power; seemingly contradictory specifications. We already learned that the the Pentium M is fast and that its is not power hungry but how do the notebooks based on the chip do in comparison to one another?

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First let it be said that the solutions we looked at today in our Pentium M notebook roundup are all impressive implementations of the Pentium M processor. All offer long battery life and the majority are built around size specifications that could never be met with previous high performance mobile Intel processors. Each of the three manufacturers we looked at seized the opportunity to design a new notebook and we commend that.

Overall winner of our roundup has to be the IBM ThinkPad T40p thanks to its small size and superb battery life. This was not an easy choice to make as we were somewhat torn between the ThinkPad T40p and the Dell Latitude D800. Both systems have their pluses and minuses. The IBM offers exceptional battery life; the Dell an amazing wide aspect LCD. The IBM's graphics system isn't the fastest available currently; the Dell's battery life was not all that impressive.

Ultimately we decided to go with the ThinkPad T40p because of its innovativeness. It seems to us that Dell could have almost as easily produced a Pentium 4-M based version of the Latitude D800. The system seems to offer plenty of space for a more power hungry processor and also seems to have enough cooling to handle a warmer processor. Part of the uniqueness of the Pentium M processor is its ability to work in small areas with low power and this is something we did not feel that Dell leveraged to the fullest extent possible. Cut the weight of the D800 by a pound and shave half an inch off the height and you have yourself one of the most amazing notebook systems every built, but as it stands currently the IBM ThinkPad T40p impressed us more.

The 3D graphics performance of the Latitude D800 makes it a wonderful desktop replacement solution. The GeForce4 4200 Go is the fastest mobile graphics chip shipping today, but we wonder for how long and at what cost. We already know that the chip requires significantly more power than other mobile chips and new graphics chips from both NVIDIA and ATI are right around the corner. We suspect that the next generation mobile graphics parts, 0.13 micron based parts, may render the GeForce4 4200 Go obsolete especially considering the amount of power it requires at full speed.

The IBM T40 and and FIC Centrino solutions are not to be forgotten. As a less feature rich version of the ThinkPad T40p, the ThinkPad T40 with the standard battery pack is quite an impressive machine. It shares many of the traits that made the T40p a winner in our book including a small size and good battery life. And although the FIC unit we got a chance to look at is clearly an early engineering sample it seems to have a good deal of potential. We will be happy to get our hands on a final version of the system as its form factor is very desirable.

We are much more excited about the future of the thin and light segment, powered by the Pentium M processor, than we are or have ever been about the future of desknote computers. In our opinion, the Pentium M processor is the best thing to happen to notebooks since 3D graphics chips arrived on the mobile scene some three years ago.