More 9100 questions & maybe a little 8600

Ok, I have a ton of questions,

1) Does the 9100 have a desktop processor? If it does, can someone comment on the heat it produces? I purchased a Toshiba laptop a while ago that had SERIOUS problems with heat and desktop processors. The whole MODEL line ended up being a lemon and well lets just say I lost a lot of money on it. I agreed to NEVER buy a laptop with a desktop processor again. Any insight on this would be nice.


2) Not understanding M processors, do they run at a faster speed than they are marked as. My next purchasing option would be the 8600 (which only has M processors), but the speeds on that laptop are WAY slower than the 9100. Am I missing something here? 2.8 GHz sounds awfully nice to me, but if it heats up, than no sir!


3) Can someone shed a little more light on the SXGA monitors being faulty in the 9100?


3) One last question, has anyone found a fix for the BLACK bars on the sides when playing games?

I LOVE the specs on the 9100 but would like to have those in a smaller more portable machine like the 8600 (plus a little more batt life would be nice). If I were to purchase an 8600, what would I have to upgage (and to what) to compare to the 9100.


Thanks for the help!


- Jeff

 

1) yes, the 9100 carries a Pentium 4 desktop processor in various speeds.

2) they run at the speed they are marked, but remember that processor performance is not 100% tied to clockspeed. meaning, the performance you get out of a 1.8GHz Pentium M Dothan processor could well match a Pentium 4 desktop processor running at 3.0GHz or so (this is often discussed in the forums, search around and you'll see numbers comparing Pentium M performance to Pentium 4).

3) I had an SXGA Widescreen monitor for the 9100 I reviewed and had no problems.

You'll get great performance out of the 8600 if you get a fast enough Pentium M and a decent amount of RAM and fast spinning hard drive (5400RPM or 7200RPM and not 4200RPM). If you want the smaller size and better battery life, go with a Pentium M in the 8600 and just give it some oomph with these things mentioned and you'll have a machine fast enough for all of your needs.

 

Great, thanks for the reply.


How about the heat, the 9100 isnt going to turn into a portable furnace will it. Can this machine sit on your lap without it giving you a 3rd degree burn?


THANKS AGAIN!!! [ ]


- Jeff

 

Here are some answers.

1) Yes it has a normal P4 desktop processor and produces the same anount of heat, I would guess it has a pretty beefy fan as well. All the notebooks that have a P4 in them are yes higher performance, but battery life really suffers and the most you will get is about 2hrs of battery use depending on the size of the battery compared with 4-6.5hours on a system with a pentium M (not pentium 4-M as this is a whole different animal)

2) I really like the M processors, they are the way to go for low heat/fan noise and long battery life. The M chips run much faster than their CPU speed suggests. I recently started a thread here on the forums to help get an idea of CPU type vs speed. I asked everyone to run a simple program to calculate pi to 2 millions places and post the time it took their notebook. I tried it on my desktop 2.4 Ghz P4 and it took 2:53 on my 1.5Ghz pentium M it only took 2:29, so a 1.5M is faster than my 2.4 P4
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2657

Jack

 

My 9100 get get pretty hot but not hot enough to burn you haha, although sometimes when i touch the memory compartment after i have been using it for a few hours it can be extremely hot.

 

<blockquote id='quote'> quote:<hr height='1' noshade id='quote'>Originally posted by Heho