What will Santa Rosa bring to the table?

About to buy a Thinkpad T60 for my sister. At the moment, its a Core 2 Duo around 1.66ghz with 2gb of RAM and Vista Home Premium (btw--that is more like Media Center right? I can get either that or Vista Business...she is a media user.)

However, I am intrigued at the prospect of Santa Rosa being just down the road. What will it provide over Core 2 Duo? Increased battery life, far improved efficiency and speed, or...?

Keep in mind that she is not a power user at all and will likely never utilize many of the benefits Core 2 Duo really provides now, other than multitasking, which she does a lot of. However, I do want to future proof this thing as much as possible. Is the Santa Rosa platform a big enough jump to render the current C2D platform as ancient history? Or merely a little bigger jump than the CD--C2D one?

Thanks a bunch.

 

Santa Rosa will only provide a small performance increase. Its not a massive increase from the current Core 2 Duo series. If the tasks are simple, then a processor from the current generation will do fine, and theres no real need to become futureproffed if that is all you plan on doing with the notebook. Intel clams that battery life will be betetr, but that is something that should be investigated after it relases, and real life examples can be examined.

The processor should be faster due to the larger 800 MHz FSB, but if your not using processor dependat tasks, thrn you won't notice the diffierence in speed. Office tasks, certainly will not be affected byt the speed. ISanta Rosa will also be expensive when it release, and it will take some time before the prices get to acceptable and affordable values.

 

Booting should be a good bit faster using Vista, thanks to the chipset integrated flash memory.

Don't expect a Thinkpad using Santa Rosa for a couple months after release, nor an HP nc/nx or Dell Latitude for a few weeks or a month. So you'll most likely have to take a significant hit in build quality to get Santa Rosa right away after release.

 

Thanks for the replies. I think she wants a new computer to enjoy the last few months of senior year with...my hand-me-down Inspiron 5100 (what was I thinking with that beast?) with broken hinges is what she's on now and it's tied down to the desk so the screen doesn't plop down.

As for Thinkpad releases, I had heard that a 14" Widescreen was set to come out soon after Santa Rosa was available. Any creedence to that? I know Lenovo took a long time to get C2D under the hood. I won't get anything but a Thinkpad at this rate, save a HP business notebook or possibly an Asus, but they can't compete to the EPP prices. Without them, the door would be more open, but a premium/business notebook is the only thing I'll ever get after the debacles I've had with consumer level stuff.

Thanks for the tips again...any other opinions just to be thorough? I certainly welcome them.

 

Oh, and I forgot, the onboard graphics will be much more powerful. Of course there's still no dedicated VRAM like AMD is about to push with their mobile platform, and the drivers for the desktop counterpart on the G965 are still very immature (though stable).

If you want a 14" widescreen the HP nc6400 is a really great option. The screen is much better than the non-Flexview T60, and I doubt a 14" widescreen Thinkpad will have Flexview. The build quality is comparable if not better on the HP, including the keyboard. I know people have said Thinkpad quality hasn't faltered since the sale to Lenovo, but my T60 is full of creaks and flexes.

 

I don't think anyone mentioned that Vista Home Premium is the Media Center version... Vista Business has no media center functionality.

 

I can assure you that in Six months when Santa Rosa is out, many of the "experts" on this forum will be proclaiming that the Core2Duo of this moment is "outdated, redundant, bla bla bla."

These BTW, are the same right ones now telling people that Core2Duo is "futureproof" and they shouldnt buy a laptop wit CoreDuo!

Bottom line is that for a non-power user, even a Centrino is just fine and will be for a good 18 months, as long as it has good amount RAM and a decent closckspeed.

And yes that includes mutitasking - which has been going on since compuetrs were invented and didnt not arrive when the Core2Duo or Santa were announced.

So dont spend time worring abouton Santa Rosa. If you sister is not a CAD designer or gaming freak, frnakly its not a menaningful event to affect her purchase of a laptop.

 

all santa rosa platform will have 802.11n wireless options and I believe there is hybrid hard drive in it as well, to save more battery power.

its not like 802.11n is ever needed since the g is already good enough in general. and you can always upgrade that in the future.

dunno if your sis care about looks of the laptop though since not everyone likes lenovo laptop looks, and prefer sony ones. It's kinda like buying a car

 

I'm sorry Skagen, but dual core processors provide such a huge boost in perceived performance, it's not even funny. Sure they're not necessary in order to multitask, but they sure make things run a lot more smoothly. Especially when running Windows underneath it all.

Also, we'll see consumer models with Santa Rosa well inside two months (middle of May), I guarantee it. Business models, depending on OEM, will be looking more towards 3-4 months from now, maybe even stretching to your 6 for a more stable series like the T or X.

Of course if Intel botches the release or pushes it back, who knows. Right now I believe it's scheduled for May 9th.

Generally speaking, however, I agree with you. People concern themselves far too much with latest and greatest babble. A new generation of wifi or enhanded sata hardly matters, and embedded flash memory worries me. I'd be a lot more excited about embedded vram for that shiny new GPU.

 

Either way I think it would be best to wait because prices I think would drop and find a better bargain at a cheaper price,right?

 

Yes, but you have to time things just right.

 

Apparently there's be a version with dedicated memory:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3588

You're right about the immature drivers though. Don't expect decent performing drivers for games until Q3 this year.

 

That's odd because Intel has been talking about offering dedicated VRAM capable IGP's in the next generation or two after Santa Rosa, and it's the kind of thing you'd think they'd point out every chance they get. Especially since AMD is bringing it to the table so soon.

I'm guessing Vestel either hacked that in, or it's the way the chipset manages shared memory. My guess is the latter, that it takes a portion of the system RAM and claims it permanently, leaving the rest of what it's assigned to be used as system RAM or VRAM depending on which needs it most.

 

I think one of the greatest advantige of santa rosa will be that when idel that processor can clock down to 600mhz. This will be great to save battery when just surfing or typing. It shouldnt need more then 600mhz. I am expecting a big cut down in power consumtion due to that. Right now the C2D clock down to 1.2ghz or something around that. That just uses too much power and is not needed when you are not doing much.

 

The FSB speed at with Santa Rosa operates will have quite an impact on battery life, and it may be more than the actual clock speed of the processor. Intel has decided to allot the FSB, however, to decrease, and it will should also have a positive impact on battery life. Along with the processor, alot of other things consume alot of power. Such as other componenets like the hard disk, graphics card screen size.