solo vs duo

i went to a dealer today and he almost succeeded in convincing me to not get the duo processor i wanted

he said there's a big difference in power consumption ergo battery life

and

i wouldn't feel the difference in speed since all the programs i considered "multitasking worthy" such as having itunes and excel open are all loaded into RAM and speed won't depend on the cpu except for the moment i open them

ie, a solo processor would function just as well as a duo (but would be able to last much longer batterywise) unless i open a million programs at the same second, and and/or have norton running constantly



is there any merit to what he said?

 

as of now the core solo sounds like the better deal thats because programs arnt designed to take atvantage of the duo.. in the future programs will be written to take atvantage of the duo... plus ive read in other forums that said that the second core turns off while not in use.. even if it dosent the amount of battery life wont be that much where it should decide what you should get... like the sales man said right now the only reason would be if you were running norton (dont use norton is blows but thats another story) and other programs, but that right there for me would be worth it... i hate when my computer slowed down while running antivirus...

 

Hmm, technically speaking, no.
Any program that's actively running consumes *some* CPU time. Usually, it's very little, though, but it's something.

Basically, all running applications take turns to get a few moments on the CPU. So sometimes, it can take a while between two "turns" for a specific application. It might get its turn, but then there are 40 other applications that have to get their turn before it's your app again. Then it becomes a bit unresponsive. (Note, I'm saying "a bit" here, and I mean that. *At most*, one such "turn" lasts maybe 100 microseconds, so a single CPU can cycle through a good number of applications and still get back to your "main" app without you even noticing.

If you have a dual-core CPU, it basically allows you to take two turns at a time, so the computer can cycle through the list of apps a lot faster, which means the time between an application's "turns" is basically halved.

Ok, long story, but the point is that it's not "only" relevant when you load a program. It's relevant if you have a lot of applications running at the same time (and keep in mind that Windows alone runs ~20 processes that the CPU has to cycle through as well as your user applications), and if one or more processes actually consume noticeable CPU time. In those cases, your computer will seem much more responsive.

However, he does sort of have a point, in that for iTunes, Excel and other such programs, you don't need a dualcore CPU, and probably won't notice a difference. He just got the reasons wrong, and he's wrong in saying it doesn't make a difference. It does, the question is just whether the difference is enough to be noticed.

As for battery life? From what I've seen (I don't have a dual core CPU myself), battery life is actually *roughly* the same.

So, I'd say, get whatever. You'll be happy with a solo, but a duo won't cripple your battery or anything either.

 

If you have any desire to light multitasking, RAM would be a better option for performance.

If there are programs that require a great deal of computer processing, such as video rendering/processing, encoding, complex mathematical processing, CAD, then a Duo is in your best interest.

Given that the Duo 2 is coming out, the prices should come down but likely not after the stock from the manufacturer has been depleted.