Are Celeron Processors any good?

I was looking at the Pavillion ze5610 on the hp.ca website, and it has everything I need except that I'm worried about the celeron processor. How are celerons? Are they fast, reliable? Is it not worth the money? ($1399 Canadian)

Does HP offer any comparably priced laptops that have Pentiums or Athlons?

Thanks

 

Celerons are evil. They're strictly for people who either don't know any better or PHB's (see Dilbert) who want to inflict pain on their employees. They're basically Pentium 4's gutted of most of their L2 cache and with a much slower FSB, and since the P4 is a pretty inefficient architecture to begin with...

Well, OK, if you're never ever going to do anything requiring serious CPU power they'll work, but the cost savings (if any) really isn't worth it.

 

It may be difficult to find any notebooks in that price range in Canada that is not a Celeron or an EOL (end-of-line) model.

A lot of people will cringe when they hear the word Celeron, but it's completely a personal preference. The Celeron CPU's have overall less computing power than a Pentium M, P4 or current AMD CPUs used in notebooks. Notebooks that use these CPU's are usually entry-level notebooks designed for the first-time user that just needs a computer on the go for surfing, email, watching DVD's, playing music & office apps. These notebooks may be able to play some games, but not the latest graphics intensive games currently in the market. If you're just going to be using the notebook for the above listed uses, than a Celeron notebook should be more than enough for you.

Now, if you want a notebook to last you for the next few years and play the lastest games and do graphics intensive apps like 3D rendering, etc... well, this may not be the best option for you to go. CPU computing power wise, it's Celeron, Pentium M, Mobile P4, P4 (AMD CPU's get put into the mix somewhere, not really sure with all the new models coming out). Pentium M systems will probably give you the best battery life to computing power ratio, so this would be the best option to go for. The price thought is more expensive by quite a bit compared to a Celeron based system.

Overall, it depends on what your current needs are for a notebook, once you figure that out, you than need to find out what's you max spending limit. This way you will be able to find all the systems that will do what you need that fit your price range.

-Vb-

 

Thanks for the help. This does have to be a computer that will last the next four years, for university. And I will probably be using it for computer graphics and some gaming.

And can someone tell me the difference between Compaq and HP? I assume HP bought up Compaq or something? Because I always hear people talking about how great and solid and dependable HPs are, but I was wondering, does this include Compaqs too?

 

Yes, HP did buy up Compaq. The funny thing is, HP computers, or at least their notebook line was poor compared to Compaq before the "merger". As you can see in their product lines, only the Pavilion line survived the merger. Almost every other line was switched over to the Compaq's. HP had a business line of notebooks(Omnibook) and desktops(Vectra), but they were phased out for the Compaq lines. Even their servers & Handhelds were replaced by the Compaq lines. HP before the merger was mainly known for their printers and to this day, still have some of the best printers in the market (which makes up for most of their sales/revenues). The reason why the Compaq brand is still in the market, is to have a bit of self competition with the Pavilions and also to keep the corporate customers that are Compaq loyal. Look at some of their business notebooks, they're called HP Compaq's. So with all that said, the HP/Compaq brands are an excellent choice of notebook to buy.

To get a notebook that will stay fairly up-to-date 4 years from now, probably means you're going to have to spend a bit more money. You may be able to last the 4 years with a Celeron based system, that's if you're not going to be playing the lastest games on it. I myself have a P3 600 that is 3+ years old. I run XP Pro, play DVD's, surf the web, go wireless and do office apps and it's still good for me. It does get a bit slow sometimes, but I can still ive with it. The one thing that I really want to do but can't, it play the new games on this. Since it only has an 8MB SiS video card, it can't do much. I can play Unreal Tournament (the original only) but gets a bit boring not being able to play RavenShield or some of the newer games.

Overall, depending on what you want to do in the future, the Celeron system should do the trick for the next few years. Again, depending on the type of graphics work and gaming you will do, will depend on how long this system will be useful to you.

-Vb-