Pansonic Y7 what's new?

I see the Panasonic Y7 is now available but there is not much changes. The hard drives have gone SATA but does that mean it now takes any 2.5" SATA drives without modification?

i.e. on the IDE drives you had to remove a pin to make it 3.3v instead of 5v.

What do you think of the Y7?

 

The Y5 uses standard 5V IDE drive - so 5V drives are not "new" on Y7, just the SATA part is new.

Y7 is fine, but seems a bit of a downgrade from Y5 - clock speed is less and so is battery life. You already had vista on the Y5M model - and you could already swap out the HDD on that model - its a piece of cake.

So I dont see what the progress is here. yes there is a Santa rosa chip in it and SATA, but how does that make it is it actually any better to use? I dont see it - only the opposite actually.

 

The Y7 has a Core 2 Duo L7300: 1.5GHz clock, 800MHz FSB and 4MB L2 cache.

The Y5 has a Core Duo L2400: 1.66GHz clock, 667MHz FSB and 2MB L2 cache.

As already noted, the Y7 has a SATA interface. Also, the Y7 seems more widely available with a base 1GB of RAM, whereas the only Y5s I can find for sale have 512MB base. So, effectively, the Y7 has a max RAM of 2GB, the Y5 only 1.5GB.

 

This is incorrect.

Like all models Panasonic, released the Y5 in several variants of the LV Core Duo chip. On each each new one, they slid up a bit faster in clock speed. I think it started at 1.5Ghz.

The Y5 clock speed progression ended at 1.83Ghz on the Y5M, which I own, so I know that much, for sure. On that Y5M model, Panny introduced Vista for the first time in the Y series as well, in addition to incrasing the VRAM allocation - probably also because of Vista.

This is also incorrect. The Y5M was offered in a base model that has 512MB soldered on the motherboard and a "Pro" model that came with 1GB soldered on the motherbaord.

Both of the above variants can accept a 1Gb Microdimm in the extra memory slot. You can do the math from there.

(The "pro" models are the ones hand-built to order by a single worker and they always come with standard 3 yr warranty. the base models are assembly line built for stock and come with 1 yr - but you can buy extra years of coverage year from the vendor if you tell them BEFORE you pay for the unit.)

 

Sorry, I should have been clear: I was referring to the U.S. spec Y5s above.