Question:
Celeron M
Being only in 10th grade, and being somewhat short on cash, I'm forced to buy into the value notebook range. Also, I at once asked for gateway gift cards for christmas, and received them. So at this point I am limited to purchasing a gateway laptop. I'm deciding between the M210 and the M320 series, but with both, an upgrade to a 1.6ghz P. M is rather expensive (like 200$), so I wanted to know if any of you guys had an idea of quality of the Celeron M processor (1.5ghz), and could give me an idea of the margin in performance between the M and Celeron M. Also, feel free to leave any notes on either of the afformentioned gateway laptops if you own one of them.
Thanks a ton,
ben
Answer:
Well, you haven't told us about what you want to do with the notebook, so it's hard to advise on processor. For most users the Celeron will be fine. Tell us more...
Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com
Answer:
Sorry about being vague in the earlier post, but concerning what i'll use that laptop for, I would say mosty office documents, a lot of internet surfing, but only mild gaming (occasional Roller Coaster Tycoon 3). Another concern of mine is that I heard that the Celeron M lacks a certain power-saving feature, resulting in lower battery life. If anyone knows more about this, some added info would be great. Right now im considering the following:
M320CS w/ 512mb ram upgrade?, 15" XGA upgrade ($1000-200mir=$800)
M210CS w/ 512mb ram upgrade?, Ultrabright upgrade ($1000)
Lastly, I most likely would upgrade ram to 512mb, but would it be crucial for just internet surfing, MS office, and only a bit of gaming?
Answer:
I read somewhere, maybe www.tomshardware.com or something like that, they did a comparison between a Celeron M and a Centrino M, and said dollar-for-dollar, you are better off getting a Celeron M and a spare battery, the Celeron's battery life is about 30-35% less than a Centrino, but the cost difference is a lot.
Just be sure it's a Celeron M and not a straight Celeron, there ARE some of them still floating around.
I was all sold on a Centrino, and now I'm totally sold on the AMD64 Athlon Mobile processor.
Some questions are, how long do you want it to last ? What if you drop it in a year ? Will you be upgrading to a new one in 2,3,4 years ? Are onboard graphics good enough ? Will you watch DVD movies with it ?
The last thing I will say is, you will hear from devout people on which brand is good, which one is bad, and you will hear many stories going both ways, you just need to make a decision and buy one.
Answer:
I agree with brian,
The celeron M will be slower than the Pentium M, but it really depends on what you will be doing with the notebook as to if you would even notice a differnce. If your just running office applications like word or excel, email and sufing the internet you won't notice any slowdown by using the celeron. Even if your a gamer it probably won't affect much as it's the GPU that determines gaming performance. It will affect your compile times if your a programmer or other programs that require a lot of numerical computation fro the CPU.
Jack
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security" (Ben Franklin)
http://pbase.com/joneill
Answer:
Yes, but as we have seen with the ongoing battle between AMD and Intel at the top-end, the CPU is also very important to maximizing the gaming experience, especially those which are more CPU-limited. A Celeron M is a decent choice for office apps and surfing, but gaming is going to be quite limited by the CPU. I don't think that Gateway sells Athlon XP or Sempron CPU notebooks (I think they are limited to the eMachines division), but, if one could be found, I would go with AMD in this situation. At the lower price point, the performance is considerably better, and at a low cost to overall battery life.
Answer:
And on the memory issue, you need 512MB, that's a baseline with Windows XP. Look at www.crucial.com for likely a better price than the manufacturer will offer.
Editor in Chief http://www.bargainPDA.com and http://www.SPOTstop.com
Answer:
It should be fine. I have a Celeron M processor and I love it. However, occasionally it will slow-down in some situations. But, it offers great battery life (I usually get 3 1/2 to 4+ hours per charge), and when it is plugged in (laptop) it runs just as fast as my Pentium 4 desktop does. It is a great processor. I was somewhat worried that it would be really slow; but, it is completly the opposite.
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