How much differences does Centrino make

[reltor]

I am looking at a 1.7 pentium M T-42 type 2373 with everything I want. I am concerned about battery life, since this is not a centrino computer. Should I be, I do not have much practical experience with laptops.

I would like to have 8 hours of use with two batteries minimum. Would a T42 in a non centrino config do this?

[jongordo8]

yes battery life will be no different centrino/non centrino. To be considered centrino you have to have Intel's wireless card, so if you have the IBM card it is considered not centrino. Many on here will argue that the IBM is a better card, therefore they elect to go that route. The big thing is to ensure that you have a pentium m processor.

You should be able to get 8hrs with 2 batteries, as long as you keep the settings low.

[brainpicker]

I am looking at a 1.7 pentium M T-42 type 2373 with everything I want. I am concerned about battery life, since this is not a centrino computer. Should I be, I do not have much practical experience with laptops.

I would like to have 8 hours of use with two batteries minimum. Would a T42 in a non centrino config do this?

I agree with the previous poster who said Centrino or not you should be fine with a 2 battery setup, especially if it's a 9-cell as the main battery and an Ultrabay Slim battery as your second. With conservative settings and some tweaks here and there I've been fine for well over 8 hours using that setup. I now use X41's for travel though as I'm not as strong as I once was.

You'll be fine. Enjoy it.

Yak

[davidspalding]

I get roughly 5-6 hours on my Pentium M 760 with a 6-cell batt and the UltraSlim junior battery. (The smaller only gives about 1/2 of what the 6-cell does.) Thats with BT and Wifi on, readin', writin', and stuff.

Some links for FYI:

http://www.intel.com/products/centrino/prodbrief.pdf
http://www.intel.com/performance/resour ... nology.pdf

[reltor]

Thanks so far everyone, you are making my purchase more confident.

[stangri]

yes battery life will be no different centrino/non centrino. To be considered centrino you have to have Intel's wireless card, so if you have the IBM card it is considered not centrino.

Centrino is an Intel platform for mobile computing. You can have a number of different mini-PCI cards installed and it'd still be Centrino. Centrino platform was built for the Pentium-M processor which is *drammatically* different from a competative Intel's Pentium 4 processor in power consumption.

I haven't checked IBM site lately and not even sure of the T42 comes with the Pentium 4 (instead of Pentium M), but IBM or not if you want the longer battery life -- get a Pentium M/Centrino, if you want more powerful CPU and will mainly use your laptop plugged in -- get the Pentium 4.

[christopher_wolf]

To my knowledge, no T Series comes with a P4; Those were put on the G Series.

[jongordo8]

Stangirl might be confused...to be considered centrino you must have intel wireless card. So yes there are several options (2100, 2200, or 2915), but if it is the IBM atheros, cisco, or anything other than intel wireless it is not centrino. It is a gimmick and a marketing ploy more than anything. The big thing is to have a pentium M processor in your computer. Like the previous poster stated, the pentium m is all that came in the T40 series, so no worries there.

For ultimate battery life use the power manager and Notebook Hardware Control. Using a 6 cell (that is basically new) and just doing normal web browsing/ word processing I get 5 hours battery life, and mine is not "centrino."

[davidspalding]

To my knowledge, no T Series comes with a P4; Those were put on the G Series.

You're talking about the 40s ...? Looks to me like all the T30s came with P4-M chips.

[christopher_wolf]

Yes, sorry, the T4X Series.

[dr_st]

Looks to me like all the T30s came with P4 chips.

P4-M! Not P4! There is a big difference.

[RS_003]

Indeed.

A P4-M could make 3 hours on one batt, while a P4 at same speed could only do 1 tot 1.5 hours.

Atleast with the Crane laptops we use at my school (but afcourse I did not buy one )

[GomJabbar]

I almost made the same reply as davidspalding, but I double-checked the T30 with the G40 and I saw the difference. The G40 being an Intel Pentium 4 processor.

There is also a difference between the T30 - Intel Mobile Pentium 4 M, and the T40 - Intel Mobile Pentium M. It can get confusing.

[davidspalding]

Looks to me like all the T30s came with P4 chips.

P4-M! Not P4! There is a big difference.

Oh! Yes! Okay, okay!

[stangri]

Stangirl might be confused...

the name is stangri, talk about being confused

to be considered centrino you must have intel wireless card.

I retract my earlier comment what I should have said is:

Centrino is an Intel platform for mobile computing. You can have a number of different mini-PCI cards installed but it'd still be the same functionality. Centrino platform was built for the Pentium-M processor which is *drammatically* different from a competative Intel's Pentium 4 processor in power consumption.

Indeed Intel has included their own WiFi cards into the platform "description" (I would assume so that the power management features of the WiFi card are on par with the power management features of the rest of the platform), and their marketing efforts for pushing their own WiFi cards paid off, although one might argue the practicality of this definition.

A (not too far fetched I hope) analogy: while in court Microsoft could have defined the Windows XP as the OS with many features and the Windwows Media Player included -- to me the Windows XP is still Windows XP even without the Media Player.

Technically tho, jongordo8 is correct; in reality -- at least with Windows you get same features with any mini-PCI card in, Intel or not.

Another statement I made earlier (before the news of the Centrino Duo got to me) might also need correction now -- maybe the new Intel Core Duo CPU (part of the new Centrino platform) will be on par or even beat the Pentium 4 in terms of performance.