Is this a good deal?... Can you beat it?

Bard

Laptop computer:

1.1Ghz Celeron, 256Mb RAM, 30Gb HDD, DVD/CDRW combo drive, 14.1" TFT screen, 56k Modem, WindowsME, Works Suite 2001 Floppy drive, Keyboard, etc.

- all for £1,399 (€1776)

Good price?

Can you beat it?

Clinical Waste

laptop, compaq ultra light and slim Pentium III 900mhz, just €1,100

Laptop Compaq EVO400c,
Ultra thin,
ultra light,
1 kilogramme,
windows xp professional, Office XP professional, network card and 56k modem, 20GB HD, 256MB RAM, Pentium III 900mhz, new, under compaq 3 year warrenty, cdrom, floppy.

This is for sale in the classified section , so I'd say you can beat it

Bard

ah- I don't want WindowsXP and don't care what software comes with it- I'll be zapping the HD and reinstalling Win2K Pro myself.

That system you quoted, Clinical Waste, doesn't come with a DVD drive or CD Rewriter, it's got a 200Mhz (approx) slower processor and (10Gb) smaller HDD, so it's hardly a comparison.

SickBoy

I'd rather have the 900Mhz PIII then the 1.1Ghz Celeron.

azezil

Originally posted by SickBoy
I'd rather have the 900Mhz PIII then the 1.1Ghz Celeron.

Likewise, the difference in performance between the pentium and celeron is staggering.

Clinical Waste

Exactly dear Boy(?)

Much cheaper and yet so much more powerful.

And all you lose is 10Gb of HDD you will probably never use.

Buy a DVD or CDRW with some of the money you save.

Kali

aye for €600 cheaper i'd go with what he's offering there as well.. i mean the dvd/cdrw combo aint worth that much..
just as a sidepoint though, i'm pretty sure the p3 would be a lot hotter than the celeron (despite its higher speed), so if you like your legs toasty it could be a bonus

astrofool

what people aren't saying is that the newest .13 micron celerons are in fact PIII's with a 100mhz bus, and as all laptops use a 100mhz bus anyway....

SickBoy

what people aren't saying is that the newest .13 micron celerons are in fact PIII's with a 100mhz bus

Don't you mean castrated P3's?
They have less L2 cache & have a higher L2 cache latency. They are far from P3's restricted to a 100Mhz FSB.

and as all laptops use a 100mhz bus anyway....

That's not right

Clinical Waste

You couldn't get any better advice than this!
Virtually unanimous.

Bard

The slightly lower speed of the Celeron chip doesn't bother me... the DVDROM/CDRW drive is an essential part of the package.

I think I may yet go for it.

... won't be using it for games, btw...

Clinical Waste

...whatever.

po0k

Posted by Clinical Waste:
And all you lose is 10Gb of HDD you will probably never use.

You have no idea how important it is to get the biggest disk you can get.
Especially with a laptop, that space can hold about 13 DivXes for those long train journeis or even a blast of futurama episodes for the bus ride to work.

A 1.1Ghz Celeron would (I imagin) use less power due to it's 0.13 process (unless the P3 is a .13 um too) which could be all important.
Laptops are not compared in the dame way Desktops are.
Weight, ergronomics, features and battery life will matter as much, if not mroe, then the sheer MIPS performance of the machine.

On a slightly different note:
Trackpad, stud or ball??

astrofool

good laptops come with a stud and trackpad.

the new celeron's ARE PIII's cache wise, 256k, 8 way associative etc.

the PIII line is being phased out, because the pentium IV is there, it's easier running with 2 product lines than 3, PIII's are really only sold with server's nowadays.

Most laptops use a 100 bus because the power consumption is less, the Duron laptops use a 100DDR bus.

Some heavier desktop replacement model's might have a 133 bus, but often these also use desktop chips in them, not mobile.

a .13 micron processor is FAR greater than a .18 micron one in the world of mobiles.

what chipset are mobiles using these days? an adapted 815, or still with a modified BX ?

po0k

The Coppermine P3s were basically Celeron2s with the SSE instruction set. Cache ran at chip speed as opposed to the origional Katmai P3s which had double the cache running at half the speed which made overclocking a pain because of synchronisation problems.

In fairness a cheap light laptop with 600Mhz under its hood, 100Mbit NIC, decent layout and a nice big hard drive are all I'd need.

Prehaps Bard has other uses besides runnign PiFast

Gerry

The celeron 1.1ghz comes in 2 forms.

1 is based on the p3 coppermine, except with half the l2 cache disabled and a higher l2 cache latency. This chip would indeed be slower than a 900mhz p3 for most applications.

The other is referred to as the celeron 1.1A, and is a completely different and much faster chip.

The A signifies that it is a 0.13 micron 'tualatin' core processor.

This is a p3 tualatin chip, seemingly the exact same, though the specs say it has a higher cache latency.

http://www.xbitlabs.com/cpu/celeron-1200/

in this excellent review, xbit compare the celeron 'tualatin' running at 7.5 * 133 ( 1 ghz ) to a p3 coppermine running at 7.5 * 133 (also 1ghz ).

The celeron is faster, because of the data prefetch in the tualatin core.

Laptops have moved to an i815 chipset now, for the mobile tualatin chips.

The bx is still widely used up for chips up to 1ghz.

syxpak, your post makes little sense.

The celeron2 was a derivative of the p3 coppermine (see above)
and as such also has sse.

The problem with katmai p3's was that the cache couldn't run much faster than 300mhz without problems, it was still perfectly in sync with the core though... ?

astrofool

cache on the katmai's ran at half speed of the core, on the athlon 1000mhz slot A, cache ran at 1/3 the core

Gerry

yes, but it was still synchronised with the core, much as I hate to be pedantic.

astrofool

sync'd as in every second clock cycle, tho i'm sure the definition of synced means to be at the same frequency, and not just a derivitive of it, after all it could go sync in clock, sync in clock, miss, and be a 2/3 frequency, if you want to be pedantic of course

the pentium pro had a seperate cache chip, beside the core itself which ran at chip speed, this was also the reason that they were so expensive.

PII-Klamatch and Deschutes and PIII Katmai all had cache at half frequency, like the Original SlotA athlons did, the circuit board was only used as a way to fit all the chips onto the one package, which is why they went back toe the socket when they integrated the cache, and the socket could also be the future for vga "cards" when they start embedding the RAM on the chip

Gerry

indeed, though I'd imagine that each graphics card maker will be pushing their own proprietry socket to motherboard makers, I can't see a common standard emerging.

astrofool

look how fast AGP caught on?

make the fast standard, they will come, remember the AGP port is limited in pins, all the connectors on a card are between gpu and RAM, put them together and the number of connectors needed drops dramatically, just need a high quality filter standard for the DVI port (yea DVI, can be used for analogue as well :P)

Much easier to cool as cpu type coolers could be used, and a super fast bus could be used (hypertransport mebbe?)

Gerry

sure, if intel/amd or some other big industry player pushes it, I just don't see that happening for a while.

Macker

A few auctions ending today
http://www.ebid.ie/asp/breaker.asp?func=5&cat=110

Macker

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Niall I'm buying a new laptop in the next week or so from Dell, and I'm pretty sure you could get the spec you are after with them in that price range.

Just log on and configure one of the "Inspiron" models and you should find what you want. The reason I'm buying from them is that they will configure it for me to work on the UCD network and also the worldwide support, which I may need (and peace of mind).

Just a bit of advice: Make sure you go through their special promotion URL's becuase I've noticed a difference in price if you don't...ie 5% !!

www.dell.ie/tv
www.dell.ie/sale
www.dell.ie/discount

[there may be a few more special url's]

Bard

Saw your message too late, 80p... have bought a laptop.

Spec's as above (in first post) but also got a 10/100 NIC and they gave me a further €100 off the price plus 5 years extended warranty (its now insured against ANYTHING) for the price of 3.

It f3ckin' boots along nicely, - wonderful little machine, - loads of RAM, nice and fast, nice big HDD... lovely

I'm happy with my purchase anyway,...

b20uvkft6m5xwg

Ah no worries....
As long as your happy:)

BTW, where did you get eventually buy it and what are the specs if you dont mind!

Bard

Originally posted by 80project

BTW, where did you get eventually buy it and what are the specs if you dont mind!

Specs are as seen in the first post above - PLUS a 10/100 Network Interface Card.

Got it in Dixons in the Pavillions in Swords.

b20uvkft6m5xwg

See them now:)

I want to have a chat on a few tech issues actually, I mail you in the next day or so!

Bard

Originally posted by 80project
See them now:)

I want to have a chat on a few tech issues actually, I mail you in the next day or so!

Feel free...!

Also I'm free any day during the week apart from Wed, Sat and Sun - to meet up in town for pints... er... I mean ... IOFFL business

buddy

Originally posted by SyxPak

You have no idea how important it is to get the biggest disk you can get.
Especially with a laptop, that space can hold about 13 DivXes for those long train journeis or even a blast of futurama episodes for the bus ride to work.

A 1.1Ghz Celeron would (I imagin) use less power due to it's 0.13 process (unless the P3 is a .13 um too) which could be all important.
Laptops are not compared in the dame way Desktops are.
Weight, ergronomics, features and battery life will matter as much, if not mroe, then the sheer MIPS performance of the machine.

On a slightly different note:
Trackpad, stud or ball??

Sorry, slightly off subject, do you or anyone know where someone might download some Futurama Episodes!!!

PiE

Slightly?!

(Morpheus, Kazaa, eDonkey...)