2Thick said:
How do they squeeze 2.4 gigs into a laptop?
It is in the Pentium 4 M which means it is designed for the mobile systems - although really it just means laptop - that chip isn't used in any handhelds (yet).
It uses the thin film technology that first started getting used in laptops with the regular Penitum around the late 90's if I recall correctly (97?).
The initial chips have thicker copper connections inside of them because that is while the design hasn't been fully optimized yet. Then, as they have sold those and the fabrication process is proving to work out, they bring down the copper thickness of the connections and the chip is then smaller and therefore runs cooler and therefore runs faster. It uses less materials, so it is cheaper as well for the manufactorer - the cost to make something has little to with selling price in a free market economy - it is instead dictated by what the consumer is willing to pay.
Intel has frequently been known to see that there is more deman for a lower-end processor, but it is currently making more high end processors - they will simply rebrand the high end processors to make up the demand for the lessor ones and then ship them out.
Also, all processors that they make of a certain type (P4 M for instance) are pretty much the same die. But if they don't meet the fastest/highest heat standards and have slight errors in them, as long as they still work at lower speeds and meet the requirements there, then they are branded as a lower speed one.
The thin film M chips look a lot like film out of a camera, but with lots of little lines on them. They give off much less heat, weigh much less, and are paper thing so they don't take up much space. They also use less power - and that combined with the power adjustments that it does when it sees that it is on a battery connection - they are great for laptops.
They are usually slightly slower in processor speed since that will allow them to run cooler, but they make up for that slower clock speed by having more L2 cache - which means that they in the end are as fast or faster than desktop systems with high clock speeds but less Lvel 2 cache (where it temporarily stores data that it is bouncing back and forth between RAM).
The P4 M doesn't have hyperthreading though.
If you guys want good deals on brand name laptops, you can get them refurbished at
www.Ubid.com and get great deals (it is an auction setup - they are all essentially brand new systems because the company has fixed whatever was wrong with them).
Or if you want to get a cheap laptop that isn't brand name - got to
www.powernotebooks.com - they are a distributor of Sager - a Chinese company that makes nearly all of the laptops out there. Brand name companies just approach them and have it branded with their name on it.
HP/Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, Alienware, etc - they all just go through Sager. Apple used to, but doesn't anymore - and not every laptop that a company will offer will be from them.
The stuff is decent quality and very cheap in price.
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
