Travelmate 8204 or Ferarri 4006?

unless you plan on running Windows X64 and have some dire reason that you need 64bit right now, go with the travelmate 8204... it has a faster and a larger hard drive (sata vs ide) a better video card (x1600 vs x700) probably a faster processor for 32bit computing, better battery life, and a built-in camera.... as of right now, i think its the better machine for 32bit computing... but i think the ferrari 4200 will be quite impressive when it comes out half a year from now (?) and hopefully with taylor....

At the end of the year Merom arrives with Intel 64bit....I wonder how Acer positions the Ferrari then?

probably in the same place they put the ferrari now, AMD is a sponsor of the Ferrari racing team so the ferrari notebook will have a AMD cpu untill they stop sponsoring the ferrari. And i think that this years end the dual core turions will have been out for a month or maybe two. so we'll have the same arguments now, just with two cpu cores

Easy, Acer will just throw in a Ferarri T-shirt along with a new BT mouse and a BT keyboard. The new 4200 will sell like hotcakes...

It depends on what you do...

I have about 240 episodes of Friends and 51 Fullmetal Alchemist to rip. Quite frankly, I won't be trying this on my PowerBOok. So, i'm waiting for my new Acer Dual Core 2Ghz notebook to pick up where PB left off. I saw many benchmarks that the encoding process is cut short by 50%, not to mention I can encode and work on other stuff without compromising performance.

The TM8204 is a new generation of product, the Ferrari was at the top of the previous generation. Dont worry though there will be an updated dual core Ferrari with upgraded graphics sooner or later.

I seriously doubt that Merom will be much if any better than the Turion X2 that AMD should offer. Actualy if you look at Intel's recent history of problems with new chip designs, Prescott, Itanium, Williamette, The 1+ ghz P-III that had to be pulled back off the market because it was faulty. I would not be shocked of Merom had some serious issues that don't get worked out untill the next generation of Intel chips.

... thats what the Turion X2's will do to Merom

i have a feeling that meron and taylor will be quite comparable, just as the pentium m and the turion are.

well we can all be hopeful

I guess you purposely forgot all the successful Intel chip designs.

Wake up, Merom's an improved Yonah which is looking quite nice in its own right already.

Yeah. All the misgivings one would have about the Prescott, Itanium (which is a completely different situation), Willamette...and the 1.13ghz Pentium 3 (you're going waaaaaaaay back...)

Those have been countered by: Northwood, Tualatin, the entire Pentium -M line.

For a rather long while, a Northwood B (and C) were outpacing the Athlon XPs they went up against.



While I'm more than happy to admit that intel's only decent CPU is the Pentium-M line, it's not like they've screwed this line up. I highly DOUBT that Merom will be a problem. Only issue I can foresee is a socket change, which they said there won't be.


Having owned the Ferrari 4005 (I sold it for a 2.13ghz Centrino based T43), and owning a dual Opteron 254 tower...I can't wait for the Merom vs Turion x2 showdown. I've never been displeased with the Pentium Ms...the Turion, I'd have been happier if I had an MT so I'd get decent battery life (coming from a system that got 6 hours to 3 hours...I'm glad I'm back at the 6 hours)

I did not mean to imply that merom would suck, though I would not be shocked to see some issues, since it is intended to be the merging point between the PM and P4 lines, IE no more net burst, no more P4 as we know it, Actualy from Intel's recent marketing whispers no more Pentium Brand name.

Anyways AMD is looking pretty ambitious with Taylor, It seems they are talking March (hoped for Q1) launch, with launch speeds of 2.2 ~ 2.6 ghz, and a 35 watt TDP based on .90-nm SOI and DDR II 667 support. If AMD can deliver a 2.6 ghz Turion X2, in the next few months I would Imagine that to be a problem for Intel.

Amd also states they will be switched over to a .65nm strained germanium process they devloped with IBM by the end of this year. They claim a 40% reduction in power useage compared to "competing .65 nm processes" IBM has said that chips could scale to "well over 6 ghz" using their process.

So just a hypothetical here, but even if Merom is good, how would you expect it to stack up to say a 3.6~4.5 ghz Turion/Athlon X2?

This year should be interesting, Looks like we have the potential for some big clock speed gains that we have not seen in some time.

Well Itanium was a first instance of new Intel Tech, they bombed it, then (questionably) fixed it later, the 1.13 ghz Pentium 3 was well just desperation so I wont count it, Willamette was the first instance of the new P4, Intel blew it, Fixed it with Northwood, then tried to graft additional features onto it while switching over to a new manufacturing process and blew it with Prescott. The common thread was Intel has been blowing it when they try to make a significant change to a product, or launch a new one a lot recently, and Merom is going to be another significant change/new product.

i may be mistaken, but im almost positive that windows vista is going to be 64-bit based. (logically, why take a step back after xp x64?) anyway, the way i see it is that it would be a more reasonable investment to invest in the ferrari because it will be more expandable in the long run due to the expansion of 64-bit tech. sure, it may not be the fastest technology after the 64-bit x2 amd processor comes out, but if you are looking for a computer to do general work on, i would go with the ferrari.

Vista will have both 32 and 64 bit versions

Sorry but I wouldn't say that Prescott was "waaaay back".

What we see today is the lack of dualcore server chip from Intel and also lack of 64 bit support in notebook with chips from Intel and AMD gaining market share.

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Yeah, theoretically 2 cores can do 2 times more than single core. However you need softwara that can effectivelly use them. Existing games can hardly benefit from the second core.

errrr yeah.....

make mine a double

amd that is hehehe

actually, the waaaay back comment was regarding the 1.13ghz Coppermine.

Yeah, it was a bad release...but I've had enough 1.2ghz + Tualatin P3s to overlook it.

Anyway. I'm holding onto my IBM T43 after all. 2.13ghz Dothan. It will last me for years...I will skip the 8204 and hold off for the Tualatin dual cores. Hopefully they get Pacfica. If so...my dual opteron tower is going bye bye (assuming Pacifica's Virtual PC enhancements are worth a damn)..

Okay we've got a dual core server chip from Intel already and AMD had essentially no notebook market share before Turion. I'd hope they're gaining market share.

I mean come on guys, AMD's got some great products right now, but some of this info you're putting out is just..... Don't let technology blind you to the real world.