ZDNet has reviewed two of the latest top of the range Intel 1.7GHz P4-M notebooks from Sony and Dell and has found performance to be disappointing for both models when running mainstream productivity applications. Business Winstone 2001 was used to obtain these results. What was really surprising in this test was that both machines were slower than an earlier Dell model that was running an Intel 1.13GHz PIII-M processor. That's a 570MHz difference! Shouldn't Intel be advertising a performance degradation warning? Performance with content-creation applications was better than the PIII-M machine, but not compelling. With the latest mobile graphics processors, both models gave excellent graphics performance.
Other speed grades will be available at 1.4GHz, 1.5GHz and 1.6GHz. It should be obvious why Intel launched its P4-M at 1.7GHz. If Intel had launched with the 1.4GHz model, business productivity performance would have deteriorated from being merely disappointing to very poor which would have tarnished its launch. Those who buy notebooks for business productivity performance should give these products a wide birth.
