Packard Bell W1801 - Celeron M - Any good?

So is the Celeron M really any different to the Pentium M? I heard that it has the same characteristics as the P-M. One of the mates in my college IT course is looking to buy a new laptop and he asked me to ask you about this laptop. He does not want to game on the laptop as he has a PS2 and a PSP so he just needs a laptop for basic Wireless internet viewing, programming and website development, as well as the usual MS Office tasks. He also wants a 17" screen laptop, i recommended this one to him.

So would this be ideal for him?

http://www.packardbell.co.uk/product...c00101-47.html
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anyone help me???

 

Celeron sucks do not buy it. Its very slow.

 

Celeron's are a barebones version of the Pentium. They lack a lot of important features like the ability to dynamically adjust their clock speed and all the power/battery saving features. They also have smaller cache's. In a laptop you should avoid them unless you need to go absolutely minimal (in which event you probably shouldn't be buying a laptop).

And I had no idea Packard Bell was still around. My old 486 computer was a Packard Bell. I thought they went out of business.

 

Sempron is a better budget CPU.

 

SAME HERE! LOL. From what I remember, didn't HP buy out Packard Bell? Or actually, Packard Bell merged with another company and became Hewlett Packard. I can still remember the packard bell logo though: that one boy.

But yah.... celeron, not good. Not good at all. Im pretty certain if you look at the right places, you can get a decently priced Pentium M, especially with the introduction of Core Duos.

 

Packard Bell is a huge company that sells all over the world. Its niche market is Western Europe where it sells most of its products and have been doing so for many years.

In Europe and USA, Packard Bell is in partnership with NEC Elecronics.
I have provided a map to where packard bell sell their products
http://www.packardbell.com/company/companyworld.htm

 

No, Packard Bell simply closed up shop in the U.S. back in the 80's, but there was no buy out. The Packard name is purely coincidence and has no relation at all with HP. They are both very old, seperate companies.

And I second zazonz recommendation that if your friend must go budget, get the Sempron. I noticed on the site you linked to that they had different versions of the same machine featuring both processors.

 

Unfortunately the other versions or this computer (Sempron W3301 and Turion64 W3240) are now discontinued products that are no longer avilable to the UK.

The new model of the Easynote W series is the Celeron W1801 which is the only one available.

 

The Celeron M's are great CPU's they'll perform clock for clock with the more expensive Pentium M's -despite the L2 handicap. The only real issue is Enhanced SpeedStep which is what Dragon_Myr touched on. If the computer is only on battery for about 2 hours or less than it's not needed. Also since most people keep thier Laptops plugged in >90% of the time it's only a small benefit.

 

Hm, appears you're right. That seems kind of silly. Wonder why they haven't taken it down from the UK site yet?

 

how did you find out for yourself - it doesn't say that they are discontinued on the website

 

Nope, it closed operations in the U.S around 2000-2001, I had a Packard Bell desktop of theirs from 1998, it was okay, just mediocre.

 

Ok im not so worried about Packard Bell's past, could we just stick to the subject in hand, and help to evaluate this laptop please.
Thanks

 

http://www.anandtech.com/mobile/showdoc.aspx?i=2625&p=4

The most interesting item? The V2000 Celeron M notebook offered significantly better battery life than its Sempron counterpart, the V2000Z, in all aspects. We were particularly shocked in how much better the V2000 did in the wireless web browsing tests when compared to the V2000Z. The same performance, but significantly better battery life? We at least found which of the three Compaqs that you should choose.