I am trying to buy Toshiba satellite notebook computer. 
I use computer for just regular use such as Microsoft Office and
Internet browsing.
Assuming all other components are same (40G HDD, 512MB memory), and
price is same, which one should I buy?
I heard that Pentium M is better than Pentium 4, which is better than
Celeron, if you compare them at same clock speed. But if clock speed
are different, which one is faster? Celeron 2.6GHz, Pentium 4-M
2.2GHz, or Pentium M 1.3GHz?
If you have a converting table, it would be great too. 
Please do not give me those detailed test result which often appear on
many computer magazines which I don?t understand.
I know you may say I won't see much difference at this point, but I
may use this notebook for long time. It may cause a big difference
when I use Office 2006. If price is same, which one should I choose?

---

Request for Question Clarification by alienintelligence-ga on 28 Dec 2003 06:13 PST

Hi officedepot111,

Can you tell us what kind of 
"PC user" you are? 

Do you foresee being a "PowerUser"?

Are PC games in your future?

Will you be doing layout, graphics,
or video editing with this laptop?

When you run programs, are you the
type of person to have 2-3 programs
open and then close the ones you
aren't currently using... or do you
pile up 40-50 open applications at
once like I do? I like to have a 
good mix of Winamp running, at least
one remote control app, a billion
web windows, at least one office app
open, my notepad, email, ssh client,
ftp, mirc, cmd window, AIM, ActiveSync,
hmmm that's what I have open right
now, hehe.

A friend of mine has that exact Celeron
you are talking about. I personally
wouldn't own it... and if someone
would give me one, I'd sell it. But you
see how I use (abuse) my PC power. I have
the P4M chip in my Toshy laptop I'm using,
and even though it's slower than his,
once I load it up with open apps, his crawls
to a stop and mine still remains perky.
[Same memory size on both]

P4 and P4M issues are mainly heat and
battery life related.

-AI

Technically the clock speed is the only thing that should be
comparative, so the computer with the higher clock speed on the
processor will be the fastest, and will be able to run the best. 
However differnces in processor only occur because of running
capabilities on the computer, like it could handle higher image
resoultions, or better handling for games, or servers.  But still
overall the the clock speed is the only variable you should look at to
determine which on to buy.  So i would go with the 2.4 Ghz computer.

Actually, the clock speed of a processor does not determine the
computing power between different CPU types.  Each processor has a
different architecture and can improve the rate of instructions
processed.  (a couple basic techniques to increase processor speed are
better pipelining or having more memory cache.)  So, the best way to
determine the fastest processor is to look at some benchmarks. 
However, the performance of the benchmark is dependent upon the system
(the parts other than the cpu) and the benchmark program used.  Here
are some below:

A good comparison table and benchmark (desktop cpu?s):
http://www.tomshardware.com/cpu/20030217/cpu_charts-32.html#comparison_table

An AMD Benchmark:
http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_572_863%5E7227,00.html

Taken from http://www.cpuscorecard.com/cpu_comp.htm
Intel Pentium 4 3.0 GHz 	 	98% (D)
AMD Athlon MP 2800+ 			89% (D)
AMD Athlon MP 2600+ 			88% (C)
AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 			87% (D)
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 			86% (D)
AMD Athlon MP 2400+ 			83% (D)
AMD Athlon XP(B) 2800+ 			82% (D)
Intel Pentium 4-M 2.5 GHz 		81% (D)
Intel Pentium 4-M 2.4 GHz 		78% (D)
AMD Athlon XP 2500+ 			72% (D)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.7 GHz 	66% (D)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.6 GHz 	62% (E)
Intel Celeron 2.4 GHz 			59% (A)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.5 GHz 	58% (E)
Intel Celeron 2.3 GHz 			57% (D)
Intel (mobile) Celeron 2.2 GHz 		56% (D)
Intel Celeron 2.2 GHz 			54% (B)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.4 GHz 	54% (E)
Intel Celeron 2.1 GHz 			52% (D)
Intel (mobile) Celeron 2 GHz 		51% (E)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.2 GHz 	49% (D)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.3 GHz 	49% (E)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1.1 GHz 	41% (E)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 1 GHz 	37% (E)
Apple G3 800 				36% (E)
Intel (mobile) Celeron 1.26 GHz 	34% (D)
Intel Pentium-M (Centrino) 900 MHz 	32% (E)


Out of the three choices you listed, the P4-M 2.4 is probably the
best.  Keep in mind that other hardware can greatly improve
performance, like more RAM (and faster RAM) and a fast hard drive. 
Actually, if you can save money buying the 2.2 and spend it on more
RAM, that may be the better choice.

The pentium 4m 2.2 is going to be the fastest. The reason is that
although the celeron goes through more clock cycles per second, the P4
does more with each clock cycle. Due to the memory attributes of the
celeron line of processors, most of their clock cycles are spent
sitting around waiting for something to do, whereas the P4 actually
gets some work done on the majority of it's clock cycles. For this
reason, for most tasks a celeron will be 30-50% slower than a
similarly clocked P4. The other two options for processors are close
enough in how much work they get done per clock cycle that the extra
900mhz of the 2.2g P4m will clearly be faster than the 1.3ghz option.