Intel's Centrino Duo and Pro, featuring draft-n WiFi and Core 2 Duo, are the rage of the morning. The fact is that it's a incremental, inconsequential upgrade, with PC World saying that "it doesn't establish tremendous new performance records," and the most exciting speculation centering on whether Apple will bother. We reviewed Lenovo's T61 this morning and complained about the price.
New CPUs seeing the light of day include the 2.4 GHz T7700 and the 2.2 GHz T7500 Core 2 Duo mobiles, with the 2 GHz T7300 and 1.8 GHz T7100 for budget models. The pokey 1.8 GHz model also has half the cache, at 2MB. All are fabricated at 65nm, with the platform around it offering an 800 MHz front-side bus, 802.11n, gigabit ethernet and what Intel claims is "significantly improved" GPU, the Mobile 965 Express.
Some manufacturers are prepping laptops for release over the summer, but today sees a small cohort of day 1 releases. At the top of the pile, there's the HP Pavilion HDXfor about $3k and Sony's $2k+ Blu-Ray-equipped VAIO VGN-FZ100. Acer's Gemstone has a nice, number-free name, but there are also the likes of Dell's D830, D630 and D430 Latitudes, Toshiba's latest, Japan-only Qosmios, Lenovo's ThinkPad T61, and less monstrous Sonys such as the 13.3" SZ-series to think of. Toshi has western models in the Tecras, but they're all boring and businessy compared to the Qos.
Gizmodo picks the Asus W7S and Fujitsu LifeBook T4120 Tablet PC as its favorites. I don't like the LifeBook for its underpowered specs, but be warned: the more capable E8410 model lacks draft-n WiFi.
Need more? Gateway has its newest E-series models, the E475M and E265M, and desktops will get similar new kits, too, such as HP's cheapie newcomer, the Pavilion dv9500t.
My money would be on the Vaio FZ, if I wasn't being sensible and waiting for Penryn.
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