M/Turion vs. Celeron/Semperon

Duffman

A friend wants to buy a laptop with a budget of €1000. He'll mainly be using it for web surfing, watching movies and storing music. Definitely no gaming.

At the moment I'm looking at getting one from Dell IE/US or buying one in a US store. The €1000 limit isn't very flexible so the options seem to be decent storage etc with a Celeron/Semperon or a basic Pentium M/Turion but with crappy onboard gfx.

The prices of the Celerons/Semperons are obviously lower but I'm fairly prejudiced against them. I've never owned one but any celeron lappys I've seen have seemed kinda crap.

So Q is, is it really worth shelling out for the Turion / M for the purposes above? Will it make any difference? I'd never buy one but think it'll be ok for him?

aidan_dunne

Well, if all they're going to be doing is, as you said, web surfing, watching movies and storing music then there's not a thing wrong with a Celeron. The Celeron's seemed to have improved a good bit the past year or two and the Celeron M's you find in laptops are more than up to the tasks you outlined.

I bought a laptop back in August (Acer) just for doing the things you mentioned as well as office stuff and burning CDs/DVDs. Bought it for €899. Had no plans to use it for gaming at all, just the basic everyday crap, so a fairly basic model was all I was looking for. It has a Celeron M and it does everything I've thrown at it more than adequately. And in fact, despite the fact it has onboard graphics, I can still play older games fine as well. Wouldn't want to go trying Half Life 2 or anything like that on it but for the older stuff I play, it runs fine. Battery life isn't fantastic (between 1 and 2 hours usually, depending on what I'm doing) but if you're really worried about battery life or are going to be using it on the road, so to speak, a lot then you'd be plumping for something like a Centrino anyway.

Otherwise, as long as you're sure games won't be an issue with your friend or they're going to be encoding hours and hours of video or anything really intensive like that (and they're not too bothered about battery life), I'd have no problem recommending a Celeron M.

vishal

a laptop in my opinion is just that, it should be protable, light weight and have good batery life. it should not be a desktop replacement imho. that is why i would recomend a pentium m with crappy graphics. celerons are just slow, but maybe i too am prejudiced against them

aidan_dunne

vishal wrote:

a laptop in my opinion is just that, it should be protable, light weight and have good batery life. it should not be a desktop replacement imho. that is why i would recomend a pentium m with crappy graphics. celerons are just slow, but maybe i too am prejudiced against them

I think you, and many others, are too prejudiced against them. The early Celerons were a complete joke but Intel seems to have improved them a lot, as I said, the past year or so. A year or two ago I would have dismissed a Celeron processor as well but I think a lot of people seem to be basing their opinions of the current crop of Celeron's on their experiences with the older models which is a completely wrong thing to do. As I said above, if all you want is a basic machine that will do the everyday tasks mentioned and you'll only be using it away from your desktop the odd time or for short periods of time, the current batch of Celeron M's are fine. If you have heavier requirements (gaming, video encoding, etc.) or need longer battery life, then you'll go for a Pentium M/Centrino jobby. But you can't just dismiss Celerons based on what the older ones were like or because "I read somewhere/a mate told me they're crap." For someone working on a tight budget who only wants a basic machine, they're fine, and I have no trouble recommending one based on my own personal experience now.

Remember, each person's requirements for a laptop and budget is different and it's all about weighing up the pros and cons, working out what you want to use it for and how much you're willing or have to spend.