This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by Jared Richardson. Original Post: Dual core laptops are imminent, Apple and otherwise Feed Title: Jared's Weblog Feed URL: http://www.jaredrichardson.net/blog/index.rss Feed Description: Jared's weblog. The web site was created after the launch of the book "Ship It!" and discusses issues from Continuous Integration to web hosting providers. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by Jared Richardson Latest Posts From Jared's Weblog

In a previous blog entry I speculated on the possibility of Apple announcing dual core laptops at MacWorld (next week).

Here are a few more rumors and a little information slipped in. :)

Intel is now shipping Yonah chips. There is one single core version (T1300) but the rest are dual-core (T2600, T2500, T2400 and T2300). See The Register for a good write up.

Next, Acer has a dual core laptop in the wings and it looks VERY NICE. A 2 gigahertz dual core CPU, 2 gigs of RAM, and, get this, 512 meg of ram on the video card!! I'm surprised the disk drive in only 120 gig at 5400 rpm. That's a slow drive... but with 2 gigs of RAM, you cache everything anyway. Check it out on Notebook Review.

NEC has announced a dual-core laptop, but the release doesn't seem like it'll be here until second quarter.

Another dual-core is allegedly available from Widow PC, but it's a monster laptop with a base price around $3,500 and is designed as a gaming machine, not a mass-market, lightweight laptop.

Be sure to visit OSx86.org, the article that got me rolling tonight.

It seems that the dreams of countless geeks, to have dual CPUs in their laptop will be a reality. I realize it's not quite the same of a full-blown dual CPU for some memory intensive tasks. But, in my experience, my wife's dual core AMD 3800+ chip holds it own against my dual Opterons system. It's just as response in every way. I think this will redefine the multiprocessor experience for all the people who insist it doesn't make things any faster if the application is still threaded (as most apps are). They'll realize the rest of the OS and all their background apps, like anti-virus scanners, are on that second processor, leaving you work in a pure, clean, and most importantly, responsive environment.

My prediction for 2006? As long as they are priced reasonably, they'll fly off the shelves.

Enjoy!

Jared