From: Eleanor McHugh <eleanor@...>
Date: 2009-10-22T03:57:35+09:00
Subject: Re: Something portable for development purposes

On 20 Oct 2009, at 08:37, Brian Candler wrote:
> A friend of mine has the Dell Mini 9 and is very happy with it for  
> light
> Rails development. It's no longer available, having been replaced by  
> the
> Mini 10v, but that's still cheap and light, and you can buy it without
> the Windows tax.
>
> I have an old Thinkpad X30 which I'm very happy with, modulo some
> problems with battery charging. I'd be interested to hear how its
> processor (Pentium Mobile 1.2GHz) compares performance-wise with the
> current crop of Notebook processors (e.g. Atom 1.6GHz)

I have an X31 with the 1.4GHz Banias Pentium-M and I don't notice a  
huge difference between it and the Atom 1.6GHz for general computing.  
The Pentium-M has a larger cache, but that's offset by the Atom having  
SSE3. Also the GMA950 lags a lot less than the underpowered Radeons  
that IBM put in the X30s which allows more desktop eye-candy.

Despite the difference in power stats between the two chips, I get  
about the same battery life from both per Wh of battery - and still  
less than with my old MacBook 1400 ;)


Ellie

Eleanor McHugh
Games With Brains
http://slides.games-with-brains.net
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raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason