I've seen a bunch of M200s on sale on ebay, here

[gear02]

I've seen a bunch of M200s on sale on ebay, here, and elsewhere that are the 1.5 Ghz version which I've been told is the Banias chip (1 MB L2 cache). I also note these versions are about 2 years old (release date 2003). Excluding the fact they only have 802.11b, which I can upgrade based on many threads around here (this forum rocks btw!), how does this compare to the newer 1.6 Ghz, 1.8 Ghz models? Do they perform substantially worse? Can they handle all Tablet PC functions (one note, etc.) without any problems?

Would you recommend getting a 1.5 Ghz Banias over a 1.6 Ghz Dothan if there was a decent price drop?

[Wcrocker]

As an early (December 03) M200 purchaser, I can't give you any direct comparisons as to speed and performance between the 1.5 Banias chip and the newer Dothan chips. I'm sure others can and I'm sure newer and faster will always be newer and faster.

I can say this in answer to your question. I run OneNote and most Tablet PC Apps that you read about and don't have any problems with speed and peformance on my older M200. That said, I have upgraded the memory to 1 gig and upgraded the hard drive to the Hitachi 7200rpm model and this keeps things purring along quite well. I'd recommend those upgrades even if there wasn't a faster chip out there.

If the price drop was substantial enough on the 1.5 and that gave you the room to add some memory and a faster hard drive, you would build a tablet that can handle current tablet apps on the market with no problems. There's my $.02.

[soda97]

what about dothan vs. sonoma

i have a M200 1.8ghz dothan, 768 PC2700 ram, and 32m GeForce
i'm planning to get a sonoma with this spec
1.73ghz sonoma, 512 DDR2-400 ram, and integrated GMA 900 (up to 128mb) video card

which one would performance better in general (office work, web browsing, and slight gaming)?

thanks,
soda

[trungthiendo]

both of the machine should be the same, you will not notice a difference in speed
The Sonoma has integrated graphics whereas the moo has dedicated so gaming should be better on the m 200

[kevinGC]

The Sonoma's integrated graphics are just a tad better than 64 and 128 mbit Geforce FX 5200's:

http://www.tomshardware.com/motherbo...et_775-50.html

Plus, Sonoma has HDTV decoding.

[gear02]

Is there going to be some hardware refreshes with the Toshiba M200 and the Fujitsu T4010 to get their specs to the Sonama chipset?

[soda97]

cool...nicee review
but is that for desktop mobo?
if so, how accurate to laptops'
i only do slight gaming
and it seems that the GMA 900 do purrty well

soda

[Tuan]

If you only do slight gaming then you don't have to worry about it. Even with spec maxed out the M200, as well as any other TabletPC is just a joke when it comes to serious gaming.

Here's a list of recent, popular, hot games that run pretty well on these machines, suggested by a fellow gamer-TPC owner:

- Sid Meier's Pirates (Adventure, Strategy)
- Counter Strike: Source (3D Shooter)
- Max Payne 2 (Action Shooter)
- If you only do slight gaming then you don't have to worry about it. Even with spec maxed out the M200, as well as any other TabletPC is just a joke when it comes to serious gaming.

Here's a list of some recent, popular, hot games that run pretty well on these machines, suggested by a fellow gamer-TPC owner, so that you can get the idea:

- Sid Meier's Pirates (Adventure, Strategy)
- Counter Strike: Source (3D Shooter)
- Winning Eleven 8/ PES 4 (Sports)
- Football Manager 2005 (Sports)
- WarCraft III - Original and Frozen Throne (RTS)
- Rise of Nations (RTS)
- Commandos 3: Destination Berlin (Strategy)
- ...

So don't think FarCry, Doom III or Rid****, I reckon general gaming is satisfactory though. :-)

[gear02]

Hmm...still that's a pretty good list. CS:Source is fairly graphics intensive.