[lca2018-chat] Arjen's new laptop

[Arjen Lentz]

Hi James

> On 29 January 2018 at 17:38, Arjen Lentz <arjen at openstem.com.au> wrote:
>> It has a quad core Intel i5 8250U 1.6GHz (turbo to 3.4GHz) which is a quad core
>> + hyperthreading.
>> Why not an i7? Because you will mainly kill your battery life, in return for
>> very little extra performance - remember it's a mobile CPU infrastructure.  A
>> desktop replacement approach will always be bigger, heavier and eat more power
>> (been there, tried that).
> 
> Are you sure about that?  If it was an i7 from the same range, it
> would likely have the same TDP as the i5 models.  At least for the
> mobile chips, the i5/i7 branding mostly looks like a case of picking
> and market differentiation rather than being completely different
> products.

I didn't mention thermal?

I raised two aspects:

a) This quadcore i5 performs pretty well. I expect that an i7 which has higher clockrate and more caching also chews more power, and that has a direct effect on battery life.

b) Typically, a desktop replacement uses desktop (not mobile) component architecture and infrastructure. While that provides desktop performance, again your battery life will suffer. It's a trade-off. This laptop is not a desktop replacement, and thus I do not expect it to be as performant as my snazzy desktop machine.  They each have their purpose. For me, a laptop becomes much less useful when the battery doesn't last.

I'm a tad confused as to what aspect your response addresses.
Are you disagreeing with my basic analysis, and if so where?
thanks

Regards,
Arjen.
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