How quiet are the laptops?

[stmiller]

Are the dual core laptops silent? Or fairly quiet (mac-like quiet?)

Thanks,

[x64Jimbo]

Depends on whether ACPI gets configured correctly (the autoconfig will get it right 99% of the time).
Most laptops these days don't even run their fans unless they're under some pretty heavy load, so unless you're planning on doing a lot of 3D rendering, compiling, video editing, etc, it'll be hard to find ANY laptop out there that makes a lot of noise.

[stmiller]

I disagree. I've sat next to many people who's toshiba, or gateway laptop sounds like a leaf blower when the fan comes on. Loud and annoying.

[crichell]

We don't sell any leaf blowers :)

The entire line is very quiet

[derjames]

if you want your Laptop to be really quiet, install the CPU frequency scaling monitor and set the CPU frequency to the lowest available.
In my case my Athlon XP 1500 has the lowest frequency at 398 MHz, which I selected most of the time,fOr my daily activities such as reading email, typing docs this is perfect, now the fans on my laptop hardly ever are turn on, i.e. completely silent and cool (literally)...

cheers

[jdong]

I disagree. I've sat next to many people who's toshiba, or gateway laptop sounds like a leaf blower when the fan comes on. Loud and annoying.

I own a leafblower as my junk laptop! It has a Celeron M that clocks from 200MHz to 1400MHz.

The fan likes to flicker on and off, and there is no in between setting, so the uneven noise level is even MORE distracting :)


So there are definitely leafblowers out there :)

[x64Jimbo]

Let me restate. If you are buying a NEW laptop, it is very likely that it will not make a lot of noise, since there have been some extraordinary advances in mobile processors recently (read: 1.5 years or so)
If Intel, look for Pentium M (Centrino) or Core archicecture chips. If AMD, look for Turion or Athlon models. I have used machines with all of these, and every one of them runs very quiet unless doing very processor-intensive tasks.

[jdong]

Your rephrasing should including something about quality, because some manufacturers are still SUCKING at proper BIOS fan control or low-noise fans, even as I walk around the computer store shelves today I can her the occasional sub-1000 laptop go into leaf blower mode showing the XP screensaver :)

[x64Jimbo]

You have a valid point. Touché