Although Crusoe has better battery performance than current Intel processors, the chip giant isn't sitting still. Last week, the company unfurled a new product road map for notebooks. Some of the ideas for throttling power consumption on the Pentium family likely derive from Intel's experience with the Xscale, formerly StrongARM, processor. The entire ARM chip family runs at fairly high speeds without burning much energy. Intel acquired StrongARM from Digital in 1998 and in the past year has begun to dedicate more resources to developing the chip family.
Exact comparisons remain difficult, however.
Leibson, like many other analysts, has yet to test a notebook containing Crusoe. Like the notebooks released earlier, NEC's LaVie MX initially will be marketed only in Japan. The notebook contains a 20GB hard drive, 128MB of memory and a 10.4-inch screen. Inc. All rights reserved.