When using AC power, the chips run at full speed, but cut back to 500 MHz in their battery-optimized mode to deliver three hours of running time.
Users can override the switch to run the systems at full speed even on battery power.
The chips have a 100-MHz system bus. Businesses that use lots of notebooks say they welcome Intel's latest mobile efforts. Not everyone says mobile users are as concerned about faster speeds as they are about other issues, however. Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Micron, Sony, and Toshiba unveiled notebooks with the new chips. For example, the Solo 9300 from Gateway has a 15.7-inch screen, and the TransPort ZX from Micron weighs seven pounds and is just 1.68 inches thick.