I was out looking at laptops and computer hardware this weekend. I need a new laptop and I am going to need to build a couple of DVR’s over the next few months. After talking with my brothers recently and my dad I realized that most people really don’t know about all this stuff and it makes the purchase decision quite difficult. Answering the question “What do I need?” becomes quite difficult.

Lets start at the bottom here, 32-bit vs 64-bit. This is the number of binary bits that are used to represent a number. Binary, if you’ll remember, is 0 or 1, or ON or OFF. In a 32-bit machine this means that there are 32 binary bits (Zero’s or Ones) that make up a number. In a 64-bit machine it means that there are 64 binary bits that make up a number.

This is important because you can hold larger numbers or higher precision numbers and address more ram in a 64-bit machine. In reality most of us don’t need 64 bits and therefore most software does not take advantage of 64 bit architecture. Many pieces of software that I played with would not even compile without significant changes on a 64-bit machine.

The Core 2 and Core Duo are similar. They are both have multiple computing cores on one chip. It’s similar to having two CPU chips in the same computer. What has happened is that CPU manufacturers have started to reach the physical limitations of how fast a normal CPU can run. They shrunk the transistors and the space between the internal CPU wires to the smallest reasonable size they can.

The limitation is on the heat generated, power required and physical space for the CPU. The size of a CPU has to be small because of the size of the case and the available heat dissipation that the normal consumer can make available. The last generation of single core Pentium chips ran really hot (Some people even installed water cooling).

Something had to change, so the chip designers are making more CPU’s available in the same physical CPU chip. Enter Core Duo and Core 2 Duo.

The Core Duo is an x86 based multi-core processor. If you buy a Core Duo you get two 32-bit processing cores on the same chip. The Core 2 Duo is an x64 based multi-core processor. This means if you buy a Core 2 Duo processor you get two 64-bit processing cores in the same chip. Most of us can get away with the Core Duo processors.

When I was out looking at laptops, there were many Core 2 Duo Centrino machines out there. Only one of the dozens I looked at even came with a 64-bit operating system. Without the 64 bit operating system you cannot take advantage of the 64-bit architecture. That did not keep the sales people from trying to hype me up. This is the latest processor, It’s much faster than a Core Duo etc… most of these sales people had no idea on the underlying architecture and when I asked them hard technical questions, they got that deer in the headlights look.

Centrino is really just a marketing name, it means that you have a laptop that has a matched cpu, mainboard chipset and wireless network interface. Thats it, a matched set. In theory will make the laptop run longer on less battery and run cooler. Generally, this is true but not always, if the mainboard itself is of poor design or the manufacturer does not use low power hard drives then it won’t hold true. So when you look at these machines make sure you are looking at reputable brands like Dell, HP etc…

What you need to look at as well is the processor model. For laptops you will usually see a Txxxx number. On destops, they are numbered Exxxx. The xxxx is the model number of the cpu, they are numbers like T2050, T2060 or E6600. These are all multi-core processors, the number after the letter means tells you how fast it is. In general this higher the number the faster the processor and the more you will pay.

This was all changed because for twenty years the battle was waged on speed. 1GHZ then 2GHZ then 3GHZ processors. Now, this competition model is kind of fading. So rather than tell you outright the speed they hide it. For instance an E6600 is a Core 2 Duo running at 2.4 GHZ. Most people think 2.4 GHZ? Thats slower than my 3.2GHZ processor.

Technically, the 3.2 is faster; if you’re only doing one thing. Think of it this way, if you had to transport 8 people 60 miles you could use a Porsche going 150 mph or two sedans going 60. The two sedans would get the job done in one hour. The Porsche would would take 5.6 hours to do the job. You are doing work in parallel with the sedans.

This is the big move in CPU’s and it’s a good move. Even if you are not using multi-core capable software you will still see an increase in speed. Your Excel and PMS can all run more efficiently. Instead of having one core for two programs you have two or in this example one core per program.

This year we are also going to see quad core and eight core processors. The more Cores the better for now but it wont be long before the speed race is back. If more cores are better then more cores running faster is even better.