[ltp] Noise and Power Consumption of T20 and T23

[Tino Keitel]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 21:29:44 +0100, Hannes Kuhnert wrote:
> Now I've been using a Thinkpad T20 for several months and I really like it: 
> Most time the fan isn't running, hence it operates quite quiet.
> 
> My sister would like to have a notebook, too, and she should get one of these:
> 
> 	T20	featuring Mobile Pentium III 750MHz	319?
> 	T23	featuring Mobile Pentium III-M 1000MHz	369?
> 
> I'm expecting the T23 to be clearly more powerful and that would justify the 
> higher price.
> 
> Information about the CPU on <http://thinkwiki.org> lets me assume, that the 
> T23 consumes more power than the T20. Is that right? Is it relevant, if one 
> does the same things - I mean only writing, e-mailing and things like that - 
> on both machines?

The T23 has a newer chipset (i830M) instead of the BX chipset in the
T20. This results e.g. in much cheaper memory upgrades. It's harder and
more expensive to find modules larger than 128 MB for the T20, whereas
the T23 eats cheap PC133 512 MB modules. But if you just write emails,
the T20 should be good enough with its power.

> 
> Can the T23 be operated without the fan running as well as the T20 at low 
> load?

On my T23/1133 MHz, when running at full CPU speed, the fan will
regular run for a short time, but it doesn't make much noise. When I
use Speedstep to run it at 731 MHz and noflushd to spin down the
harddisk, it will run without running the fan at all if there is not
much CPU load.

> 
> Which one of T20-750 and T23-1000 would you choose and why? What are 
> significant differences?

The T23 has newer sound, a newer chipset, newer graphics, cheaper
memory upgrades, the T20 can use a modem without Linux support (3com),
the T23 has two USB ports.

Regards,
Tino