PC's new generation

By the time you read this column, the personal computing world will have undergone a major change, especially in the fast-growing laptop (notebook) sector. And whether you're running your company from a home office or you're employed at a global megacorporation, no technological shift is likely to impact your business more than one in personal computing.

You may remember that 2005 was the first year in which laptop sales overtook desktop sales. While laptops offer convenience, flexibility and mobility compared to their desktop counterparts, they've always lagged in performance. Faster processors consume more power and generate more heat, both of which limit their use in laptops. This led to the development of specialized, low-power processors (such as the Pentium M) that feature reduced heat output but offer equivalent performance to standard chips at lower "clock speeds" in MHz or GHz. For example, a 1.6 GHz Pentium M can typically match a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 chip for most tasks.

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Now, for the first time, you have another option: laptops that contain dual-core processors. A dual-core processor is essentially a single "chip" that combines two separate processors and their associated controller circuits. The benefits of such a setup include greater performance than today's single-processor systems, without doubled power requirements, and most importantly, the same price point.

The new laptops will feature Intel's dual-core mobile chip, code-named Yonah, that will run at speeds up to 2.2 GHz for each core. By the end of 2006, Intel expects to introduce another mobile dual-core chip, named Merom, that will offer higher speeds while consuming substantially less power (an estimated 5 watts, compared to today's single-core Pentium M at 27 watts).

In the desktop world, dual-core (and dual-processor) systems have been around for some time. The next generation of PC desktops will feature dual dual-core systems (already available in Apple's PowerMac G5 lineup), or a total of four processing cores packed inside a very powerful machine. By the end of the year, single-core (or single-processor) systems will quickly attain dinosaur status, at least for high-end business applications.

Of course, to get the most from a system with more than one processor or core, you need an operating system that can take advantage of it. The most common way to do this is to use what's called symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), in which the operating system distributes the computing load among two or more identical processors. Macintosh users have long enjoyed these benefits, with Mac OS X supporting SMP since its introduction in late 2000. While Windows XP Home does not offer SMP support, XP Pro does. However, even XP Home users can benefit from dual-core systems if they use applications that are written for such systems - typically, graphic-intensive and multimedia software.

Now that Apple has announced that future Macs will use Intel chips, you may even be able to get the best of both worlds - buy a dual-core, Intel-based Mac laptop with OS X, configure it as a dual-boot system with Windows XP Pro, and leave your desktop behind forever.