Intel Rumor: New Chips and Price Drops

According to DigiTimes, rumor has it that Intel is set to drop its prices as well as introduce new processor models. If they come to fruition, some CPUs could see price drops of up to 20 percent. Intel is also said that these new processors will be revealed next month. Reports say April 19 will see the launch of the Q8400 (95W) and Q8400S (65W), both clocked to 2.66 GHz but priced at $183 and $245, respectively.

The same report, which cites sources at motherboard manufacturers says that we’ll see more processors introduced at the end of May, including Celeron and Pentium Dual-Core parts, the Core 2 Duo E7600 and two new Core i7s: the 3.06 GHz 950 and the 3.33 GHz 975, priced at $562 and $999, respectively. The news comes just a couple of months after Intel dropped the prices on several processors significantly, with some of the cuts amounting to as much as 48 percent. The company's Celeron Mobile 570, Core 2 Quad Q9650 and Xeon X3370 all saw cuts of over 40 percent.

Here’s a full list of the aforementioned price drops and new releases, courtesy of DigiTimes.

Lenovo's Two-headed Monster: The Thinkpad W700ds

I was lucky enough to see this two-headed powerhouse laptop at a friend who's way more luckier getting one for a test. This heavyweight weighs around 13 pounds and the chunky chassis won’t squeeze into most notebook bags. Fortunately, Lenovo has one large-enough case for around $60. The Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds looks like a notebook with a notebook growing out of it. A 10.6 inch screen slides out beside the 17-inch main display, creating 39% more desktop space. Our W700ds came with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Quad Extreme QX9300 processor. This power CPU is great for some multicore applications. This system had 4GB of RAM, two hard drives configured in a RAID array, and nVidia Quadro FX3700M workstation graphics; and Windows Vista Business 64-bit.



The W700ds performed well on game and benchmark tests. Hopefully I could get more data next time. The battery in the W700ds lasted about three and a half hours, which was pretty much decent as we had the secondary screen stowed. But running the battery test with the screen activated, the battery life dropped by almost half, to only 1 hour and 42 minutes.

So why would you want to buy a ThinkPad W700ds, when a similarly-equipped desktop with two full-size monitors would cost several thousand dollars less? The ThinkPad provides an opportunity to put the entire desktop experience—full keyboard, Wacom tablet, dual screens, and all—in an (admittedly large) bag and take it with you. Photographers and filmmakers, who are used to lugging heavy equipment with them on-location, won’t even notice the system’s size. Workers who find themselves setting up shop for weeks at a time in different cities will be able to take the W700ds with them, much more easily than the combination of a desktop, keyboard, mouse, tablet, and two monitors.

The ThinkPad W700ds sports a base price of $3,663 but was recently released in Japan at a whooping price of $7,747.