As an adjunct to Drew's comments, we have a good FAQ on PentiumIII on The NOSPIN Group web site: http://nospin.com/pc/PentiumIII_faq.html Our list of FAQs is growing all the time: http://nospin.com/pc/faqs.html Bob Wright At 01:19 PM 8/14/99 , Drew Dunn wrote: >There's nothing "bad" about a Celeron chip. Intel has positioned that chip >as an entry-level processor, but its performance is still extremely good. >I'm tempted to say that the production costs are higher for a PII than for a >Celeron, but I'm not actually sure that is the case. The most significant >difference between a PII and a Celeron is that the level 2 cache on a PII is >four times larger than that of a Celeron, so at a given clock speed a PII >will outperform a Celeron on CPU intensive operations. Also, the Celeron >uses a 66MHz bus and the PII may use a 100MHz bus...although I'm not sure >about the PII 333. > >Here's an example: I work in R&D at a networking company. We just produced >an "all in one" Internet server that does all the usual stuff: email, web >serving, file serving, proxy, firewall, etc...and it runs on a Celeron 333. >Even with 50 users, the system uses only a fraction of the processor's >bandwidth. > >Depending upon the use that you intend for your notebook, you may find that >the Celeron is a good choice. In fact, unless your are performing torturous >graphical or numerical operations, you probably won't be able to tell the >difference in performance between a Celeron 400 and a PII 333. > >So, my opinion on the Celeron vs. PII pricing structure is that it's just a >matter of marketing. > >If your system was one of the first PII's to be produced it's unlikely that >a P3 will be a plug-in replacement. But since Dell uses industry-standard >ATX motherboards, you're probably in luck...you can simply replace the >motherboard with an aftermarket board. And since a good quality motherboard >is around US$100-125 (mailorder), it's a pretty economical upgrade. Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to Digest mode - visit our web site: http://nospin.com/pc/pcbuild.html