Business Machines - i3/i5 vs Intel M Broadwell (Opinion)

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syrupd

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So I am seeking the public opinion on this. It am looking at new laptops for our business, and i've been reading up on the Intel M series, specifically the M 5Y10c.

From a business standpoint, Like running Word/Excel/Outlook simultaneously while Internet Browsing & Viewing Pictures (medical scans) - do you think that the 5y10c would suffice or would it feel like we are back in celeron days?

I have a couple running i3 4100U's (and i5/i7's), but I am interested in the power consumption and the size of the machines I can get for this processor version.
 
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As long as you have high speed IO like an SSD and plenty of memory available I'm sure hey would be fine. 11" screens are really hard to work on and...
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williamcummins

williamcummins

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Maybe a cheaper solution would be to build small form PCs with the integrated intel J2900. AsRock has this motherboard/cpu combo that i think is perfect for office/htpc use (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157546&cm_re=j2900-_-13-157-546-_-Product). You could build your own small, efficient and powerful machines around 350$ each.
 
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Justin Millard

Justin Millard

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It depends on your usage. If you are in a situation where the device will be unplugged for more than five hours, then the extra battery life of the M 5Y10c will help. Its a slightly weak processor, but it should have enough power to do what you need. If you have been happy with the performance of your i3 systems then the core m should be fine.

Just buy on price. Both the i3 and low power core m use so little power that the core m will make little difference to your electricity bill.
 
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Traciatim

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What are you doing in Excel... huge spreadsheets with tons of calculations or is it more just looking at some reports and a few sheets of data?

In most cases you'd probably find your machine would run better if you went with a cheaper processor like an i3, and made sure you had plenty of RAM for all your applications and an SSD large enough for all of your applications and data.

Most of the time in Laptops slow down happens when you have too many applications or data open and you start swapping so your drive speed has a huge impact on the feel of your machine since most laptop drives are really slow. You feel this when you do things like alt-tab to a new application and it takes a few seconds to start to open and then you physically watch the new application get drawn on the screen... but once it's open it performs pretty much OK. These types of issues don't necessarily need fast processors but are just due to running out of resources so your processor has to wait around for data to be read off of really slow media.

How high res are the medical scans and do you feel like 32GB of RAM would make sense? If that's the case keep in mind that the low power options generally only support 16GB. You can get fairly low powered i5's like the i5-4590T (mostly used for All in one machines, but maybe you could find it in a laptop) which remains idle most of the time your using it but has some power to spare when you need it. Lots of RAM and an SSD with a good battery would make a machine like that feel really nice and smooth... but then it depends on what people want to carry around and in what cases you are using it.

 
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syrupd

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All good answers, however a couple of points:

1) Not building anything, this is just for people who are on planes all the time and at events.
2) They work they are doing are not heavy calculations, spreadsheets are reports but multi paged.
3) I looking at buying small form-factor laptops, so 11-incers with power - The SSD's come standard with these as it is.

Good points on the memory, The options I am looking at all come with 8GB, so it will suffice. I was more concerned with these newer low-wattage processors the type of bottle-necking a person might run into with this series.
 
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doron

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The M series will deliver good enough performance in the scenario you're describing, but I would personally choose core i3.
Reasons:

- The M line is designed to throttle. As time goes, thermal conductivity will degrade and sustained-performance will likely drop. While this is a mere speculation, I'd much rather wait a year or two before getting onboard the M train, especially if it's for business.
- The M line is designed for ultra slim machines. From a business perspective this means fewer ports and harder maintainability compared to business class, "normal" machines.
- The Core M is for general purpose use and that's it, no repurposing possible.

Of course, it all depends on many factors, such as the nature of the business, yearly hardware budget and the amount of work done on these machines. Ultimately I don't think it's a mistake to go for Core M, but core i3 / i5 (especially broadwell) seems to me like a more solid option right now.
 
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Traciatim

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As long as you have high speed IO like an SSD and plenty of memory available I'm sure hey would be fine. 11" screens are really hard to work on and are usually low resolution, I kind of consider 14" about the lowest size of a usable machine and anything less is more of a thing you use between using your regular equipment and in emergencies.

The processors you mentioned will be perfectly OK for general day to day activities, when you mentioned medical imaging I wasn't sure about memory requirements since I do know some of these files can be many GB large, but if you know that 8 or 16GB will do then I'm sure the machines will do fine.

Have you actually tried typing on an 11" keyboard? I'd almost pick large tablet over a tiny laptop like that. Something like a Thinkpad Yoga might be handy for the stuff your doing, I'm not sure what kind of budget you have though.



 
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syrupd

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Thank you everyone. Even with my knowledge of processors it was a bit of a thought process of stepping into this new realm of processors as it is. Traciatim called it perfectly, it is the Yoga line I am looking at, and have already deployed Yoga 2 Pro's before (totally recommend them for travellers), just the power consumption on the M's was an attractive piece when I have people travelling on 12-20 hour flights.

I am going to stick with what I trust, as doron states, jumping on the "M" train may not be wise quite yet.
 
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Justin Millard

Justin Millard

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Thought it was time to update you on the latest info on Skylake Y Core M.
Skylake Y looks extremely promising. Intel has worked hard in this area.

The new CPUs are expected out in September (possibly with some higher powered processors coming later).
Intel is claiming up to 17% faster CPU and up to 41% faster graphics performance. Skylake Y will get a bigger boost than any other Skylake chips.

I am backing them in to be a good series for the kind of use you are describing. Good luck to you and your business.

http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-launch-schedule-leaked-skylake-s-skylake-y-skylake-h-skylake-u-launch-september-2015/

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/07/expect-big-performance-boosts-from-intels-skylake-chips-report/
 
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