WinBook J4 Pentium 4 2.4GHz

Looking back at our past mobile product reviews we noticed a trend. About 80% of the reviews include a line in the introduction about how laptop machines are becoming more and more like desktop ones. Perhaps we are being redundant, or beating a dead horse but the truth of the matter is that laptops and notebooks are evolving at an almost exponential rate. Even in the four months that we have been doing notebook reviews the gap between desktop machines and notebooks has closed even further.

The most recent trend started when a few manufacturers began producing notebooks based off of the desktop Pentium 4 chipset. Instead of finding ourselves limited to mobile processors at low clock speeds, these desktop Pentium 4 based notebooks kept in pace with the fastest desktop machines we had seen. Add to these systems a powerful video solution, such as an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 or an NVIDIA GeForce 4 Go 440, and the line between desktop and notebook faded even further.

Taking into account the profit that these desktop processor based notebooks are making as well as the success they are experiencing in the market it is no surprise that more and more notebook manufacturers are adding desktop processors to the helms of their desktop replacement notebooks. In fact, the only current advantage that Mobile Pentium 4-M chips have over their desktop brothers (on top of a slightly smaller package) is SpeedStep technology. Since many of the notebooks receiving desktop CPUs are large and include powerful batteries, much of Mobile Pentium 4-M's appeal is lost. This is especially true when considering that the desktop Pentium 4 is able to bring higher speeds to notebooks at lower prices.

Right now the line between Intel's mobile processors and their desktop processors is not solid enough to force the mobile world to use a strictly mobile CPU. This will change as Intel migrates to their next generation of CPUs, including the Banias mobile processor, but for now the low cost and high performance that the desktop Pentium 4 offers in a notebook machine is enough to keep many notebook manufacturers interested in the chip.

Once such notebook manufacturer is WinBook. One of the larger notebook manufacturers, WinBook continually finds themselves in or just outside the top 10 notebook producers in the country. Their top of the line J4 is a desktop replacement notebook outfitted with an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics chips, a 15" TFT screen, and, you guessed it, a desktop Pentium 4 processor.