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Toronto Star Fast Forward column for October 12, 2000 

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2000

• What's Speed?
• Celeron v/s Pentium III (and others)
• Let Me Read Your Palm

When I wrote a "letters" column a couple of weeks ago, I was only able to answer one and that barely scratched the surface. I'll do better this week.

What's speed? 

As a result of a couple of columns about Sympatico's High Speed Edition written in August, many readers wrote to me reporting the speeds they were getting with their Internet connections. Some were happy; many were not.

But what was very common was confusion about exactly what speed they were reporting. The problem arises because of tradition (imagine a tradition being born over such a short period of time as we've been using the Internet). 

Transmission speed, that is the speed at which our various types of modems talk to each other, is reported in bits (BInary digiTS) per second or bps. When you have thousands of them, it is written as Kbps and when you have thousands of Kbps, it's supposed to be written as Mbps. 

Data transfer rates, that is the reported speed at which data moves from one place to another, has traditionally been reported in bytes per second. In written form, again for thousands of them, it's supposed to be KB/sec or, if you have more than a 1024 KB, as MB/sec. 

The confusion arises because the various browsers and other Internet tools we use can report both of these values and because they're not directly equivalent. 

When you're assessing the performance of your modem connection, both numbers are meaningful, but there isn't often a direct way of relating them to each other. Yes, there are eight bits in one byte, but simply dividing your transmission rate by eight won't necessarily give you an accurate data transfer rate. 

Why not, Myles? Several things are taking place when data moves from one remote location to another. It is compressed on the way out and expanded when it arrives. The modems are also exchanging error correction information on top of the raw data. That data is moved in packets and, when something goes awry (far more often than you know), the modems will keep re-sending and receiving a bad packet until they get it right. Lots of things can increase the errors, including flaky phone lines, a bad router somewhere in the pathway, or simply lousy weather. So, while still not necessarily completely accurate, it's a better rule of thumb to divide the transmission rate (bps) by 10 or more to get to a more roughly reasonable data transfer rate. 

Example: if you are connected by a "56K" dial-up modem's top transmission speed of 53.3 Kbps, you can expect a data transfer rate of somewhere between 4 and 5 KB/sec.

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Celeron v/s Pentium III (and others)

This letter, from Edouard Van Rengen is typical of many I receive: Can you in a few sentences give me the real difference between Celeron and Pentium III? I talked to some sales people and they told me that Pentium does a better job than Celeron with games. Can you explain that a bit?

Myles replies: The key to this question lies in a part of the computer that most retailers and manufacturers think you're too stupid to understand (and I, of course, know that you are no such thing). 

The data pathway that connects the processor to main system memory, BIOS (basic in/out system -- a combined traffic map and manager), and the logic chipset is called the front-side bus. The speeds you're quoted about processors (600 MHz, 700 MHz, etc.) are reporting the internal speed of the processor. This internal speed is always a multiple of the front-side bus speed. 

Current front side bus speeds are 66, 100, 133, and 200 MHz and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you have four freeway lanes at these "speeds" and four cars starting from the same point, one of them is going to get to work first. It's okay to have data being passed around among the processor's internal components at a high rate of speed (for me, the faster the better), but the front-side bus speed is crucial to overall system performance when it comes time to get data into the processor, then getting it out later. 

To answer your question: Celeron processors use a 66 MHz front-side bus. Pentium III processors, depending on the precise model, use a 100 or 133 MHz front-side bus (so, even if they both have the same internal clock speed, the Pentium III-based system will be faster). Both AMD processors, Athlon (the competition to Pentium III) and Duron (the competition to Celeron), use a 200 MHz front-side bus. 

There are other differences, such as the amount of level 2 cache memory in each processor (128 KB for Celeron, 64 KB for Duron, 256 KB for Pentium III and Athlon), and this too has an effect on performance. 

To keep this explanation as simple as possible, the level 2 cache memory is a temporary parking area for processor calculations and both incoming and outgoing instructions. Because all current models of all four processors have it embedded in the processor core, it communicates with the processor at its full internal speed - much faster than the processor communicates with main memory (which is also slower than cache memory). The function of L2 cache memory is to reduce the number of times the processor "ticks" over without doing anything because it's waiting for instructions, writing temporary calculation results, or retrieving those results. The more L2 cache memory you have, the more efficient the processor becomes. 

Last, but not least, Intel's former CEO, Andy Grove, when introducing Celeron, said it was the processor "just good enough" for those who wished to do light Internet surfing and moderate word processing. In other words, it is not considered suitable for a professional user or someone who wants to run high-end games.

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Let me read your Palm

From Fermi Austin: I just purchased a Palm IIIxe, but I wonder whether the model I bought has a lot of useless features that I do not need. I'm interested in being able to use Microsoft software on the go and the various date-book functions. Would I then do better to get the cheaper "m100" model? Keep in mind that I am a student on a budget.

Myles replies: I have a Palm m100 lying about but I've been a little overwhelmed by products recently and haven't managed to get it out of the box - so I can't tell you how it performs compared to the Palm V or IIIc that I have tested. 

However, I can tell you that neither this model, nor any other Palm product, is what you're looking for because none of them can use Microsoft software. For that you need a hand-held model by Compaq, Casio, Hewlett-Packard, or anyone else with a product that runs the Windows CE operating system. 

Palms run the Palm OS and neither run Microsoft software applications nor handle their file formats (although you can pass data to and from Outlook). 

The bad news is that none of the WinCE handhelds are inexpensive. They are comparable in price to, and sometimes more expensive than, Palm's leading edge models. Sorry.

Additional info:

Since this column appeared, two responses were interesting. One offered to sell Fermi a CE-based unit. I passed that offer along. 

The second took me to task for suggesting that Palms don't run Microsoft software and mentioned an emulator while pointing out that he could transfer data to and from Outlook and the Palm.

My answer is simple: Out of the box, Palms cannot run the CE versions of Microsoft Office Applications (e.g., Pocket Word, Pocket Excel, etc.). Being able to synchronize contact data with Outlook (or another PIM) does not constitute being able to run the application or to handle its native file format.

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