The topic that seemed most interesting to me this week deals with the processor "Intel Core 2 Duo". I am actually about to buy me a new MacBookPro, so this week's topic came at the perfect time for me! As I want to have a MacBook that perfectly fits my needs (and I guess even more my wants, so I am more or less not properly following the buying advice as proposed by Mr. Olson), it is very important to me to actually be able to evaluate just by myself which computer qualifies best. However, I always thought that you only compare the processor of your computer with the Gigahertz number stated behind (or better included in) the name of the processor. Now I know better:
Gigahertz (GHz) is basically a description of the clockspeed of a computer, which means that the faster the computer's central processing unit's (CPU's) clock can tick per second, the faster the computer can process data. GHz is composed of "Hertz", which describes
the frequency, and "Giga" stands for "billion". Thus 1 GHz equals 1 billion cycles or ticks per second. However, in order to compare the capabilities of different processors, it is not possible to only look at the GHz information. Instead, one must first watch whether the processor uses the same CPU type!
A processor of a computer is basically what facilitates executing instructions and thus using programs. Nowadays, mostly multi-core processors are being used, which means that there is one chip with two or even more separate CPUs and thus more work can be done by the computer in a shorter timeframe.
The one Apple currently builds into its new MacBooks is the above mentioned "Intel Core 2 Duo" processor. So in order for me to decide which kind of MacBookPro I would like to have, I chose the one with the "Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66 GHz" as this is the processor, which certainly satisfies and already somewhat exceeds my need to be able to handle several programs at the same time, play music, store a lot of data etc. Again, it is such a great timing, that I now actually understand how to actually compare these processors (as I was focused only on design, weight and size of the computer before). So, I deemed this topic to be a very important and also very interesting one that all people of this technology generation should be aware of!
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