Our friends over at PCPerspective have taken a Core 2 Duo T7400 "Merom" processor and installed it into a Dell XPS M1710 notebook. They had to contend with a couple of performance related anomalies, but other than that everything seemed to work fine. It's possible that we'll see Core 2 Duo notebooks very soon because the new chips can drop right into existing designs.
"One of the nice things about the XPS M1710 is the relative ease at which you can disassemble it to upgrade the CPU. I will not do a step-by-step procedure since anyone willing to tinker with the innards of a laptop can generally figure this stuff out without me telling them. However, just so you have an idea, you unscrew bolts from the base of the laptop, detach the display and cables, and remove the casing."
Marco Chiappetta
Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com
