Which mobile CPU should I go for?

[cyberknight]

So I guess my most immediate choices would be
-Athlon XP-M
-Sempron
-Celeron M

I don't really know much about mobile CPU's and am a little unsure on how I should base my decision. Any comparisons on battery life, heat output, performance, and what not on the mobile CPU's? What would you pick for a pretty basic work laptop that would have 512MB of RAM?

Should I consider the Turion 64 which is around the corner? Or is that likely gonna be out of my price range?

 

[uOpt]

The Celeron-M beats the living hell out of the other two if you want low noise and good battery life.

The Pentium-M is better battery-wise when the machine is idle, but the Celeron-M is still better than traditional mobile CPUs, especially when the CPU is loaded or partially loaded (e.g. watching DVDs, having no flashblocker in firefox etc.).

The Turion 64 will be as good as the Centrino CPUs. The question is whether the chipsets for it will be as good as the Centrino chipsets. As always with the "should I wait?" question the answer is "no".

 

[vegetation]

Stick with the Pentium-M. Celeron-M comes close but runs hotter and less battery life in everyday usage due to the throttle disabling system that distinguishes the two.

 

[fbrdphreak]

You can generally get Pentium M notebooks for around $1000 for a decent configuration. For general usage and portability, go with Pentium M.

Turion64 is right around the corner. It should provide A64 performance with power consumption close to that of Centrino, but time will tell on that. Right now the TDP ratings on the Turions are about that of the Sonoma Pentium M's, so it'll be an interesting match. Right now Acer, Asus, Fujitsu, and a few others have announced Turion notebooks; but no models have shipped yet.
We are working on getting a model into our labs @ LaptopLogic, believe me I will post when we do
Turion 64 News & Info Thread
That is our Turion thread, its slightly outdated but I will try to update it in a day or two.
GL!