Intel Corp’s soon-to-be-released Core 2 Duo notebook chips will offer speed increases over the company’s current notebook processors, but their thermal design may leave much to be desired.
Specifications released by Intel this week to system designers reveal that the chips, formerly code-named Merom, each have a thermal design point (TDP) of 34 watts — about 3 watts more than the top of the line 2.33GHz Core Duo (Yonah).
AppleInsider | Merom’s thermal specs fail to impress
Well, with this kinda of news, I think this is another reason to sit out the first Merom upgrade until Intel’s 2007 release of their 800MHz FSB chipset. Apple’s next MacBook Pro may have to do a lot of things to make sure that the heat generated by the Core 2 Duo chips will be dissipated properly and not cause the case to run up too hot. Please, please, please – not too many fans that will whir, whine and moo!
Inspite of all of these, who knows? I might just change my mind if Apple decides to release the Merom MacBook at 13″ with backlit keyboard and Leopard this January 2007! 
technorati tags:merom, macbook pro, apple, intel
