Centrino is actually not a type of CPU - it refers to a "technology" that has
to do with wireless networking - consisting of 3 Intel made chipsets. One of
those is the CPU, the other two aren't. Actually, let's look at what you
have from a CPU standpoint alone:
Duo at 1.66 GHz (T2300)
Non-Duo at 1.86 GHz (T13))
In effect, on the Duo machine, Excel and most other applications today are
going to run on one of the two available cores. For the moment, think of Duo
as having 2 CPUs available. But each program can pretty much just use one at
the time. The advantage of having the dual-cores right now is being able to
split the load when running multiple applications between them. In its most
simplistic form: you run Excel and you run Word at the same time, picture
Excel as running on one core, Word running on the other.
Now, having tried to explain that very simply, what you have on the Duo
system is Excel running on a 1.66GHz speed CPU while on the single core
system it is running on a 1.86GHz CPU. So odds are it will run faster on the
T1300 vs the T2300.
Do not despair - time will come when the applications are built with the
ability to more fully utilize the features available in dual-core systems.
For the present, you should be able to run more on it with less slowdown than
running the same things on a single core system.
Within a family of processors, clock speed can be used as a good indicator
of relative performance expectations. But across differrent families, it can
fool you. Consider this: I have an Excel application that reads and
processes test data from 100 large .txt files created at a laboratory. Lots
of work to be done.
On an Intel P4 at 2.4GHz with 512MB it takes 80 minutes to finish.
on an AMD 3200+ at 2.4GHz with 1GB RAM it takes 60 minutes (same clock
speeds, but knocks 20 minutes off of the time.
Finally on my dual-core AMD X2 64 4800+ @ 2.4GHz w/1GB RAM it takes ONLY 20
minutes!
Three different families of CPU, all running at same clock speed, very
measurable differences in performance.
