Orion Duo - future Merom upgrade possible?

[aeonsound]

hi,

i'm looking to buy a high spec laptop for live music. i was almost ready to buy the Orion Duo (T2500) when i found out about the possibly-imminent-possibly-delayed launch of Merom.

i've seen some discussion which centered around the possibility of a fairly simple upgrade from Yonah to Merom processors, based around a simple plug-n-play socket job and a BIOS upgrade.

i want to know whether you could do this with novatech's Orion Duo... or whether it would be a waste of time, money and energy :) this will affect my prospective purchase.

it's quite tricky because i must have a new notebook by no later than september 10th... does anyone think it's likely we'll see merom-equipped notebooks by the start of september? i'm figuring it's quite unlikely... so if i could at a later stage simply upgrade the T2500 processor to one of the higher merom ones it would be ideal and i could buy with confidence :)

thanks heaps for any help. if there's anyone who can answer this in the next few days it would be really appreciated because i want to buy on friday :)

thanks!

[Coops]

We are currently working out the bits of pieces with regard to Merom Support.

The Orion Duo should support Merom By BIOS upgrade and we currently have BIOS in testing.

If all tests out OK and we can get stock of Merom CPU you should see Merom Systems appearing some time next month hopefully.

[aeonsound]

hi Coops,

thanks so much for a quick response :)

i know this is probably a 'how long is a piece of string' question, but in your opinion - given that i must must must have a laptop by 10th September - is it worth waiting for Merom, or just buying Yonah and upgrading to a faster Merom in a year or something?

thanks heaps again :)

-aeon-

[Coops]

Well the wait really is up to you. The problem is i cannot say for sure that we would have Merom equipped systems in time for your required date of the 10th.

That being the case i would probably take Yonah and look at getting Merom later.

Considering that the major factor of Merom is that it is 32/64bit CPU and unless you are going to run XP 64bit you might as well stick with Yonah for now and you can look at merom cpu later.

Obviously if you were not on such a restricted date i would porbably wait.

But once again........... how long is a piece of string. Its all down to what you want and how long your prepared to wait.
One could always wait to buy the newest and best technology but then you would never buy as you would always be waiting.
Sorry i cannot help much but that is a toughy to answer for anyone.

[aeonsound]

no need to apologise, that's great, i knew it was quite a vague enquiry :)

as long as the capability exists (or is likely to exist) to upgrade an Orion Duo processor in the future, i'm happy!

thanks again for all your help,

-aeon-