Core 2 Duo laptops hit the street

Intel announced its Core 2 Duo processors in July, but the mobile versions of the chips weren't available until today. Many announcements will be made in the coming weeks as vendors update their laptop lines with the new chips; we've seen the first such models from Dell, Gateway and HP, plus a laptop from the California-based PC Club.

Based on our tests of these first four laptops and benchmarking a top-of-the-line Core 2 Duo chip against a Core Duo, the early performance results are lukewarm at best. We are seeing some performance gains, but they're not nearly the game-changing results we saw last month with the desktop chips. To be fair, Core Duo mobile chips weren't crying out for an upgrade, with nearly the volume of Intel's previous-generation dual-core desktop chips. Read our reviews here and expect more Core 2 Duo laptop reviews soon.