The Megahertz race saw companies going for faster and faster machines at the expense of power consumption. The worst of the bunch was the Pentium 4 series. You might remember this as a period of explosive processor speed increases. (let me remember: in 1992, the fastest CPU was 33 MHz; in 1995, 100; in 1999, 450; in 2002, 1.4 Ghz; 2004 3.4 Ghz. Today 3.4 Ghz). You look at those numbers, and you see an arms race in the last few years. At the top speeds, they hit a wall. Even intel saw the wisdom and abandoned the P4 path. So today's laptops are often quieter and less power-consuming than yesterday's. Heck, I have a P4 3.0Ghz laptop on the desk right now, next to my E6600 Core2 Duo (Running at stock 2.4). The laptop is noiser and slower.
