Well, I'm going to be attending Virginia Tech this fall and the College of Engineering has a computer requirement. Thats all fine and dandy, but I'm not really a hardware person yet and don't really understand the processor requirement.

Computer Form Factor Notebook - Not a Slate form of Tablet PC
Processor/Processor Speed * Intel Pentium-M (or equivalent processor) with a clock frequency of 1.60GHz or higher (Pentium 4 M should be 2.8 GHz or higher)
Operating System Windows XP Professional
Memory 1 GB RAM
Hard Drive 40 Gigabytes
Video Card 32 MB or greater
Optical Device Options DVD/CD-RW (Optionally device can be a DVD+R or DVD-R drive)
Network Card 10/100 Mbit Ethernet Card and 802.11b Wireless Interface
Modem 56 Kb Modem that uses the V.90 Standard. Winmodems are not acceptable
Input/Output USB 2.0
File System NTFS
Warranty STRONGLY Recommend 3 Year
Software Students are required to purchase the Engineering Student Software Bundle. This bundle offers over $1500 worth of software for around $500. Information on the bundle, pricing and pickup can be found at the software purchasing site
They hooked up a store with Dell, and they are offering to different notebooks; one for 1900 and the other for 2200. Basically my question is, whats up with the processor? I'm new to the "Pentium M."

To understand it, what cpus does it compare to in speed and type?

Plus, do you think this notebook could be cheaper than the 1900 to 2200 offered by Dell?

Thanks!