Processors, netbooks and all that stuff?

[oxf]

OK I'm considering purchasing a "net book" Anyone got any comments on the processors available? I'm just a little overwhelmed at the atom variants alone. I'm not really needing games but otherwise reasonable fast and power consumption is a consideration.

[del_diablo]

DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS, I REPEAT DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS.
Wait for AMD to give out their bloody fusion laptops.
ATOM do not support Nvidia chips anymore, which results is that its not capable of gaming.

Edit: Intel ATOM uses 10-40 times more power than a ARM chip of equalliant calculation power, get a proper ARM notebook instead.

[kamaboko]

DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS, I REPEAT DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS.
Wait for AMD to give out their bloody fusion laptops.
ATOM do not support Nvidia chips anymore, which results is that its not capable of gaming.

Edit: Intel ATOM uses 10-40 times more power than a ARM chip of equalliant calculation power, get a proper ARM notebook instead.


Uhhh...did you read where the OP said that he doesn't need it for gaming?

To the OP....I've been really happy with my Asus 1000HA. It has a N270 Atom in it. Perhaps you'll want to pick up a newer model, but this thing has been awesome. It's running desktop 10.04. Hulu runs great on it, as well as YouTube, etc. I get at least five hours out of a charge, and that's after having had this thing for well over a year.

[oxf]

Uhhh...did you read where the OP said that he doesn't need it for gaming?

To the OP....I've been really happy with my Asus 1000HA. It has a N270 Atom in it. Perhaps you'll want to pick up a newer model, but this thing has been awesome. It's running desktop 10.04. Hulu runs great on it, as well as YouTube, etc. I get at least five hours out of a charge, and that's after having had this thing for well over a year.

OK thanks! The charge time is what I want to hear as I don't know I can trust the published specs, however they come up with them. I was also wondering if there's much difference between the different Atom chip?

@ del_diablo: I've been watching discussions on ARM chips for a while and from I can gather everyone is still waiting for decent netbooks to hit the market.

[ubunterooster]

Uhhh...did you read where the OP said that he doesn't need it for gaming?

To the OP....I've been really happy with my Asus 1000HA. It has a N270 Atom in it. Perhaps you'll want to pick up a newer model, but this thing has been awesome. It's running desktop 10.04. Hulu runs great on it, as well as YouTube, etc. I get at least five hours out of a charge, and that's after having had this thing for well over a year.
Yes, but having the power to run a powerful screensaver well can put a good strain on GPU...as can compiz.

I am waiting for a good ARM to come out also.

[chiliman]

Here's intels list on the Atom Processors.
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=29035
the Nxxx series are the ones they are putting into netbooks as far as i can tell.

As you can see the N200 series uses only 2.5w compared to the compared to the 5.5-6.5w for the N400 series. So you should get longer life on the N200's.
You could also get a SSD if you can afford it and that would also increase battery life.

It says the N400's have integrated graphics not to sure how much that would affect performance.

if you want more power then theres the NVIDIA ION chipsets in some netbooks. ive read some people playing COD4 on low/med settings. Ive also read rumors about ION2 chips coming out later this year or early next. but from what ive been reading the ion have much shorter battery life.

i plan on getting a netbook eventually im just still waiting for the technology to come down in price and to have more options.

[mamamia88]

i have a samsung n130 running windows 7 home premium. runs great i love it. had ubuntu on it but it didn't work too great

[kamaboko]

Yes, but having the power to run a powerful screensaver well can put a good strain on GPU...as can compiz.

I am waiting for a good ARM to come out also.

Heaven forbid....no Compiz? What's the world coming to? I'm not sure about the rest of the netbook crowd, but I don't need to see spinning boxes, flames, magic lamps, etc., on a netbook. I just have the screen shut off if I'm not using the netbook after a certain period of time. Moreover, to those concerned about gaming, these aren't gaming rigs. That's not their purpose.

[NormanFLinux]

Intel Atom is pretty good. Much better than the Via C-7 chip used on some early netbooks. Its all most people need for e-mailing, surfing the web and doing some word processing work. If you want to do hard core gaming or heavy graphics work on it, a laptop is what to get. But small is beautiful and for 90% of what most people do and the price, a netbook is more than sufficient for their day to day needs.

[formaldehyde_spoon]

DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS, I REPEAT DO NOT GET ATOM VARIANTS.
Wait for AMD to give out their bloody fusion laptops.
ATOM do not support Nvidia chips anymore, which results is that its not capable of gaming.

Edit: Intel ATOM uses 10-40 times more power than a ARM chip of equalliant calculation power, get a proper ARM notebook instead.

Gaming on a netbook??
I'm a big, big fan of ARM, and would buy an ARM netbook in an instant if a good one existed for a decent price (please don't anyone reply with the Touch Book, it's massively overpriced. HP Airlife is the best ARM netbook yet.) but Atom uses around 4 times more power than an equivalent ARM chip. That's still huge, it's just that ''10-40 times'' is not accurate.

[oxf]

Here's intels list on the Atom Processors.
http://ark.intel.com/ProductCollection.aspx?familyID=29035
the Nxxx series are the ones they are putting into netbooks as far as i can tell.

As you can see the N200 series uses only 2.5w compared to the compared to the 5.5-6.5w for the N400 series. So you should get longer life on the N200's.
You could also get a SSD if you can afford it and that would also increase battery life.

It says the N400's have integrated graphics not to sure how much that would affect performance.

if you want more power then theres the NVIDIA ION chipsets in some netbooks. ive read some people playing COD4 on low/med settings. Ive also read rumors about ION2 chips coming out later this year or early next. but from what ive been reading the ion have much shorter battery life.

i plan on getting a netbook eventually im just still waiting for the technology to come down in price and to have more options.

The problem I see with SSD's is there are very few options. Maybe I'm missing something?

[del_diablo]

Gaming on a netbook??
I'm a big, big fan of ARM, and would buy an ARM netbook in an instant if a good one existed for a decent price (please don't anyone reply with the Touch Book, it's massively overpriced. HP Airlife is the best ARM netbook yet.) but Atom uses around 4 times more power than an equivalent ARM chip. That's still huge, it's just that ''10-40 times'' is not accurate.

The amazing Touchbook is not overpriced, its also dated :(
I wish they upgraded it so that it would be worth the price.

[formaldehyde_spoon]

The amazing Touchbook is not just overpriced, its also dated :(
I wish they upgraded it so that it would be worth the price.

I agree. If I lived in Spain I might buy an Airlife, but they are too expensive as well.

Today I came across this: http://armdevices.net/2010/06/04/besta-10-samsung-arm-cortex-a8-laptop-prototype/
Not much in the way of details, but it might turn out ok.

For now I'm making do with my Eee 1005PE, which I can get 12.5 hours out of (from an advertised 14 hrs).

[CharlesA]

I've got an Asus eeePC 1005HA, it ran 9.10 decently and it runs 10.04 decently. The graphics card is garbage if you want desktop effects turned on, but it'll play flash and youtube and junk fine.

[chiliman]

The problem I see with SSD's is there are very few options. Maybe I'm missing something?

Yea your probabbly right, there are several SDD manufactures but all pretty much selling the same thing. if you want one under 200usd i dont think you can get bigger than ~120gb. Anything lager is just way too expensive. I think a 32gb is about 75usd if you get a really cheap brand like ADATA. But it will be much cheaper in a year with more options most likely.

[oxf]

Yea your probabbly right, there are several SDD manufactures but all pretty much selling the same thing. if you want one under 200usd i dont think you can get bigger than ~120gb. Anything lager is just way too expensive. I think a 32gb is about 75usd if you get a really cheap brand like ADATA. But it will be much cheaper in a year with more options most likely.

Well I just spent most the afternoon searching around trying to figure out which net books are curently being sold with SSD's. I'm having a hard time coming up with any! I thought the Dell mini 10 had that option but even that seems to have changed. Maybe I'm missing something but seems like they all have HD's. Have we progressed backwards here?

[kamaboko]

I'd pass on the SSD. The bang for the buck hasn't been met IMO. I can burn through 32GB on my netbook in a heartbeat. I keep a number of movies (in ISO format), and lots of music on it. Go to slickdeals.net and keep an eye out for netbook deals. They had a slew of them the past month or so...coming it at around $200 with the same specs as my Asus 1000HA. I like the 160GB hard drive my Asus came with.

[snowpine]

Asus eee 900HA, 1.6ghz Atom 270, integrated Intel 950 graphics. Full Gnome desktop with the Compiz desktop cube, absolutely no glitches or slowndowns. In terms of pure number crunching ability, the Atom 270 is in the Pentium 3-4 range, but as a web surfing platform it is OK in my book.

I do find that Flash video performance is quite a bit better with Windows XP than with Fedora 13 Linux (I dual boot). The only drawback to Linux on the Atom, IMHO. (Disclaimer: I have not tried the high-end Atoms, for example the Nvidia Ion platform.)

If you want a netbook with an SSD, get one with a standard SATA HDD and swap it for an aftermarket SSD. The "SSDs" in first-generation netbooks were basically flash cards; they do not have the performance of a real SSD. I have a Dell Mini 9 with a factory-installed 8gb SSD; it is brutally slow. A good SSD would be a significant price increase on a netbook ($100+), so that's why they are not common factory-preinstalled.

[gnomeuser]

I have the Eee PC 1002HA model with a single core 32bit ATOM chip in it. It's not a slow machine but it does feel constrainted at times. I love it for carrying to coffeeshops to write.

My desktop is an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 using a dual-core SMT capable 64 bit ATOM chip (the 330 model). This feels snappy and is a great machine for general desktop tasks. I don't think this chip is available for netbooks though.

AMD's netbook style chip offering has started being shipped as well, these I have high hopes for, especially for nettops. ARM I am still dying to see ship consumer netbook/tops but it has been "just about to ship" for a year now.

If you need a netbook right now I would go for something in the Eee PC line, the quality is generally good for the price and Asus have a procedure to get a refund for your Windows license if you are required to buy a model shipping with that.

One thing I would watch out for is the touchpad, often they skimp on this and it ends up feeling like rubbing your finger tip on sandpaper. Also you may find that certain functionality such as edge scrolling isn't available.

[oxf]

Asus eee 900HA, 1.6ghz Atom 270, integrated Intel 950 graphics. Full Gnome desktop with the Compiz desktop cube, absolutely no glitches or slowndowns. In terms of pure number crunching ability, the Atom 270 is in the Pentium 3-4 range, but as a web surfing platform it is OK in my book.

I do find that Flash video performance is quite a bit better with Windows XP than with Fedora 13 Linux (I dual boot). The only drawback to Linux on the Atom, IMHO. (Disclaimer: I have not tried the high-end Atoms, for example the Nvidia Ion platform.)

If you want a netbook with an SSD, get one with a standard SATA HDD and swap it for an aftermarket SSD. The "SSDs" in first-generation netbooks were basically flash cards; they do not have the performance of a real SSD. I have a Dell Mini 9 with a factory-installed 8gb SSD; it is brutally slow. A good SSD would be a significant price increase on a netbook ($100+), so that's why they are not common factory-preinstalled.

Uhm and I understanding you correctly here? Isn't the interface for a SSD completely different from a HD? I didn't even consider replacing a HD with a SSD...


I have the Eee PC 1002HA model with a single core 32bit ATOM chip in it. It's not a slow machine but it does feel constrainted at times. I love it for carrying to coffeeshops to write.

My desktop is an Acer Aspire Revo R3610 using a dual-core SMT capable 64 bit ATOM chip (the 330 model). This feels snappy and is a great machine for general desktop tasks. I don't think this chip is available for netbooks though.

AMD's netbook style chip offering has started being shipped as well, these I have high hopes for, especially for nettops. ARM I am still dying to see ship consumer netbook/tops but it has been "just about to ship" for a year now.

If you need a netbook right now I would go for something in the Eee PC line, the quality is generally good for the price and Asus have a procedure to get a refund for your Windows license if you are required to buy a model shipping with that.

One thing I would watch out for is the touchpad, often they skimp on this and it ends up feeling like rubbing your finger tip on sandpaper. Also you may find that certain functionality such as edge scrolling isn't available.

Thanks.. useful advice!

[CharlesA]

Uhm and I understanding you correctly here? Isn't the interface for a SSD completely different from a HD? I didn't even consider replacing a HD with a SSD...

They both use the SATA interface. :)

[oxf]

They both use the SATA interface. :)

So I could?! OMG that changes everything! :) :)

[snowpine]

Uhm and I understanding you correctly here? Isn't the interface for a SSD completely different from a HD? I didn't even consider replacing a HD with a SSD...

Many netbooks have standard SATA-interface hard drives that you can easily replace with a SATA SSD or larger-capacity SATA HDD.

Some of the earlier netbooks used non-standard drive formats (like my Dell Mini 9, which has an 8gb mini-PCI SSD) and on a few models it is soldered directly to the motherboard. :(

[formaldehyde_spoon]

...
(Disclaimer: I have not tried the high-end Atoms, for example the Nvidia Ion platform.)
...


Possibly some confusion here? The Ion is not a high end Atom, or any sort of Atom. Ion is a motherboard with a 9400M GPU and (currently) Atom CPU (and really, even this is slightly misleading. In practice it would almost make more sense to just refer to the 9400M as Ion). Just think of Ion as the graphics side of things, because that's all it's relevant to.

There are a variety of Atom CPUs being used with Ion, there's no way to identify a CPU by knowing that a machine uses Ion.

It will still be ''Ion'' when they release Via+9400M, and if they release AMD+9400M.