Netbooks?

[Stereodude]

Anyone have a Netbook?

I was perhaps thinking about getting one, but there are so many different models from so many different companies that all seem similar it seems like a crap shoot.

 

[ddrueding]

A friend got an Eee 9" running XP and it is a dog. That is the limit of my experience.

 

[time]

That's really handy to know Dave. Thanks for that.

It implies that Intel's 1.6GHz Atom is a particularly weak CPU and easily outclassed by Via's Nano! Clock for clock, it's supposed to be comparable with the original P5 Pentium, but it doesn't sound like it manages even that.

The nifty EEE Box must therefore also be a dog, because it runs an identical platform. Probably only really suitable as a Citrix client, which is disappointing.

 

[Gilbo]

It's a shame the new Dell Mini 12 is limited to 1GB of RAM by its chipset, and that it includes a non-standard PATA-ZIF connector for the HDD. I would love one of these, but I'd want to add a little RAM, and a better disk --neither of those are options with this. What a failure...

Stereodude, look at the Asus 1000-series. It is amongst the most highly reviewed of the netbooks. There are a few variations within that model line.

Also looking very good is the Samsung NC10. It has a best-in-class keyboard as well as fantastic battery life. The Lenovo S10 is also good.


If I was to buy a netbook right now, it would probably be the Samsung NC10. As I alluded to above, if the Dell Mini 12 was expandable I'd be all over it. But it's not, so it sucks.

 

[hacksaw]

A friend got an Eee 9" running XP and it is a dog. That is the limit of my experience.

That's really handy to know Dave. Thanks for that.

It implies that Intel's 1.6GHz Atom is a particularly weak CPU...

No, it doesn't imply that necessarily. Look at the options for the 9" EEE netbooks (9xx series). There could be a host of factors coming into play with whatever 9" EEE ddrueding is referring too, including the CPU itself not necessarily even being an Atom.

 

[Stereodude]

Also, a dog compared to what? I have an old Pentium M 1.4gHz Dell notebook with a 40 gig HD that's pretty quick running XP IMHO, and it only has 512MB of RAM.

 

[Stereodude]

It implies that Intel's 1.6GHz Atom is a particularly weak CPU and easily outclassed by Via's Nano! Clock for clock, it's supposed to be comparable with the original P5 Pentium, but it doesn't sound like it manages even that.

The Nano also supposedly draws a lot more power and isn't found in any netbook devices, just the older and weaker C7M.

 

[Stereodude]

Stereodude, look at the Asus 1000-series. It is amongst the most highly reviewed of the netbooks. There are a few variations within that model line.

Also looking very good is the Samsung NC10. It has a best-in-class keyboard as well as fantastic battery life. The Lenovo S10 is also good.


If I was to buy a netbook right now, it would probably be the Samsung NC10. As I alluded to above, if the Dell Mini 12 was expandable I'd be all over it. But it's not, so it sucks.

Thanks... What about the MSI Wind U100?

 

[ddrueding]

Actually, it seemed to be HDD-limited most of the time (see the notes about cheap SSD performance in that thread).

 

[time]

No, it doesn't imply that necessarily. Look at the options for the 9" EEE netbooks (9xx series). There could be a host of factors coming into play with whatever 9" EEE ddrueding is referring too, including the CPU itself not necessarily even being an Atom.

The options are really straightforward. For all intents and purposes, the 9" display models all have 1GB RAM and have either a 1.6GHz Atom or a 900MHz Celeron-M.

I immediately suspected that the Celeron-M option (a precursor to the Core 2) might even outclass the higher-clocked Atom, but wonderful Wikipedia says:
The Atom is a basic in-order execution CPU and far slower per-clock than the Celeron M due to high latency, the fact that Intel stripped away the superscalar architecture, superior out-of-order execution, and other important features. Still 1.6ghz Atom-equipped Eee PCs tend to perform similarly to their Celeron-equipped counterparts due to the higher clock speeds.

The only possibility that might support your assertion is to be found on the Wikipedia page, which shows one of the 3 or 4 Celeron-M models, the 904HD, as being clocked at only 630MHz.

Note that according to that page, the Eee PC 1000HD is exactly the same, i.e. a dog with fleas. Caveat Emptor.

Ddrueding now says it appears it was disk-limited. No idea how you could tell that from casual observation, but does this mean you believe that SSDs are slower than HDDs, erratic performance or not?

 

[time]

Also, a dog compared to what? I have an old Pentium M 1.4gHz Dell notebook with a 40 gig HD that's pretty quick running XP IMHO, and it only has 512MB of RAM.

Which means that the Eee PC is more than 50% slower than your old Dell - see previous post.

 

[time]

According to Xbit, the newer Atom 330 is a huge improvement, but there aren't any netbooks using that yet either.

 

[Stereodude]

According to Xbit, the newer Atom 330 is a huge improvement, but there aren't any netbooks using that yet either.

Nor will there be.

 

[Mercutio]

I'm not sure CPU performance is a particularly big deal with those things. They're meant to run a web browser and not much more, after all.

Not being able to upgrade RAM sucks hard, though.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm not saying that it was purely HDD bound; I'm saying that it was a dog, and exhibited the performance freezes that we discussed in the SSD thread. I'm not saying it was a rocket the rest of the time, a 1.6Ghz Atom is not a rocket of a CPU.

 

[MaxBurn]

I think its significant that many of these come with Linux, they simply don't have the horsepower to drive XP really well and forget vista. My friend has one of the Asus ones with the SSD and said it basically sucked under XP but was quite happy under a couple Linux variants a browser and OOO. I don't remember what flavor he settled on though. I see the niche for these where just about everything can go through a browser these days.

 

[Stereodude]

Since I'm in no hurry, I think I will hold off and see what 2009 brings. The Atom CPU seems to be quite the power mizer, but every other chip surrounding it is a bit of a hog. The chipset uses almost 5x the power of the atom CPU.

 

[Stereodude]

Not being able to upgrade RAM sucks hard, though.

I think most of them use a DDR2 SO-DIMM now.

 

[ddrueding]

I think most of them use a DDR2 SO-DIMM now.

I think Merc was commenting more on the chipset being limited to 1GB, so adding more wouldn't do any good.

 

[Mercutio]

Yes.

I spent most of my morning with an Eee. I set it up to dual boot XP and Ubuntu. It's a lot snappier in Linux than it is with Windows, especially for boot time. The model I was working with had a Celeron CPU and a 120GB hard drive. I had it side by side with a new Ubuntu-based desktop machine (4GB, x2/4850) and to be honest they were subjectively identical for boot time and responsiveness with just a web browser and synaptic open. Obviously that's not going to hold when there's 20 tabs open in Firefox, a movie playing and Openoffice running, but it was completely tolerable to use.

I am still not an Ubuntu fan, though.

 

[Gilbo]

Thanks... What about the MSI Wind U100?

That's also very well-reviewed. You can get it with a 6-cell battery, just like the Eee 1000, and Samsung NC10. I think it has a slightly smaller screen and keyboard than both of those though. Otherwise it's probably quite similar.

 

[MaxBurn]

I pinged my friend with the eee and he had to return to a XP light situation for compatibility in the office and isn't really happy with the performance, BUT all the chicks in the office like it because it's so "small and cute".

 

[ddrueding]

I now have an Acer Aspire One (1.6Ghz Atom, 8GB SSD, 512MB RAM) and a 1GB chip is on the way (1.5GB total). The OS that it shipped with would be satisfactory for non-geeks in a stand-alone environment. It had direct links to all the common tasks, and it booted within seconds. Of course, I'm currently installing Ubuntu 8.10 and will be doing the tweaks detailed here in the next few hours. More to report later.

 

[Mercutio]

Hope your WLAN hardware isn't Atheros based.

 

[ddrueding]

Meh, the tweaks show how to make it work. I don't get the spiffy indicator light, but it can only be a matter of time.

 

[ddrueding]

For the record, performing just the first fix on the list fixed the wireless:

sudo aptitude install linux-backports-modules-intrepid

This is the laptop that I wanted when I paid $2500 for the ASUS R2H-A1 a year ago (that is now serving as a glorified remote control and sometimes camera remote viewfinder/backup device). The price of progress...