Hi guys, the new fall '09 semester at my university is right around the corner (late august), and I'm going to be needing a netbook to take from between classes, and use for writing/web surfing/music/movies during my downtime. After much research, I have settled on the following netbooks: MSI Wind U123-001US http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152109 Acer Aspire One AO751h-1885. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115584 which one will give me the performance I need while giving the longest battery life? I'm planning on running the following applications: Microsoft Office 2007 VLC Media Player AVG 8.5 Spybot S&D Spywareblaster 4.2 PeerGuardian 2 itunes AIM ----- and yes, Windows XP is a MUST for me on a netbook.
Netbooks are all the same because they all use the same CPU and 1GB of RAM (some have 2GB). They all either use a 5400RPM hard drive or small SSD. I wouldnt get a netbook for school work unless you really dont want to carry more stuff, I would get a cheaper laptop that is dual core with 2 gigs of RAM. Even the slowest mobile dual core is probably faster than a netbook. We have sales at work at the time for these kinds of laptops that whoop up on netbooks for the same price or slightly higher. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115572 I would recommend this. The integrated graphics chip is good enough to play games! Ive tested the HD3000 chip on games like UT3, DeadSpace and Grid. They run smooth on high details, but at really small resolutions like 800*600/1024*768. and this 2nd if you cant make it http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834115569 Basically an AMD netbook with an better IGP, 2GB (can be upgraded), and a disc drive. Remember, netbooks dont have disc drives and external ones can go for $70. So you are better off really with a laptop, unless you have everything on SD cards or Flash drives.
I didnt want to go with anything larger than netbooks because of their tendency for batteries to die, as well as generate ALOT of heat. I've had 2 laptops and both have suffered from heat death (computer shuts down but not before becoming SCORCHING hot). But if you're saying that the only way I can do what I mentioned above is to get something beefier than a N280 Atom with 1GB DDR2, then I guess I ll have to reevaluate which one I would need. Intel is my preference. Are u saying I need something beefier than a netbook? P.S.: I have ALOT of 16GB flash drives so I have no problem going to usb flash drive only setup
you could put 2GB of RAM in a netbook yourself. There are vids of it on youtube. Some are easier to do than others. You could also get a 7200RPM hard drive with larger 16MB cache. But if you do the math, that comes out to over $400-450 total if you bought extra parts to swap out for the extra speed. I was going to get a netbook also, but I was like naaaah. I would get frustrated at the speed.
lol wow, ur acting like my system would slow to a crawl if I ran Excel and Word 07 simultaneously. Is it that bad? I mean I got along wioth my dell Celeron M 1.7 GHz + 256MB DDR RAM alright until heat death hit.
I have an Acer Aspire One A150 with XP installed and it's just awesome. It has a surprising amount of grunt and XP flies on it. I have no problems running Open Office with several instances open (alongside Opera, iTunes, MSN and anti-virus) and despite the small keyboard touch-typing is perfectly doable with good accuracy as well. I'm surprised at the people who remark on netbooks lack of power; sure they don't have as much under the hood as a full-blown PC or laptop but I've not seen mine struggle under any circumstances (yet, at least). The review of the Aspire One on the link you first posted said about "Youtube stutters, full-screen video is a no-no" etc but - what? I can run "HQ" Youtube videos in full-screen fine and I tested a 2gb WMV file - it played fine in full-screen (using VLC). Infact I've been using the netbook in the living room streaming the Ashes cricket series over our network on to our HDTV; that was playing for hours and hours a day for a couple of days at a time and it never faltered once (barring occasional network hangups when I was using bandwidth for other bits). All in all I've been genuinely surprised and even amazed at the performance of this netbook. I bought it (with Linux on) expecting a weak, feeble computer - nothing more than a glorified word-processor. Word-processing was all I originally wanted from it and given the price I paid this was not a problem at all but it's now a fully-functional PC with all my music on, a number of videos and of course Peggle for when I need a rest. Battery life isn't that marvellous on the AAO150 but it's expanded up to 5+ hours with a six cell battery. I get well over two hours with the stock one and honestly that's fine for me as I'm house-bound. As a proof-of-concept I set up my phone as a wireless router using it's data-tariff and the netbook was able to get a nice internet connection off of it via ad-hoc networking. If I was able to get out-and-about I'd be a happy bunny :nerd:
Dont get either just yet. Wait until you can get the ones with the geforce 9400 built in (basically an nvidia ion) I use an asus EEE 901 myself. It does it's job, but i'd rather have waited for the ion platform.
POV already released an ION netbook. All other suggestions here are negated by this fact. http://www.guru3d.com/news/point-of-view-launches-notebook-with-nvidia-ion-/ http://www.pointofview-online.com/default2.php?content_id=2&news_mode=detail&news_id=59
The ION stuff looks awesome in the long-run but it's surely a bit like Core I7 at the moment; fantastic but excessive given the cheaper alternatives. The netbook you linked to is over twice the price of an Aspire One A150 and yes, it's performance is undoubtedly better but sometimes that is not the only factor to consider...
the intel GMA950 in most netbooks is horrible. Most people never plan on putting games on a netbook, but everyone i know with a netbook has games on theirs. Also the hardware acceleration for HD playback on the 9400 would be helpful. My GMA950 has trouble with HD videos.
If you never plan on playing HD videos then sure go with a GMA950 one. Piece of **** IMHO. I would gladly pay $495 for a 10 inch netbook that can even play 3D games. Oh & it's nothing like the i7... can't compare the two. My rig can play all the same games an i7 rig can play. But a GMA950 netbook cannot do HD video.
The pricing scenario is similar, that's what I meant. There's nothing my PC can't do with it's overclocked Q6600 but obviously an I7 is better and I'd be a fool to say otherwise - it just comes with a substantial increase in price. HD video on a netbook? I guess it really depends what you want from the thing, the OP said nothing about games and for the purposes he listed an Atom/GMA950 is perfectly adequate and potentially half the price of an Ion powered netbook. The Atom/GMA950 combo is not hugely powerful but that is not why they are proving to be so popular. They're popular because of their form factor and their suitability as a lightweight computer platform, £150 for a little computer I can chuck around as I see fit and use for "office" work, internet, music and videos is perfect. £300 for the same thing but with basic graphics potential... Not so much. Just my two cents, depends what the OP is after of course.
alright guys settle down. While having a 9400M under the hood of my netbook gives me a great deal of comfort, the fact of the matter is that all of my video files are either in .mpg or .avi, which require very little graphics processing from my experience. However when playing my videos on a computer that had integrated graphics and a P4 2.8GHz, the video was VERY grainy, especially after resizing the image a few times. So will the atom+intel GMA950 give me any issues like that? I'm not going to be gaming AT ALL with my netbook, other than online shockwave/flash/java games that have no real Direct3D/OpenGL usage.
What sort of videos ended up grainy? If you can explain the sort of files that caused problems I can try and sort out some screenshots if that would help. Straight rips of the LOTR dvds look absolutely fantastic on the AA1 but they weren't grainy to begin with.
TechGURU, it's all about pre-planning. You say you wont be gaming at all with it. But it's one of those things where you think you wont use it for anything else, until you have it. It's like people that get credit cards and swear they'll never use it for anything but emergencies. Once you have it, you'll want to put it to the test. I bought my netbook for 1 thing and 1 thing only, to surf the web away from home with good battery life, and without lugging a big laptop around. Within a week of having it, i was half way through the main story of Morrowind, on the netbook. Right now, as i type this, my netbook is running a collector for the game Flyff. It's been running the game for the last 10 days straight.. A computer i swore wouldn't be for gaming. As far as grainy? not really the weak CPU and GPU causes stuttering, not graininess. The Atom is a great cpu, for it's power draw, but it's still very weak. At least with the 9400m, you can use the video chip to speed up videos, and take load off the cpu, since the cpu is still weak. My EEE can't run 1080p videos at all, and struggles with 720p. I regret not waiting, and i may even purchase a whole new netbook later giving my EEE to my kid to tinker with and probably destroy. DO NOT get a netbook that uses the GMA950. Also don't get an Asus EEE unless you want to perform surgery on it's screen to remove the anti-reflective film which makes everything look grainy.
They were suppose to go into production this month, but there have been a couple head butts between the companies involved, so it may be a month or two before you see them released on a larger scale. Personally i'm waiting for a netbook that uses the Intel Atom N330, which is a dual core atom cpu, that also supports 64bit as well as hyper threading for 4 threads. The ION platform netbooks will cost about $400 to $500, a bit more than current GMA950 netbooks, but the additional power and superior chipset make up the difference. Even a GMA X3x00 or X4x00 series chipset would be acceptable, they offer alot more power than the GMA950. 1 more thing, go with the 10-12inch screen, mine has the 8.9 inch screen and it's actually just a little bit to small. Just a little bit. My mother has a 10.2 inch screen on her netbook and it is noticeably easier to read on. If you absolutely need a netbook RIGHT NOW, and for dirt cheap, you might be able to find some used ones on ebay for <$150. Though they would have a GMA950. Alot of people buy netbooks not realizing how small the screens really are, and are forced to sell them for a larger model. Just make sure it doesn't have an Intel Mobile CPU, or VIA cpu, or Intel Celeron. The Intel Mobile, is just another naming for the Celeron.
Yeah man, I was totally hoping that I'd see the N330 combined with the 9400M. That was be an AWESOME setup. I'm gunning for at least a 10.2" screen. 11" would be the best one though. If I'm going to invest in a netbook, I'm going to get one that will last. If I have to pay $600 to get the 9400M + N330, so be it. But a penny more, will not. Any idea when the 9400M + N330 ION netbooks will come out?
Got a Lenovo S10E myself. Currently using a 320GB 7200RPM Seagate, 2.5GB of Crucial RAM, an Intel 4965BGN card, and XP PRO. Runs Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike 1.6, X2 : The Threat, and Thief 1 and 2 !! Plays 720P H264 smooth as silk.
