I had a little trouble keeping the credit card at bay, which resulted in me purchasing a white MSI Wind U100 netbook for about $300 on Newegg. Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834152092 Specs: Intel Atom N270 @1.6GHz 1GB DDR2 533 (667 maybe?) Intel GMA950 160GB HDD 10" LED-backlit LCD (1024x600) Built-in 802.11b/g wireless 3-cell Li-ion (which I'm a little skeptical about) Basically, I was looking for something smaller than my desktop yet larger than my iPod Touch to use for the internet/Guru3D/email/YouTube, etc. I dunno, there are tons of netbooks out there from ASUS, HP, Samsung, Sony, and what have you, but to me the wind is especially nifty because it supports the vanilla kernel of Mac OS X. Yes, I would prefer using OS X on such a device instead of the supplied XP Home...sue me. If anyone has had experience with one of these things, let me know! I'm just curious to hear about battery life, build quality, or anything else you might have to say about the U100. Ah, I almost forgot. I hear there's some 'turbo mode' in the BIOS that allows a 24% overclock? I think that would bring this machine somewhere around 2GHz. If you know anything about that too...let me know. Regards, ~Skyline
well, if i where to get a netbook right now, i would probably get an MSI wind also. they are my favorite design right now, but i would have gotten one with the GMA500 if i could find it. you should be happy with the atom for basic use as you discribed, the MSI wind v1.09(i think ?) BIOS has 100% voltage and FSB control as far as i know, so you can overclock as you want.(if temps premit) in fact, some people put one of em on LN2(liquid nitro) and got it up to 2.38Ghz. anyways, you should be happy. BTW if you want to do any gaming at all, get the GMA booster application! the GMA 950 in the wind is only clocked at 166Mhz, where you can clock it up to 400Mhz with this app! http://www.gmabooster.com/
If you're looking for a websurfer, the keyboard might be a little smallish. I've seen full size 15inch notebooks with PentD 1.8GHz, 1GB for the same kinda prices as the Atom noteboks.
But the OP would not be happy cause that would not run OS X (I hear). I have Dell Mini 9 and it fails at flash (youtube/Hulu). The CPU is just not fast enough. Maybe overclock will help, but since the dell is passive (no fan) I can't overclock.
atm i have two mini 9's sitting on my desk, im guessing your talking about full screen since i ran some youtube and it runs fine, except for HD. though its sad that intel's GPUs do not support video, because they are quite fast enough! in fact both machines run world of warcraft quite playable. i have looked for overclocking features on these, but i do see that there is none at all that i can find. it seems the MSI and asus are the only ones i know of that support it! and i did run intel burn test, the mini 9 get a max temp of 74c, even though they dont have a fan. quite good, IMO. until they get better support(possibly on pinetrail) for flash and video(ION!!!) they will just not be as good. and since some benchmarks where able to even get cod4 PLAYABLE is a great sign, once they start getting 1.8Ghz atom CPU's and possibly dual cores we will see lots of options open up here for budget gaming. BTW, i cannot get GMA booster working on the mini 9's... EDIT: BTW full screen youtube seems to work fine, its only the HD that really puts a strain on it. at least, for me.
Well, I'm posting from within OS X on the Wind...and things are a lot nicer than I thought they would be. I have everything working except the internal sound (which no one has gotten to work, it seems). However, a RAM upgrade is a must...1GB isn't going to keep me sane for long.
Got a Lenovo S10E last week for £189. Stuck a 320GB 7200RPM HDD in it, 2GB of RAM extra, and Intel 4965ABGN WIFI card, and XP Pro SP3. Plays 720P H264 perfectly... and lasts about 6 hours.
It's all nice except 3-cell batteries which suck. Sure it lasts longer than regular notebooks but real freedom comes only with 6-cell which can last up to 5 hours and more of usage.
Yeah, I'll be looking into a 6 cell or possibly 9 cell, though that one would probably stick out too much. But wow, what a process it was to get OS X 10.5.7 working on this thing. I had originally installed 10.5.4 on it, but updated immediately to 10.5.5 with the following results: -No functioning sound -Unable to change the screen resolution from 800x600(stretched) Now, I downloaded the kexthelper app and the Framebuffer/IntelGMA950/Winddisplay kexts, which did the trick for getting me back to 1024x600. I just left the sound alone...temporarily. I then updated to 10.5.7 using Apple Software Update, which resulted in the keyboard/trackpad, sound and resolution ALL not working. I of course was able to fix these through the removal of certain kexts and addition of others, but it was a really time-consuming, hair-pulling process. But now, I have a successful OS X install on an MSI wind with everything fully functioning except the internal microphone and camera. Cheers.
There is 1GB soldered to the motherboard, but there is a single additional SO-DIMM slot for another 1GB.
ahh thank for the info. im tempted to buy one, and sell my pc. Though i dont really know how much i'd get for it... i wouldnt mind a bit more RAM for it though..
No problem. I have a stick of 1GB Crucial 200-pin DDR2 667 coming in tomorrow, and I'll post back with the results after I install it.:thumbup:
