c-60 and virtualbox?

[themillak]

Not sure if this is the right forum to ask, but I'm looking to buy a netbook and here seems to be the place to ask if it can handle a task.

I've started school this semester and my school sends out plenty of messages each day, 1-2 a week by text message and the rest by email. I currently have a 17" notebook with terrible battery life and a backpack that doesn't quite hold it as well as I'd like. Plus, the tables are a bit small and I'd prefer to not have to take up lots of space and an outlet constantly. I've been deciding between an atom netbook like the asus eeepc 1015px-pu (n570, claimed 11 hrs battery life) and the acer ao722 (c-60, claimed 7 hours battery life). I really like the small size of both machines and that they're light, making them easy to have at school. I'm satisfied enough that I can get debian running on them without too many problems but i'm almost definately going to want/need to run visual studio on the netbook, meaning i'll need windows on it also.

I know I can dualboot the netbook but I know from past experiences I'll mostly stick to one or the other OS and so I'd prefer to do what I do on my laptop and have a VM of windows for when I need to use specific windows programs. Does anyone have any experience with VMs on one of these machines (or a gut instinct about how it may perform)? I'm assuming it'll be slow but once loaded it should work well enough i'm hoping.

 

[gmaster456]

I would NOT advise running a virtual machine with a C-60. It struggles enough with multitasking. The C-60 is not much more powerful than an Atom. Also, how big was the hard drive in your old computer and whats your budget? For what you want I would recommend a laptop with a Core i3 or Llano A6
Here is a review of the processor if you want to read it
http://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-C-60-Notebook-Processor.51806.0.html

 

[DaveSimmons]

Windows 7 is a little bit laggy running natively on a dual-core Atom, so running in a VM on a comparable CPU is going to be painful. And VS 2010 is a little sluggish on my much faster 2.4 GHz Q6600 quad core at work.

Get the i3-21x0M instead -- it will be something like 4 times as fast as the C-60.

 

[F1shF4t]

I ran XP in VMware player on my c50 netbook running win7. This was so I could access work email while on a holiday.
It worked but it was just painfully slow even with a SSD. You'll definitely want at least a ULV cpu if not a standard voltage one.

You can still get great battery life without using netbook or ulv class cpus. For example I get 6-8 hours out of my u36 during light use. Heavy use its a lot less but then its also a lot quicker, so its unlikely to stay loaded for long.

 

[wsaenotsock]

try an e-350 based netbook?

4-5 hours of battery, maybe more undervolted. Seems to run ubuntu 10.10 fine and win 7.

 

[podspi]

Between the two, the Atom has any virtualization support, so you'll 'want' to go with the C-60.

I am doing the opposite of you (VM is running Linux) and its... slow with an E-350, I honestly wouldn't suggest running Windows in VM on a C-60, especially to run Visual Studio.

Honestly, I'd look into an E-350 and dual-boot. It might not be ideal, but even the E-350 will be a bit slow for Visual Studio. People buy serious machines to run Visual Studio. That said, I have successfully used it on an Atom N270, but it was not what I would call pleasant.

 

[Fox5]

You can certainly run a VM, people were running VMs back when desktop machines were weaker than the C-60.

If those are your options, the C-60 (or if you can, an e-350 or e-450 based netbook) would certainly be better than the atom.

 

[gmaster456]

You can certainly run a VM, people were running VMs back when desktop machines were weaker than the C-60.
.

Unless TC is running the exact same software that people were using back when CPU's were weaker than the C-60, your comparison does not work. With the advancements in hardware also comes the advancements in software.

 

[Fox5]

Unless TC is running the exact same software that people were using back when CPU's were weaker than the C-60, your comparison does not work. With the advancements in hardware also comes the advancements in software.

If he's virtualizing XP or earlier, I'd say he should be ok. Virtual Machine software has gotten faster over the years, not slower. However, what people considered acceptable performance for a virtual machine has changed. Just getting an OS running in a virtual machine was good enough back then, now people demand near native performance. If he doesn't set his expectations too high, I think things will be fine, so long as he has plenty of ram.

I ran a virtual machine back in the day out of necessity. It was slow, but I needed a way to run certain software. Now I can run VM's just because I feel like it or to play around with an OS.

 

[ThatsABigOne]

You can certainly get the c-60 and use Virtualbox without much issue. The speed might be slow at times, but having the battery life on the go with some computational ability is no brainer.

 

[themillak]

I was told to let them know what I needed and they would buy it for me. They also said this about Visual Studio itself and said they'd buy it before asking how much it was but i got it basically free after jumping through the free for educational use hoops. So I'm looking to keep it as inexpensive as I can for their end and for myself a long battery life (i'd like about 6 hours to cover the time i'd be in classes and not have to bring the power cord) and small & light to make it super convenient. I have a windows 7 and xp disk & code I can use for the VM and I'd of course be bumping up the ram.

At home I'll still have my larger laptop with its own VM for visual studio so I don't imagine I'll need more than "functional enough" for when I'm out.

 

[Fox5]

I was told to let them know what I needed and they would buy it for me. They also said this about Visual Studio itself and said they'd buy it before asking how much it was but i got it basically free after jumping through the free for educational use hoops. So I'm looking to keep it as inexpensive as I can for their end and for myself a long battery life (i'd like about 6 hours to cover the time i'd be in classes and not have to bring the power cord) and small & light to make it super convenient. I have a windows 7 and xp disk & code I can use for the VM and I'd of course be bumping up the ram.

At home I'll still have my larger laptop with its own VM for visual studio so I don't imagine I'll need more than "functional enough" for when I'm out.

How about an E-450 based netbook? Runs at around ~1.7Ghz, so it's a good bit faster than a C-60. I'd say get as much ram as possible if you're doing VMs.

 

[themillak]

I thought that the c-60 was closing the gap to the e-350 is and is much easier to find in a <12" machine. other than the dm1z i don't know that i've come across other netbooks with an e-350/450.

 

[Fox5]

I thought that the c-60 was closing the gap to the e-350 is and is much easier to find in a <12" machine. other than the dm1z i don't know that i've come across other netbooks with an e-350/450.

Search for the e-450 on newegg, you'll find a few. Lenovo's S205 has an e-450 as well.

 

[Fayd]

i know this is necroing a thread... but...

i have virtualbox on my acer aspire 722 with a C-50... i use it to run xubuntu 11.04, which in turn runs eclipse. (i couldn't get eclipse to compile c++ code in windows). it's slow at opening programs, but not painfully so. once i get it up and running, it's slow to compile compared to my desktop, but it's workable. if your concern is whether or not you *can* do it, yes you can.

 

[Fox5]

i know this is necroing a thread... but...

i have virtualbox on my acer aspire 722 with a C-50... i use it to run xubuntu 11.04, which in turn runs eclipse. (i couldn't get eclipse to compile c++ code in windows). it's slow at opening programs, but not painfully so. once i get it up and running, it's slow to compile compared to my desktop, but it's workable. if your concern is whether or not you *can* do it, yes you can.

Agreed, it works, it's not fast, but it works at a speed fast enough to be usable, but not enjoyable. You wouldn't want to use it to run a VM full screened as your primary OS, but it can be usable for the occasional app.

 

[themillak]

sorry to necro my old thread, wanted to fill in how it went in the end.

in the end i bought a lenovo x120e with the e-350. upgraded to an m4 and 8gb of ram and installed debian. windows xp inside virtual box started up faster than on my wife's PIII before I repurposed it but the boot-up sound stuttered. after seeing debian start in seconds, watching xp crawl to a start made me ditch the VM and I'll be making due with other options for if i need visual studio or something else that i would have used that VM.

 

[Fox5]

sorry to necro my old thread, wanted to fill in how it went in the end.

in the end i bought a lenovo x120e with the e-350. upgraded to an m4 and 8gb of ram and installed debian. windows xp inside virtual box started up faster than on my wife's PIII before I repurposed it but the boot-up sound stuttered. after seeing debian start in seconds, watching xp crawl to a start made me ditch the VM and I'll be making due with other options for if i need visual studio or something else that i would have used that VM.

Are you using virtualbox? Try playing with the settings, try using the 'best' hardware options and checkboxes available if you aren't. If you are, try turning off ACPI in the VM settings, which is a serious performance hit on some hardware.

 

[themillak]

i have whatever virtualization options offered in the bios turned on and it looks like I had the IO-APIC setting turned on. If I try it again later I'll setup the VM with that setting off.

 

[Fox5]

i have whatever virtualization options offered in the bios turned on and it looks like I had the IO-APIC setting turned on. If I try it again later I'll setup the VM with that setting off.

Not just the bios, you have to turn them on in the virtual machine settings/preferences as well. There's also different hardware selections, and generally newer = better performance. Like choosing Intel ICH9, allocating 2 cpus, switching from IDE to SATA (although that's tough on windows xp, but apparently worth it), enabling caching, and so forth.

But IO-APIC is ridiculously slow on most older cpus due to missing some VM extensions, not sure how it fairs on the low end AMD chips, but it's worth a try. (it will disable some hardware options and multi cpu support though)

Also, make sure you install the virtualbox guest additions.

 

[themillak]

i haven't finished doing the updates yet (won't do it on battery power and i don't have a plug in class) but it was actually usable with io-apic off, and even faster once i switched it over to a sata port. thanks