Whats the point of the intel atom/netbooks?

[kpxgq]

My current laptop is an aging HP NC4200 "ultraportable"
- 1.7ghz pentium-m / dothan
- intel 915 gpu
- 12" svga

my priority for this machine is portability and ruggedness,it is used 90% of general internet browsing and light duty work... i keep the cpu downclocked to 1ghz (using RMClock) and can get about 4-5 hours of battery life on typical usage.

it's an old machine and has significant cosmetic damage so i was thinking of upgrading to something newer... since i only need casual internet usage and portability, the new netbooks seemed a great pick (looking at the lenovo s10).... however upon further research, these new netbooks seem to be a downgrade from my current old laptop:

- 1.6ghz atom performs worse than a 900mhz dothan
- wvga screen seems to have less screen real estate than svga
- smaller keyboard
- standard 3-cell battery gets only 2-3 hours of battery life compared to my 4+ hours

i thought the new atom cpu was supposed to be fairly efficent but it looks like it is slower and gets worse battery life than my 5 year old dothan powered laptop. at this point im wondering if it might be a better idea to grab another used nc4200 on ebay for around $400-500

 

[apoppin]

i am not so sure if this belongs in CPU, but is is my own question .. and what i am trying to decide now .. i need a notebook so i can monitor my webcans at home while i am at work .. that is all i need .. plus being able to handle internet and Office07 applications

i need decent battery life .. and to tether my notebook with my cellphone for total freedom

How slow is that 1.6Ghz Atom?
- are these notebooks really glorified Blackberries?

 

[SunnyD]

It's for extreme portability while having enough horsepower to do common daily tasks. At the price point as well... it's not too bad.

 

[MichaelD]

I have a MSI Wind 432US (6-cell battery/160GB HD/BlueTooth) and I think it's fantastic when used for what it's meant to be used for.

SunnyD hit the nail on the head with his assessment. :thumbsup:

I bought a case for it and without the charger in there, it weighs no more than a textbook. Even with the charger, you hardly notice you're carrying it. When setting it up in a mobile environment, I still have lots of room on the (typically) tiny table for my sandwich, drink and newspaper.

The WiFi in it is 10x better than the one in my 3-year old Acer laptop. With 2GB of RAM (it came with 1GB) once the OS is up and running and I have my various windows open, switching b/t them is very fast and lag-free.

The KB is 90% of full size and fairly comfy to type on. I'm a touch typist and can easily type 90WPM on a full-size KB. I can't get anywhere near that on the Wind, but I can honestly say if I slow down and am "conscious" of what I'm doing, it's not difficult at all to type on easily.

The 1024x600 res fits a full webpage; no side scrolling necessary.

The downsides? Of course there are some. Speaking only for me, obviously:

It's not a gaming machine. Don't even bother trying.
Looking DOWN at the screen for long periods of time can be a pain in the neck. Literally.
I have not gotten anywhere near 6 hours of battery life yet, but I've read that the battery needs to be well discharged/charged multiple times before acheiving that long of life. Most times, I'm near an outlet and use it religiously, but so far I've seen almost 4 hours.

But the ultra-portability due to it's small size and low weight, coupled with the fact that I can check email, chat, surf 10 webpages at once, work on an Excel sheet and listen to MP3's all at the same time (with speedy switching b/t the apps) with something 1/3rd the size of my Acer laptop and it's luggage-like casemakes this little box a best-buy in my opinion.

YMMV, of course, but that's my two cents.

 

[skillyho]

I've played with a Dell Mini9 and Asus 900A (with various linux distros and the standard XP setup) and you have to really use one to understand how convenient they truly are. You slowly adjust to the keyboard/screen size and I find myself reaching for my netbook over my Dell 15.4" Vostro Lappy just b/c the battery life is outstanding, it weighs a fraction of the other device, and most often I'm just browsing Anandtech/HardOCP/Slickdeals while on Skype with MP3's playing. My wife loves how it convenient it is for kitchen use (recipes/videos) and it's also a great table PC for the occasional IMDB lookup to try and figure out "what's his face" on "that movie"....etc..etc...

They are really a terrific value for their intended purpose of ultra-portable mobile computing.

 

[Jabbernyx]

Small and light (10" is just nice for me - enough display real estate and non-toy-sized KB)
1.6GHz Atom (easily clocks up to 1.7GHz with ASUS' utility) is fast enough
Good battery life (skip the 3-cell cheapies)
Inexpensive (got a 1000HA Eee for ~$240 after Live CB)

The only thing keeping it from double-digit battery life is the abysmal (power-wise) 945 chipset.

 

[pm]

Two "good" uses for a Netbook:

1. I bought one for my nine year-old daughter. There is no way we'd get her a $600+ laptop, but a $260 Acer Aspire isn't so bad. (A150-1570 $252 shipped at Tigerdirect). She's happy to have a computer to work on, and I'm glad she's not spending hours hunting-and-pecking on my computer.

2. a cheap small laptop for travelling. Rather than carry along my somewhat expensive laptop, or my wife's laptop with all of her work on it, we just take the netbook. 120GB gives a nice buffer for the digital camera, and WiFi and the rest makes it easy to connect.

 

[LoneNinja]

I thought these things were cool little devices until I played around on one at Best Buy. They're just too small for me to type on, its literally uncomfortable to my hands. I'll be sticking to my 15.4" Dell Latitude.

 

[magreen]

Great, they're useful. But back to the OP's question: why are these netbooks better than the OP's 4-yr-old 12" hp?

 

[pm]

Great, they're useful. But back to the OP's question: why are these netbooks better than the OP's 4-yr-old 12" hp?

I don't think they are. I think he's right - except that you'll pay more for a used NC4200 than for a low-end or even mid-end Atom netbook, and it will be bigger and heavier than a typical netbook (4lbs for an NC4200 vs. ~2lbs for a netbook).


* not speaking for Intel corp.

 

[Jabbernyx]

Originally posted by: LoneNinja
I thought these things were cool little devices until I played around on one at Best Buy. They're just too small for me to type on, its literally uncomfortable to my hands. I'll be sticking to my 15.4" Dell Latitude.

What size? I find a 10" to be comfortable, <= 8.9" to be toys.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: kpxgq
My current laptop is an aging HP NC4200 "ultraportable"
- 1.7ghz pentium-m / dothan
- intel 915 gpu
- 12" svga

my priority for this machine is portability and ruggedness,it is used 90% of general internet browsing and light duty work... i keep the cpu downclocked to 1ghz (using RMClock) and can get about 4-5 hours of battery life on typical usage.

it's an old machine and has significant cosmetic damage so i was thinking of upgrading to something newer... since i only need casual internet usage and portability, the new netbooks seemed a great pick (looking at the lenovo s10).... however upon further research, these new netbooks seem to be a downgrade from my current old laptop:

- 1.6ghz atom performs worse than a 900mhz dothan
- wvga screen seems to have less screen real estate than svga
- smaller keyboard
- standard 3-cell battery gets only 2-3 hours of battery life compared to my 4+ hours

i thought the new atom cpu was supposed to be fairly efficent but it looks like it is slower and gets worse battery life than my 5 year old dothan powered laptop. at this point im wondering if it might be a better idea to grab another used nc4200 on ebay for around $400-500

I'm in a similar position. I have a Thinkpad X41T ultraportable tablet and it has severe cosmetic damage as well. However, it has a 12" screen, 1.5Ghz ULV Pentium M, 1.5GB of ram, 1024x768 res, and in general beats out these netbooks. It only loses in battery life, I get less than an hour and a half on the 4 cell battery. (probably partially ubuntu's fault, don't think power management is as good as windows, partly the condition of the battery, but mainly just a small battery) Power usage is only between 10W to 15W, so I'm guessing the battery is just too small, I don't think even the netbooks are much lower in power usage than that.

Still, I see the attractiveness of a netbook. Very low cost, very portable, and amazing battery life. Personally, I find myself eyeing HP's dv2 and dv3 more so. I bet you could even undervolt the processor and improve their battery life. The dv2 is a bit too stripped down, but the dv3 looks like about as low as you can take a laptop while still making it fully usable, complete with decent 3d graphics.

 

[Idontcare]

Originally posted by: Fox5

Originally posted by: kpxgq
My current laptop is an aging HP NC4200 "ultraportable"
- 1.7ghz pentium-m / dothan
- intel 915 gpu
- 12" svga

I'm in a similar position. I have a Thinkpad X41T ultraportable tablet and it has severe cosmetic damage as well. However, it has a 12" screen, 1.5Ghz ULV Pentium M, 1.5GB of ram, 1024x768 res, and in general beats out these netbooks.

I was in this position too. Had a 2002 Dell X200...nice 800Mhz P3 with 12" screen. Sucker lasted me 6 yrs, was super light and very portable and ran XP like a champ despite its paltry 640MB ram.

Went shopping for a replacement and all these new portables had smaller screens (10") and no-better battery life (3-4hrs) than my 6 yr-old laptop. Uhg.

 

[LoneNinja]

Originally posted by: Jabbernyx

Originally posted by: LoneNinja
I thought these things were cool little devices until I played around on one at Best Buy. They're just too small for me to type on, its literally uncomfortable to my hands. I'll be sticking to my 15.4" Dell Latitude.

What size? I find a 10" to be comfortable, <= 8.9" to be toys.

I'm almost 100% sure it was 8.9.

 

[TurtleCrusher]

I use my netbook for school and travel. I also have a Lenovo T61 with a Core2 T7500, which is a VERY good laptop processor. It has a nice 15.4in screen and looks awesome.

Cons? It so fucking heavy. I don't like the battery performance. I dont mean to swear and all, but really, if you are going from class to class and you need to whip it out to do some notes or web surfing its a real pain. It's too big and clunky. The 5400RPM drive just kills me. It takes a good 2 1/2 minutes from power to internet. My EeePC is less then half of that.

 

[Fox5]

Originally posted by: Scholzpdx
I use my netbook for school and travel. I also have a Lenovo T61 with a Core2 T7500, which is a VERY good laptop processor. It has a nice 15.4in screen and looks awesome.

Cons? It so fucking heavy. I don't like the battery performance. I dont mean to swear and all, but really, if you are going from class to class and you need to whip it out to do some notes or web surfing its a real pain. It's too big and clunky. The 5400RPM drive just kills me. It takes a good 2 1/2 minutes from power to internet. My EeePC is less then half of that.

Heh, if you think a 5400RPM drive is bad, the X41T came with a 4200RPM drive prone to constant braking due to its active protection mechanism. Mine died years ago, didn't feel like dealing with warranty, and replacement drives were $300. I repeatedly partitioned out the free space using low level drive management software in Linux (causing an ever shrinking hard drive and the partitioning could take upwards of a week to finish). Eventually I just got an adapter and put a 32GB compact flash drive in. It works about as well as the SSDs in current netbooks, though since there's not much holding it in place, a sudden jolt to the computer can crash it.

 

[PCTC2]

I love carrying around my friend's 10" netbook rather than my 12" LifeBook or 14.1" Lenovo ThinkPad T61. Smaller, lighter, and all I ever use any of these computers for is word processing, spreadsheets, and server maintenance and troubleshooting (SSH mainly). They all get good battery performance, but I can fit the netbook into my shoulder pack. I have to use a Targus bag for the Lifebook and Thinkpad.

 

[imported_seferio]

The ASUS 1000HE comes with a 6-cell battery which should solve most battery lifetime problems. It also seems like netbooks are moving away from the 8.9" screen to 10" screens, either that or the price drop on the smaller netbooks is finally happening. Regardless, you were already downclocking and Atoms are quite fast for the basic tasks (email, internet, word, etc). I think a larger netbook would make sense for your needs and would come with the benefit of being NEW (rather than buying something old and used) with components that are more up to date. You could also wait and hope for an Ion netbook which would definitely be a step up.

 

[hans007]

well a used subnote was quite expensive when new.

my dad uses an x31 thinkpad, and it was like $1300 4 years ago (the x41 had already come out and it was on sale).

The atom is great if you want a NEW notebook that performs like one of those. I mean, its still a bit lighter than an x series thinkpad (crappier keyboard tho definitely). And usually even the 3 or 4 cell ones get better battery life.

I mean you could buy a used X31/x41 but it woudl be used, and get worse battery life etc , have a smaller / slower hard drive.

I mean the point of a netbook is that it is NEW and serves thee same funciton as a 4 year old subnote.

 

[IntelUser2000]

- 1.6ghz atom performs worse than a 900mhz dothan - wvga screen seems to have less screen real estate than svga - smaller keyboard - standard 3-cell battery gets only 2-3 hours of battery life compared to my 4+ hours

1. It's not slower what are you talking about: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3321&p=7

Most of the benches show advantage on the Atom and at worst its equal. It looks like 1.6GHz is around the level of the 1GHz Pentium M.

2. You underclocked your Pentium M which isn't how its generally used.

3. Sure the screen size is smaller but what do you expect when the whole system is smaller??

4. Another unfair comparison. You can of course find things on EBay for much cheaper than retail prices. Even with your point, the Atom Netbooks are still cheaper, and its new!

5. Battery life hasn't improved because the capacity of the battery is different. Do you say an SUV that uses 2x more fuel per mile yet has twice the gas tank size of a smaller car has same efficiency?

The whole point of the Netbooks is bringing "cheap" to ultraportable sized computers. New ultraportables that feature latest ULV processors go for $1500+.

 

[konakona]

well you gotta learn to live with worse keyboards. not like the ones that come with laptops are perfect either. mine isn't great, can't play games on it but typing wise it gets me by.

 

[Colt45]

If they could get a more efficient chipset for the atoms, we'd see some amazing battery life, i'm sure.
The mini-ITX atom board i have is an awesome example... the atom itself has this tiny heatsink.. the 945 has a 3x the size heatsink. and fan!
see here -> http://www.geek.com/wp-content...8/05/intel_miniitx.jpg


that said, I prefer the old subnote thinkpads, due to the whole tank-ness.

 

[IntelUser2000]

If they could get a more efficient chipset for the atoms, we'd see some amazing battery life, i'm sure. The mini-ITX atom board i have is an awesome example... the atom itself has this tiny heatsink.. the 945 has a 3x the size heatsink. and fan! see here -> http://www.geek.com/wp-content...8/05/intel_miniitx.jpg that said, I prefer the old subnote thinkpads, due to the whole tank-ness.

It depends what kind of 945 chipset its using. If its using the 945G for the Nettops, sure, people are right in saying the chipset combo consumes a lot of power with a TDP of 22W.

But on the Netbooks, its using one of the most efficient chipset for the PCs. The 945GSE used on the Netbooks only use 5.5W.

 

[taltamir]

the atom notebooks take a chip that was designed for SMART PHONES and shove it into a notebook, it is too slow to do ANYTHING and will be extremely painful to use...

If it costs 200$... fine, get it as a toy for your 10 year old... but for anything more its a rip, get a real notebook.

 

[D0nmac]

I may be a tad late on this but I've been looking for a v small portable laptop\netbook for a while. I wanted to use it for a number of things. i.e. music\media, connecting to a citrix server(work related). when I looked at them the best netbook was the nc10 for close to 300 GBP but I managed to find a second hand 4200 for 100 GBP. Even although it is an old laptop it does everything I want it to do plus more with only a slight increase in weight(extra battery) but it is worth it for the keyboard + 12 inch screen. Until the netbooks can match an old laptoop for functionality then I'll stick with my old ultra portable. The fact that they are throttled by microsoft due to ram restrictions speaks volumes and until the bespoke versions of windows 7 comes out I feel they will be be stuck behind the times