Netbooks

Posted by Ben | Filed under Random

I admit, I never thought I’d buy into the whole mess. My first experience with them was with the Intel Atom, single core, and it performed about as much as most people seem to think it will.

Then I moved up to the 1.66 GHz Single core w/ hyperthreading, and things got a little better. I recently had to go on a working trip to Anaheim, and I took the company HP Mini with me, and used it to help me perform my work there. I also brought along my Dell XPS M1530, which is a tad more robust, and found that I really hooked onto the Mini for most of my work. It was just easier to pop on the top of the server rack and use it to load my programs, whether it be vSphere, the web interface for our SAN, or just general surfing. I even loaded office communicator on it and used it to talk to coworkers from the laptop (one of the benefits of working where I do, no phone required, just speakers and a microphone)

It was after that trip that I had decided that it was time to try looking for one for myself. That opportunity presented itself within the last two weeks.

A friend / coworker of mine had been considering one, and I have had hands on time with AMD’s C-50 processor, so I recommended one after he mentioned it. I was already in the “pre-purchase” mindset, so when he got his and I had a chance to play around with it, I decided that it would be what I wanted as well.

We both own the Acer AO722 Aspire One netbook. The specs are pretty standard fare for a system of its size:

  • AMD C-50 Processor (1.00 GHz, dual core with integrated Radeon HD 6250 graphics, which claims 256 MB of RAM from the system)
  • 2 GB DDR3
  • 250 GB Hard Drive (though that lucky punk ended up with a 320GB for free for some reason)
  • 802.11 n wireless (yes!  N! not g!)
  • Gigabit LAN
  • Card Reader
  • a usable keyboard
  • 6 cell Li-On battery, about 7 hours worth for this system
  • 3.21 LBs

Performance on it is, I think, much better than the Atom.  The chip performs like you’d expect one would at 1 GHz, and it runs pretty cool – most of the time I never hear the fan.  I’m running an experiment with it now where I replaced the stock 250GB hard drive and put in an SSD to see if I could give it some extra speed.  I’ll be upping the RAM to 4GB next month as well, seeing as how the system came with a 64 bit OS.

One of the advantages of AMD’s Bobcat architecture is that it’s an Out Of Order architecture, unlike Atom, which is in-order only.  Since the Bobcat core can execute operations in any order, it doesn’t need to place them “in-order” first, like the Atom, which makes the overall computing experience, I think, to be more smooth, even though the chip runs at a 660 MHz deficit of the similarly equipped Atom processor.  Bobcat is also AMD’s new architecture, which will be helping to push AMD’s desktop processor into the mainstream again.  Most everyone else knows of this chip architecture as “Bulldozer.”

I’m always happy to give AMD’s newest technology a test drive, and since this netbook fills the niche where my XPS M1530 is too big, I find myself using it more.  On the couch, in bed, outside at the patio table, etc.  It even plays my latest addiction- Minecraft – pretty darn well.

It’s really worth giving one a shot, especially if you need something light and portable.  You never know, you just might find a use for a netbook where you thought there wouldn’t be a good use for it.

 

Amazon’s link:  http://www.amazon.com/Acer-AO722-BZ454-11-6-Inch-Netbook-Espresso/dp/B004UR16ES

Comments

Powered by Facebook Comments

Permalink | September 9th, 2011

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.