Re: Netbook Price / Performance -- PCTECH

The N270/280 and Z520/530 (IIRC) are older Atoms. The N450 is newer and
while speed doesn't appear better it does advance the platform by offering
64 bit support and a few other things. Here's Intel's comparison:
http://ark.intel.com/Compare.aspx?ids=41411,42503, Of note to me is that
the N450 can draw more power so potentially battery life will be a hair
shorter all other things being equal.

From what you say, handling the streaming video or playing Flash animations

is probably the heaviest workload you'd subject it to unless you want to
edit the photos you import. Read reviews before you commit.

Also note the other netbook compromises: Small screens with relatively low
resolutions, 2GB max RAM, 3 cell batteries by default in many models limit
battery time, no optical drive so you have to stream or pre-copy movies to
the HD, keyboards with less-than-inspiring layouts for navigation keys
(which I use heavily) and glidepads that don't offer a good feel, etc.

Personally, I played with netbooks awhile ago and realized I'd just be too
disappointed in the performance to be happy with owning one. For instance,
I would use it to read & edit Word docs and on one unit I loaded Word and it
took a fairly long time. Figuring it might just have a slug for a hard
drive, I close Word and immediately reopened it so it would open from disk
cache. It still took longer than I would find acceptable. My acceptable
and yours will probably differ, but a few simple things like that told me
that a netbook wasn't in my immediate future.

I have a work laptop but it's something of a beast at nearly 8 pounds. So
for personal use I've been considering something more of an executive
thin-n-light laptop. They aren't cheap, in fact they cost quite a bit as I
would configure one, but can serve as a main machine instead of just a
traveling companion. You can get Blu-Ray drives, Core i3, i5, or even i7
CPUs that won't bog down, 4 or more GB RAM, 64-bit Windows, larger/faster
hard drives, larger and brighter and higher-resolution screens, and believe
it or not similar battery life (a 6 cell executive laptop will do better
than a 3 or 4 cell netbook but not as good as a 6 cell netbook).

I haven't bought yet, but for no-compromise performance I'm considering the
Sony Vaio Z series.
http://www.sonystyle.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CategoryDisplay?catalogId=10551&storeId=10151&langId=-1&categoryId=8198552921644570897&parentCategoryId=16154
When I've got a couple thou to spend, anyway. :)

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 8:37 AM, <daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

The other day I got the wild idea that my life might be more complete if I
had a netbook. The "justification" was that it would be easier to take on
vacation and times when I didn't want to lug my laptop around. I got this
wild idea when I was strolling through Wal-Mart and passed their
electronics department and saw a couple of Acer netbooks on display. (I'm
not in the habit of purchasing new computers at Wal-Mart. I tend to shop
for those online at Newegg.com, Dell, etc.) It doesn't need to do a lot.
I mostly want it for wi-fi Internet access and a place to temporarily dump
photos from my digital camera. There are times when it would be nice to
stream videos or play an .mpg file that I've DVRed. If it got lost,
damaged, or stolen it wouldn't have been as costly as if it were my
laptop.

The vast majority of ones that I've see on Newegg have the Atom N450
processor. There are a handfull of Atom N270 and Atom N280 processors
with an occasional Celeron. I'm not familiar with how the Atom performs
compared with various Pentium processors. Can I load up most software and
expect it have slower but decent performance or would I be getting my
hopes up? It would be nice to keep the price below $300 but I don't want
buy something cheap but unusable. I imagine that battery life might be
more of a consideration than on a laptop.

Any thoughts or recommendations of features or manufacturers?

Dave Parnin
--
Nishikawa Standard Company
Topeka, IN 46571
daparnin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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