View Full Version : netbook processing power
jamiewakeham
10-24-2010, 04:58
Hi all
I hope you'll forgive me for this being a little off-topic, but I'm sure someone here will have the knowledge to help me!
My wife is looking to buy a netbook to use for working whilst travelling. She really wants a 10" screen, for the portability; as far as I can tell this means she's going to be limited to a 1.6GHz Atom processor and a maximum of 2GB RAM.
My question is: how well can this sort of system multi-task? She tends to run three or four applications at once, typically FireFox, Word, Excel and/or Powerpoint. Is this little processor going to be able to cope, or is she going to have to accept a 12" model with a dual-core processor and more RAM?
Cheers
Jamie
Al Patterson
10-24-2010, 05:03
Hi all
I hope you'll forgive me for this being a little off-topic, but I'm sure someone here will have the knowledge to help me!
My wife is looking to buy a netbook to use for working whilst travelling. She really wants a 10" screen, for the portability; as far as I can tell this means she's going to be limited to a 1.6GHz Atom processor and a maximum of 2GB RAM.
My question is: how well can this sort of system multi-task? She tends to run three or four applications at once, typically FireFox, Word, Excel and/or Powerpoint. Is this little processor going to be able to cope, or is she going to have to accept a 12" model with a dual-core processor and more RAM?
Cheers
Jamie
I'd go for the 11.6" models. They can be had for $500 or so, and HP and Lenovo make stripped down laptops with the better processors.
Or, you could get the new 11.6" MacBook Air for only $999...
I'd go the macbook air 11.6" personally. Looks to be a svelte little machine.
But they should all run those programs all at once pretty easily. Most of them anyway.
-doomed-
10-24-2010, 05:13
I'm currently using an acer aspire, it seems to cope with multitasking pretty well as I'll usually have several windows going on google chrome and run GIMP and Open Office all at the same time with little effect on performance.
I'm posting using it now.
MatthewThompson
10-24-2010, 05:17
My wife just got herself an HP Mini (New, $140!). The best thing you can do is wipe and reinstall so all the BS that comes with the machine from the dealer is gone. Install only what you need and keep up with the maintenance and you should be fine.
jamiewakeham
10-24-2010, 05:20
Thanks guys.
In the time since I posted I've found that Intel have released a dual-core Atom, but it's quite hard to find a netbook for sale that has one! Unfortunately my wife can't wait to get this machine; in the ideal world I think we'd wait for a few months and then get a dual-core but she needs this now.
She's not a fan of Macs, so my early suggestion to her that a little Macbook might do the job was vetoed.
We've talked about what she will do if a 10" machine simply won't cut it, and she'll accept a larger one if it's absolutely necessary, but she's really prioritised size above all other factors, so long as it can do what she needs.
-Doomed-, is that a standard 1.6GHz Atom machine you're using? If it can handle Chrome, the GIMP and OpenOffice at the same time with little effect, then maybe she'll be OK with a similar system. When you say 'little effect', what are we talking - just taking a few seconds to switch between applications?
Thanks, all
Jamie
back alley
10-24-2010, 05:27
i have a dell mini 9 solid state netbook...it is very slow...i use the ipad now for emails and web surfing and a macbook for everything else.
My Dell Mini 9 will run three applications at once but a bit slowly. No problem for me but people do differ in their expectations.
The new MacBook air looks ideal. Why not run Windows on Bootcamp or Parallels?
yours
FPJ
ElectroWNED
10-24-2010, 05:48
My only computer is a 10" Acer Aspire One w/ 1.6ghz and 1GB ram. I run "LiteStep," a shell replacement that uses barely any resources, as well as Google Chrome, Foobar2k, and CS3 for photo editing. This thing runs as fast a I want it to and never bogs down-- even with music playing, Photoshop editing, and Chrome running multiple tabs.
Moral of the story: set your machine up right and eye-popping specs don't matter as much.
back alley
10-24-2010, 05:53
a little off topic...is my dell mini 9 worth anything used?
jamiewakeham
10-24-2010, 05:54
FPJ,
She really wants to avoid a largre-than-10" netbook if it's at all possible. And, here in the UK, the Macbook Air starts at £849!
I see that dual-core Atom machines are just on the verge of coming to market; there's a Samsung model that's due to be released on Nov 5th (the NF210) that runs DDR3 RAM and will only cost £320 (admittedly I will need to budget for a 2nd GB of RAM for it). I'm wondering if the dual-core processor might be worth hanging on for, given her need to run multiple applications at the same time.
This is all too complicated for me :bang:
Cheers
Jamie
a little off topic...is my dell mini 9 worth anything used?
Perhaps $100.
Have you considered running it on Ubuntu Linux? performance is better and software is free. OSX is also an option.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntumini.com/
yours
FPJ
back alley
10-24-2010, 06:28
Perhaps $100.
Have you considered running it on Ubuntu Linux? performance is better and software is free. OSX is also an option.
http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.ubuntumini.com/
yours
FPJ
i am barely computer literate...it sits as it was born.
i should use it more...i have a 3g stick for it for when i'm out of the house and use wifi in the house.
looks like they can be had new for about 199.
jamiewakeham
10-24-2010, 07:34
This netbook is never going to be used for any heavy-duty photo processing; I'll use my desktop (a 2.8GHz quad-core beast with 8GB DDR3 RAM) for that!
My wife needs to run a browser (probably Firefox) at the same time as several office applications - usually Word, Excel and Powerpoint. She designs training seminars, and most of what she will be doing on this machine is moving information around between these applications; I've just watched her at work and she swapped between the four programs maybe 20 times in the space of five minutes. She's got very used to my desktop being able to do this seamlessly. However, she's now doing a part-time MSc alongside her fulltime job and simply needs to be able to work when travelling; down time is not an option.
Whilst she's very good at what she does, she hasn't got a great depth of computing knowledge; if I suggested she ran Linux or used boot camp to run windows on a Mac, she'd look blankly at me! She needs a machine that, as soon as she turns it on, will give her the windows environment she knows.
Cheers
J
back alley
10-24-2010, 07:37
the dell mini can do that.
I do run Photoshop on a Asus EEE. It is no slower than the Dell I bought in 2002 as a "professional high performance graphics notebook" (at roughly ten times the price). It is slow, but not quite as sluggish as the Dell with CS3 (probably due to having twice the RAM), and fast with eight year old software, like my copy of Elements or PS7. Even with CS3 it is fast compared to my early 1990's combo of PS 3.5 on a SGI Indy, then the fastest photo workstation (much) money could buy.
The real limitation is the screen estate - some plugins are inoperable as relevant buttons are lost and unreachable outside the screen area, and full image view drops me down to a stamp-like image display at single percent magnification. Overall, the old Dell with its 1600x1200 screen is still more useful for Photoshop.
Yuphorix
10-24-2010, 08:22
One thing to consider is the resolution of the screen. Currently, netbooks either have a resolution of 1024x600 or 1366x768. Although the higher density screen gives you more real-estate to work with, on a 10" screen, everything is quite small and can cause considerable eye strain if you're working on it for a long period of time. With that being said, netbooks are perfectly designed to handle the tasks you've listed. My HP mini 210 can even handle simple photoshopping tasks.
If she is a "touch typist" be wary of the shortened "shift" key on the right side which was prevalent on many early netbooks and still exists on some. It makes "touch typing" a nightmare, since a good typist, not looking at the keyboard will often miss the right shift key in normal operation and the cursor will be shooting all over the screen in a document or e-mail. I don't think there really is any such thing as a "full size" keyboard on the netbooks when you look at the cursor key arrangements and other operational keys... delete, shift, enter, etc.
I have an ASUS 10 inch with 2 GB running XP and it's good at up to three multi-task operations, as long as one of them is not Photoshop. It would obviously be worse with Vista, and only slightly worse than XP with Windows 7.
Last time I looked Google Chrome was worthless because of the resource (memory) needed to run it. If it's still the memory HOG it was early on... Blaaah!!!
The real rocket ship of browsers is Opera... Lightning Fast. Now in version 10, it's been around for years and has, for the most part, been the fastest browser I have ever seen throughout it's history.
You can throw RAM at applications like Google Chrome and others, but a sweetly written application, like Opera, is much more rewarding.
Netbooks are OK until you tally up the sacrifices. No optical drive gets inconvenient quite fast. (unless the newer netbooks put one in). the size won't be an advantage if you have to pack a small external optical drive. Netbooks tend to be thicker, and if you get the larger cell batteries for "real" extended time usage, the battery sticks out of the back about an inch.
Frankly, if I had it to do over, I'd opt for the smallest "real" notebook (usually by Sony) which tend to be quite expensive. My preferences run to Toshiba.
Linux is for nerds and geeks, of which I are one, having worked on computers professionally for 20 years. I still don't run the geek/nerd operating systems in daily and mobile usage, since there is so much software restriction on those systems for the average computer user. It amazes me how the linux crowd actually thinks average users want to live, eat and sleep computers. Give it a break linux folks.
Mmmmm ... no. I don't think, if you are truly honest on your wife's requirements, that a netbook is going to make her happy. The bottom line is that the Netbooks are not a full blown computer replacement. They excel only at being very portable.
And, I remember all too well, the down side of having an unhappy wife. :rolleyes:
we have a couple of asus 900 Eee netbooks, and for a single task of excel, word, light browsing, the single core atom 160 cpu with 1GB works OK for light use.
Where I couldn't use them is the screen resolution (not the physical size) is just too small, and the keyboard is too scrunched.
It's a step beyond a smart phone for checking email or office docs quickly but some of the above options would suit better I think, especially if screen resolution were higher, and keyboard were closer to standard use.
new Macbook air 11" seems incredible, just a couple hundred more than an ipad, and you have an ssd drive with full office apps capability, and standard usb port for external storage, etc.
hteasley
10-24-2010, 09:13
Running Office and a browser on a netbook will stretch it; I've done it, and didn't enjoy it.
It's a bit expensive (a grand), but the Alienware M11x is a great little machine. Designed for gamers, so it may be a little goofy-looking for her, but it's got an i7 CPU and lots of storage and general horsepower. I love mine.
I've had a few Atom based notebooks and at least six dual core Atom desktop units. The single core Atom notebooks are very slow, but do fine for surfing the net, Email and word processing. The dual cores, at least in desktop, are much faster with the NVidia Dual Cores even able to stream HD Video without a hickup. So, as long as you are not asking a single core to do anything more than word processing, you are fine.
jamiewakeham
10-24-2010, 09:54
Again, thanks for the input, everyone. This is seriously useful.
She has used a 10" before, and though the small screen is a drag, she loved the portability so much that she's seriously considering it anyway. She's not a fast typer, and won't be doing all that much extended writing, so the keyboard is not a great issue.
Kuzano - I hear you about the smallest notebook maybe being a better option, and we're beginning to veer towards this. She does understand that the 10" will be a trade-off between portability and power (and your last line elicited a giggle). No need for an optical drive, though; we have a usb optical drive for installing software and after that it's USB flash sticks for storing data all the way.
HTeasley; if we go for a 12" that is probably the sort if thing we'll get - thanks.
bwcolor - can you say, for the sort of switching between lots of low-demand applications that she needs, if the dual-core is a significant improvement?
Thanks again.
J
ethics_gradient
10-24-2010, 10:15
I used an HP Mini 2140 as my main computer for about 15 months or so. It's a 10" netbook, but has a higher res 1366x768 screen, which made web browsing a lot more bearable (I was coming from an MSI Wind, which had the standard 600 pixel height). I found it had adequate power for what I needed it for, and CS3 ran acceptably with 5D .RAW files. It has an aluminum body, and the keyboard is excellent; if it's not full size it's really close, and the keys feel more "clicky" and responsive than most netbooks.
The keyboard connector on mine developed a problem soon after it fell out of warranty, and when I went to unplug it from the motherboard and plug in the replacement, the little plastic ZIF connector broke off (nobody sells replacements, would have to replace the whole motherboard over a tiny piece of plastic). It had given me more than a year of excellent service, but between that and the MSI Wind I can't help but feel that netbooks are kind of "disposable laptops." My iPod touch has wifi and I can now use it with my flashcard app, so I don't think I'll be buying another one.
Replaced it with a secondhand 13" Macbook for $430, and couldn't be happier. The new 11" Air would be great, but is a little out of my price range for now. The Macbook really feels like more of a desktop replacement (I was actually looking for iMacs originally), but I find I don't carry a laptop around as often as when I was a student, so I don't mind the extra bulk and weight.
I would buy the dual core, but also looks at what else is out there. Personally, I would not buy another single core. It is markedly slower than the dual core, especially with the NVidia chipset. My best advice is get a single core for Internet browsing and dual core should you want to do anything else.
I happened to be at Best Buy today looking over the camera section.
I wandered over to the laptop computer section and browsed. I looked at the Mac Air and was impressed by it's svelte lines, but I am a PC, not a Mac.
So, in my wandering, and with my predilection for Toshiba, I looked at a Toshiba R705 Portege. It would be my choice of a replacement for my ASUS netbook, at about $700. Not much bigger, but a full duo core laptop with 4 GB RAM, and a DVD-RW
emilsand
10-24-2010, 20:54
At last try one before she buys it. I bought a Dell 10 for pretty much the same work, and found that the advantages I gained (low weight) was easilly outweighed by the poor performance, keyboard and screen. I did have chance to try a Macbook Air this weekend, and it seemed like a different class of machine: Easy to type on, very nice screen and the performance/speed was no longer an issue. Even with it's larger screen, it felt smaller than my Dell due to its thickness (or lack of thickness) and weight.
elshaneo
10-24-2010, 21:40
For me, the best and latest netbook is the Samsung NF310 :)
I have a acer aspire one with the atom 450 processor and 2 gigs of ram, with the extra ram, run multiple apps is no problem, especially if she is not going to be processing any large raw files at the same time. Get the one with high capacity battery (8.5 hours) The weight is what sold me on this one- 2.7 pounds. Good Luck -Kievman
I have an Asus EEE-PC netbook and I love it! I'm actually using it now as I wait on a late flight at the airport. It's purse sized, really. (My so-called friends sometimes call my everyday purse "the overnight bag"!) :)
I have no clue what processor, disk drive, RAM whatever it has. The screen is supposedly 9" diagonally. I run all of the standard Microsoft office things and they perform just fine. Photoshop does too.
The only issue is that it's clumsy to touch-type on the smaller keyboard, but I manage to do it. :) My hands are not that large, but the spacing is unusual. It will run almost 4 hours on the battery.
The model I have has the older Windows XP, which runs everything I have, but I'm sure the new ones are Vista.
I carry the Samsung netbook while traveling, the upgrade to 2 GB was $25, so that is not much of an issue, plus the website says it is OK to run Win 7 if you want, am not sure how much memory you can fit in the single slot then.
My desktops and laptops are getting a bit old, so this netbook actually runs a bit better, bar the smaller keyboard, etc.
Mine has shown a glitch I have yet to fix, the screen goes white occasionally, and I hae to mess with the brightness to get it back, but other than that, it gives me 5 hrs. of battery life, runs as many programs as I ask it to, (PS CS, Office, Chrome), keeping in mind the dinosaurs I have been using.
Pleasure to carry on for traveling.
I also bring a WD Passport in my luggage to store picture files.
Regards, John
If you get a small netbook then max out the RAM. Programs in the background doing nothing (except sit there) will be filling the memory, not using lots of processor power.
I use an old-ish EEE 900 (slower than the Atoms) with 2Gb of RAM and it works fine. The original software was swapped out for Ubuntu linux and that is no hardship at all, but a colleague runs XP adequately too.
More advice is definitely don't run Vista. As you seem against linux there is a cut-down version of XP that flies*, if your business licensing enables you to get a key for it, otherwise XP with as little junk as possible works ok.
*Windows XP Fundamentals for Legacy PC's (http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/software-assurance/fundamentals.aspx). You will need a company Software Assurance agreement to be able to use the software.
N. Bruce Nelson
10-26-2010, 12:11
I am using an MSI Wind with 2 g of memory. I dual boot XP and Ubuntu Linux. I am usually in Linux. I almost always have multiple programs running and find the performance very acceptable.
Bruce
oftheherd
10-26-2010, 12:39
I am using an MSI Wind with 2 g of memory. I dual boot XP and Ubuntu Linux. I am usually in Linux. I almost always have multiple programs running and find the performance very acceptable.
Bruce
Ditto on XP and Linux, but I have the Aspire 1 with only 1 Gig of RAM. I have another half gig but am too lazy to go to the trouble to put it in. On my model you have to partly disassemble it. Some day maybe.
I haven't had trouble running things yet, and do like the size. That is the main reason I bought it. I also got a USB powered DVD/RW which I like a lot and isn't a problem to carry. Mine is a 8.9 inch. I would like 10 inch but don't think it would be that big an advantage. The keyboard is a problem, but I can do it. The touch pad is worse. If you get one, get her one of the mini mounses.
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