** HP Compaq Mini 311c-1010SA Intel Atom N270 ION 11.6" Netbook @ £314.99 inc VAT **

Cheers for that.

I've noticed some these notebooks are advertised as having an Ion and others as having an Ion LE. It's confusing as they have the same part no. Is this a typo or does this model ship with different version of gpu?
 
If you install Windows 7 + the ION drivers on the ION LE version, it will unlock the full power of the chip.
Apparently the only difference between LE and non-LE is that it's disabled manually for the reason of Windows XP not being DX10 capable.
 
ANDARIAL said:
If you install Windows 7 + the ION drivers on the ION LE version, it will unlock the full power of the chip.
Apparently the only difference between LE and non-LE is that it's disabled manually for the reason of Windows XP not being DX10 capable.
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which driver did you use? i have windows 7 and full ion 197.13 drivers installed and it still shows as ion le, cos the bios setting is still as being an xp.
 
Thinking about getting this but wondering is it good enough for 1080p movie playback (mostly mkv files). I normally use MPC Home Cinema with dxva or MPC with CoreAVC. I know both are capable of using nvidia gpus for acceleration, but is this sufficient for completely smooth playback?
 
Check out ther forum i posted above for detailed info
For what it is worth i have yet to play a 720p or 1080p smoothly on the netbooks using the books screen ,early days yet though
My mifi arrived this morning....good job too as the house BB went down last night,
Also adding a 3g wireless card i have not found as easy as others have :(
Finally got it to work(antenna connection to the card was too loose and i wasted days trying to get a signal,crimped the connector a bit and it now has signal) but the u shaped antenna is pants...no signal when i close up the netbook,so it looks like the only way for a good signal if using a 3g card is to put the 2 antenna wire type behind the screen,too risky for me so i got a mifi instead
 
I gave in and ordered a HP Pavilion DM1-1102SA in the end as I didn't like the idea of being crippled by a single core atom processor; sure it's good enough for casual web browsing, office app use, but from my brief experience with atom based netbooks, it starts to stuggle when you do anything more complex than these tasks, or attempt to run more than one thing at a time. Dual core is pretty much essential these days and I doubt I'd be happy settling for something less, even if it's just for light use.

Also, while the DM1 doesn't have ION, I'm not really bothered. Gaming on something so small and weak would be unbearable compared to my desktop pc and from what I've researched, the DM1 cpu + intel gpu are enough for smooth 1080p playback.
 
Mine arrived this morning, but as I had forgotten to order memory upgrade at the same time, so am holding off upgrading to Windows 7 Home Premium* til that arrives.

* still have my full retail version that I got for £50 when it was first release :)
 
What do people think of this now?

I want something that i can:

connect up to tv to watch iplayer
surf net
watch odd movie file
skype.

Good enough for that?

How does it perform with 1gb?
 
JGBR said:
What do people think of this now?

I want something that i can:

connect up to tv to watch iplayer
surf net
watch odd movie file
skype.

Good enough for that?

How does it perform with 1gb?
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The new ION2 Netbooks are coming out next month, but they will retail for around £400 I reckon so this Mini 311c is perfect for your needs. Although I would recommend getting another 2GB DDR3 stick and upgrade to Windows 7.

PS: I read in this forum someone put another 2GB in theirs but it actually made the ram perform slower? However having done some extensive google searches no one else has reported this.
 
Thanks for the reply.

Its only really light duties like browsing and skype, watch the odd *.mov and iplayer so dont need a powerhouse

and the price seems very reasonable now, so worth grabbing before going back up to 400.
 
JGBR said:
Thanks for the reply.

Its only really light duties like browsing and skype, watch the odd *.mov and iplayer so dont need a powerhouse

and the price seems very reasonable now, so worth grabbing before going back up to 400.
Click to expand...
If you think you may want 3G in the future might be worth getting the model with it built in.As the `standard` one does not have the antenna wires(you would need to take the netbook apart to fit these properly)
I wish I had got the one with 3G built in as standard now,Got the 3G card and a U-shaped antenna,unlocked the bios to make it work and no signal at all.In the end I came to the conclusion that the antenna will not work inside the case,so ended up destroying my warranty for nothing as I now have a mifi instead for mobile internet access :)
 
ANDARIAL said:
If you think you may want 3G in the future might be worth getting the model with it built in.As the `standard` one does not have the antenna wires(you would need to take the netbook apart to fit these properly)
I wish I had got the one with 3G built in as standard now,Got the 3G card and a U-shaped antenna,unlocked the bios to make it work and no signal at all.In the end I came to the conclusion that the antenna will not work inside the case,so ended up destroying my warranty for nothing as I now have a mifi instead for mobile internet access :)
Click to expand...

Is there really that much demand for 3G when there are wireless hotspots everywhere? I suppose if you live in the country side you might need it
 
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