Thanks for the contributions so far lads, rjkoneill that’s just wrong mate!
I thought I would pen some original text . .
Atom™ Age . . .
I'd heard a lot about the Intel® Atom™ as I've been interested in ULV computing for a few years, didn't like the look of it much until the Hyper-threaded models turned up . . . There were
Net-Book models (small laptops) and
Net-Top models (ITX desktop ting!), as I already have a HTPC but no laptop the choice was easy! . . . . started reading a few different web reviews but as always when you read about a product without using it you build up a weird distorted picture, some people said it was good, others said it was laggy? . . . the biggest grumble I heard was there wasn't enough processing power to play Adobe flash videos which was a concern as I'm addicted to the
BBC iPlayer . . . Anyway got a chance to buy one for work so did a little digging around and come up with this . . .
- Intel® Atom™ N270 1.6GHz
- 1GB DDR2 Ram
- 160GB HDD
- 10.1 WSVGA
- WLAN
- Webcam
- 6cell Battery
- Black
- XP Home
- Product Page
Good Price, very good price! . . . and you can't really gauge from the picture just how dinky these things are, decent and crystal sharp widescreen, nice little keyboard, 3x USB2.0 ports, 10/100 Lan port, VGA, Headphone-In/Mic-in and built in Video-cam, WIFI . . . haha nice!
Not really a big fan of any touch pads so I plugged in a little Microsoft USB mouse and the click fest began! . . . . nice and fast, not laggy, good start. Impressed by the quality of the screen but had to change a default option that kept making it dim, once that was done I was in business. Open IE and hit iPlayer and waited with baited breath for the slides-show to begin but alas my fears were unfounded . . . it played the videos perfectly, of course the Atom magic didn't begin until I hit the iPlayer full-screen button and there it was . . . . a perfect little widescreen video playing in my palm . . . streaming the data via wireless and powered by a 6-cell battery, of course I wandered around the house marvelling at the possibilities watching the video play out in my palm as I walked, cool beans!
. . . having passed the iPlayer test I quickly fired up the mandatory Iron-Man film (DivX) and again that played smooooth! . . . at this point I realised the built-in speakers were pretty kak so went and got my boombastic sennheiser cans and connected them to the headphone-in jack . . . oh yes, sweet clear *loud* audio . . . at this point I realised I would never have a boring train journey again!
With the basic Video/Streaming-video/Audio tests out the way I sat down to do some surfing, auctioning, a little bit of OcUK forum viewing etc and found the screen wasn't really big enough with all the toolbars eating up valuable screen real estate . . . however this was solved by hitting the [F11] key and switching to
FullScreen Mode, along with the little USB mouse I found the set-up perfectly useable . . . Storage for a heap of personal data is also not a problem with a 160GB hard-disk . . . but it was easy to plug in my 500GB USB 2.5" drive which is something I use when working out and about and need an easy way to backup a clients important data so basically a very useful tool . . . . Battery life was reasonable, the video cam worked fine, the wireless worked without a hitch, can't think of anything that was a problem really!
The Intel® Atom™ N270 @ 1.6GHz processor with Hyper-Threading didn't have any problem dealing with my day to day usage, you know thing like Surfing, emailing, working in MS-Office, video/audio playback, it was all good! . . . as the version I had came with Windows XP home the 1GB of DDR2 memory proved ample for my needs. I think the only feature I didn't get on this model was HDMI out which was an extra £74. If you have been thinking of getting one of these they have no doubts, they are very good indeed . . . if you get one with HDMI all the better!
Can't really think of anything else to add apart from I've never watched a film in the bath before lol!
*on* topic chatter is welcome but it would be appreciated if you post a link while your at it . . . a little effort goes a long way!
