Netbook performance

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

NotAGolf

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I've recently been using my desktop less and less since moving into my new place and am thinking about getting a netbook as I spend most of my time in the living room these days!

I've been looking at the cheaper options around the £200 mark. Maybe the ASUS 1015PX. They all seem to have roughly the same spec, atom n450 or thereabouts with 1gb ram.

I will be using the netbook for what it's been designed to do; web browsing, youtube, downloading and a bit of word processing/spreadsheet work.

My only concern is the performance side of things as I'm used to a decently powered desktop. Now I'm obviously not expecting to play games on it, (well maybe flash ones!), but is it pretty smooth when it comes to the tasks listed above or is it quite noticeable that you're running a naff spec? I don't want to load up a flash heavy website and it to struggle as I think that would wind me up very quickly.

I like the idea of a netbook over a laptop pretty much solely on the size and the price. I'd prefer to have a nice small, quiet, light netbook on my lap rather than a louder more chunkier laptop.

Anyone been in a similar situation and 'downgraded' to something smaller? Any thoughts?
 
The few netbooks I've used have been a bit on the slow side. My aunty has a Samsung NC10 or something like that, even with a fresh install that was fairly slow compared to a desktop for everyday tasks. It's still perfectly usable though, it's not Windows 7 on a 1.5Ghz Celeron with 512mb slow :D It's just not as quick as a desktop, which is to be expected really.
 
I have a Samsung nc10 and found that the smaller screen can make my eyes sore if used much more than an hr.

I would upgrade the memory as soon as you get it to 2gb.
 
It depends a bit on what software you use. I'm using linux, with various parts of the OS in ramdisks, and my N110 flies. When running XP, it's rather slower.

Netbooks react well to cheap ssds, as the battery life goes up further, and the lag in everyday use pretty much disappears. It doesn't have to be a fast disk to make the processor the bottleneck, something like an ocz solid series would be fine.

They aren't as good as a desktop, but they are a lot more mobile.
 
Hmm, not particularly positive.

I don't want to worry about having to upgrade bits (SSD, extra ram etc) as soon as I get it. Nor do I want to spend time faffing with linux. I wouldn't mind dumping on a standard ubuntu distro.

I didn't really consider the screen resolution either. Dropping from 1920x1080 down to 1024x600 would be quite a shock!

Maybe I'll look for a look for a laptop instead, perhaps one with a 13" screen rather than 15/17. Looks to be a fair bit more expensive to go down the laptop route though... Any suggestions?
 
15

The sweet spot for price/performance is around the 14/15 inch screen size. Smaller laptops command a premium for portability.

Entry level basic 15 inchers should run 250-350 quid. If you need dedicated gfx, you going to pay a lot more.

Netbooks that run the dual core n570 atoms perform rather well, no gaming on them though. If you can find one, a netbook with the Nvidia ION2 gfx chipset on board will make all the running of Youtube/on demand video and other gfx intensive web based content a lot more fluid. Expect to pay around 300-350 for these - so competing with entry level laptops (15 inchers)
 
Tied into last comments:

Just got a HP DM1 4027ea. 11.6" dual core fusion. Can get them for as little as £260 if you shop around. Speed is good for the size and handles 1080P onto a big screen with no issues. 4gb of ram ensures things run smooth and I'm getting a good 5-6 hours run time with everthing running full whack. Better than a 10" netbook without the portability drawbacks of a bigger screen. I run games, music and video; use msoffice daily and browse constantly. I have been blown away with the practicality side of this unit. Only down side is that the beats audio does nothing for sound quality. Take a look at one of these in store and compare it to a 10" unit. You'll be happy to pay the little extra IMO.
 
On from what knuckle said, I've also got the DM1 and I'm very pleased with it. I had (well, still have) a 13" Vaio (C2D T5500) which was heavy and power hungry.
I tend to get about 5-6hrs out of the DM1 (browsing, email, a bit of msoffice etc) and the resolution is better than my wife's Asus 1005PE too (1366x768). There's a thread on here about the DM1 and other peoples' experiences with it though, might be worth checking it out. http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18322722
 
Thanks knuckles and jonifen. Just had a quick read up of that laptop and flick through the thread linked.

Quite impressive. Seems to have the speed and resolution advantage over the notebooks, but is only a touch bigger and for only a few quid more looks to be a lot more powerful. I might have to go instore and have a play with one.

Anything else worth looking at along the lines of that HP?
 
make sure its a dual core netbook,

youtube all hte models in your shortlist for adding memory...

some make it really really hard, some make it very easy, pick an easy one and upgrade the ram to 2gb..

remove all bloat ware, and make sure its got a light weither av on (or better still if you know what you are doing just scan the machine once in a while and dont have any active av most of the time)
 
TBO mpledge, I rekon HP have goti it spot on with the 11.6".
You can now get the 4040 (500gb drive instead of the 320gb on the 4027) so if you want more space, this might be an option. The Lenovo idea /think pads might also cut it for what you want. If you want more choice in this niche though, I'm sure it won't be long before other manufacturers realise what the DM1 represents and all jump on board.
 
First post, and I really don't mean to sound like a Toshiba spammer. But anyways... if you're still thinking about getting a netbook, I recently got a Toshiba NB550D for £260 and definitely recommend that. For what you say you want to use it for, I'm not sure buying a laptop is worth it as a higher-end netbook could definitely meet your needs. Also, after a while even a laptop can feel quite cumbersome - I got my netbook to do writing on after I got tired lugging a Mac round with me.

550D Specs:

- AMD Fusion architecture (an AMD C-50 CPU + a Radeon HD 6310 GPU), which outperforms Atom equivalents like the Asus you mention
- 1Ghz dual core processor
- 1GB RAM
- 250GB hard disk

Performance:

Word processing & spreadsheets
Does the job here - and comes with free/ad-supported Microsoft Office Starter editions of Word and Excel. The starter versions are more limited than the normal versions though, so you may need to upgrade or use Open Office.

Video
Streams video in 1080p HD on Youtube and similar sites. Streams/plays iPlayer perfectly, but not in HD. I've heard HD video ripped from Blu Ray disks play fine. Has an HDMI output so you can hook it up to an HD TV if you want.

Web
Does the job here!

Gaming
Flash games will play flawlessly. Will also play most games released before around 2007 except Crysis.To give you an idea, Far Cry will play on high settings while Bioshock, Dark Void and Portal games are playable on lowish settings; if you upgraded the memory to 2GB (or to 4GB if you also upgraded from Windows 7 starter, which is limited to 2GB) then you could play them at higher settings, as well as the likes of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare/MW2.

Battery life
The 550D promises a 9 1/2 hour life, but this varies according to task with any computer. With wifi switched off you can actually get 11 hours out of it if just doing word processing and spreadsheets. If you're watching video or gaming, it's closer to 5 or 6 hours.

Audio
Comes with built in Harman Kardon speakers which sound great. Also, if you have a mini jack to mini jack cable, you can even use the speakers for your mp3 player while the PC's turned off.
 
For the same price the HP DM1 offers 1.6ghz dual processing, 4gb of ram, 320gb HHD and windows 7 home premium. I looked at the 550D initially, along with the Lenovo Ideapad and Thinkpad but the HP DM1 won me over with little effort when compairing price vs performance vs portability. Each to their own though.
 
Thanks for the advice guys.

I plumped for the HP dm1 in the end. I got it for £300 with £30 cashback so effectively cost me £270.

I've had it for a couple of days now an have been very impressed. In normal activities I can barely notice a difference in performance between this and my desktop! It's small and light, the battery is lasting 7ish hours which is pretty good as it's been pretty much installing stuff, downloading and copying/moving files around all this time.

I went to look at it in a purple store to compare it before I bought it and have to say that in terms of looks and feel the dm1 is superior to anything else I saw, and 1366x768 is a pretty hefty difference to the 1024x600 screens. There's no way I could read off a 1024x600 screen for any length of time.

The only disappointment I have at this time is the speakers. Unless speakers in other laptop at this range are really god awful, I don't know why they're pushing the 'beats audio' label as imo it sucks!
 
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