Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook

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Sputnik
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PostRecommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Tue Sep 28, 2010 3:05 pm

Looking for something very portable (but not too small. 10" screen is really limit), mx. 12-13" but I don't know where to start, with portables.

The processors I see go from (dual?) 1.60 GhZ to i5 and even i7. Is it worth having such powerful processors on a netbook?

I'd be using it for:

netz'n'gooseberry fool
Matlab and other math programs
Linux (is it even possible to run linux on a netbook? Dunno lol)
Gaming, but nothing fancy. Ie. Retro consoles emulators and smaller, older Steam games.

Go :arrow:

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Drunken_Master
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Tue Sep 28, 2010 4:17 pm

Budget.

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Tue Sep 28, 2010 5:57 pm

Well it's weird because I don't use GBP here and it's complicated because of currencies and blah, and I'd be buying the notebook here where the price may be higher (customs would rape me if I imported from the UK).

Let's say the price of a 32 GB iPad is the absolute maximum limit.

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Drunken_Master
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Wed Sep 29, 2010 9:16 am

Sputnik wrote:Well it's weird because I don't use GBP here and it's complicated because of currencies and blah, and I'd be buying the notebook here where the price may be higher (customs would rape me if I imported from the UK).

Let's say the price of a 32 GB iPad is the absolute maximum limit.


So, you've got £500 to play with for a netbook.

Hmmm.

I'd recommend the Asus Eee PC 1201PN @ $484 on Amazon. It's a netbook with the ION chipset, so it's considerably more more powerful than the bog standard Atom based netbooks.


Or either the;

Acer Aspire 521 or 721



Here's a youtube vid of someone playing games on the chipset this netbook features.


Given the choice out of the three, I'd go for the Acer Aspire 721. Its AMD chipset is far more powerful than the bog standard Atom based netbook. However the trade off is power consumption. You're looking at a battery life of about 4 hours as opposed to about 8 hours for the bog standard Atom based machines. Personally speaking I think it's a sacrifice worth making. Form factor wise they're about the same size. You should be able to get either the 521 or 721 for under the price of a 32GB Ipad. Have a mooch around Youtube, there's lots of videos of people trying them out.

If you can wait a couple of months though, both Intel and AMD will be releasing new netbook chipsets. AMD's fusion based netbook chipset looks brilliant.

If you can play the waiting game that is.

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Wed Sep 29, 2010 11:35 am

Cheers. I don't want to wait, really.

I think it's better if I go by what they have in the shops around here, as anywhere I'll import from will charge me billions for customs.

The iPad comparison was kinda silly, because it costs way less here than it does in the UK.

Let's put it like this... Netbooks I can get here, but are kinda stretching my budget (so they must be amazing):

- Neither of those two Acers. :(
- The EEE 1201PN.
- At the same price they have the 1016P, which has a smaller screen (gooseberry fool) but a N455 proc (presumably better?).
- Acer Asp. 753
- Samsung X125 (K125 Athlon II)

That last Samsung one tempts me, because it's 11.6" (like the 1201, then) and can go up to 3GB RAM. But I dunno about Athlon.


The ones that are well within my budget are:

- EEE 1001PX, and it seems it has the same N450 processor as the 1201PN, although it only has 1GB RAM and it seems you can't upgrade it.
- EEE 1015PE
- Acer Aspire One 250 (n270 proc) From youtube videos the N270 seems good, but I dunno really lol.
- Acer Aspire one 532H (N450 proc).
- Acer Asp. 255-2DQ
- Lenovo Ideapad S10-3 (unknown Atom proc)
- Packard Bell Dot s2/W.IT/131
- Samsung N150
- Toshiba NB250-108 (N455 proc)


There's more, but that's plenty of choice already, I think.

So yeah... which one would you recommend out of these?

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Drunken_Master
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Wed Sep 29, 2010 11:47 am

Y'see the thing is, I don't like Atom processors. They're okay for surfing and a light bit of word processing but that's it really. Bare minimum I'd get is a dual core Atom. Or an Intel Atom with ION to supplement the wank procesor.

Regarding the AMD Athlon Neo K125, it's about three times faster than a normal Atom.
Downside is battery life.
As our CPU benchmarks show, the AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processes significantly faster than an Intel Atom. For example, the K125 achieved 1697 points in the 64 bit variant in the Cinebench R10 Single Rendering test. In the 32 version, it still got 1464 points. N450 netbooks get only around 550 points in the Cinebench R10 Single. In the Shading test, the AMD system achieved 1.1771 points. With their weak GMA 3150, Pine Trails netbooks only get up to 290 points in this test. The AMD netbook is therefore on the same level as Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 (single core) and Core 2 Duo SU9400 (dual core) and closes the ranks with subnotebook performance.




The Samsung X125 sounds good. However, I haven't read any reviews. The Acer models I linked to, reviewed really well.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Ace ... 490.0.html

I presume the Samsung is pretty much the same thing, in a different shell.

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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Wed Sep 29, 2010 6:01 pm

But the EEE 1201 you recommended also is an Atom. An Atom with an ION chipset? I don't understand *quack* Image

Also, the Samsung is single core. Shouldn't I be getting at least a dual core at this point? The new N550 (dual core) is apparently more the gooseberry fool than the Athlon.

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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:27 pm

Sputnik wrote:But the EEE 1201 you recommended also is an Atom. An Atom with an ION chipset? I don't understand *quack* Image

Also, the Samsung is single core. Shouldn't I be getting at least a dual core at this point? The new N550 (dual core) is apparently more the gooseberry fool than the Athlon.



ION is basically an Atom processor coupled with Nvidia graphics. So whilst the processor is relatively weak, this is compensated for by the decent graphics. So you'll be able to stream 1080P video, light game and take advantage of applications which are accelerated by the graphics card (Internet Explorer for instance).

As for the N550 dual core, I must confess I don't know much about this processor. What I will say though is, I'd rather take a slower processor + decentish graphics card over this processor coupled with the Intel graphics cards normally used in netbooks.

But then I'm approaching it from a multimedia, light gaming, all round laptop type angle.

Also, looking at the CPU Passmark benchmark scores

AMD Athlon II Neo K125 475
Intel Atom N550 @ 1.50GHz 586

So there not that far apart then.

Ideally, best choice would be an processor with an Intel CULV based processor and Nvidia Optimus graphics system. They cost money though, and will probably be over your budget.

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Wed Sep 29, 2010 7:34 pm

What processor is recommended for maths applications?

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Drunken_Master
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Thu Sep 30, 2010 8:07 am

Sputnik wrote:What processor is recommended for maths applications?


I would have thought any modern CPU would me more than adequate for maths applications, if the application makes use of multiple cores than the Dual Core atom would be faster, if it only uses one core the AMD would be faster.

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Fishfingers
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Fishfingers » Thu Sep 30, 2010 1:06 pm

I got myself an HP DM3 with AMD Neo recently. It's amazingly well built, has an amazing keyboard and has handled all the web browsing/video/music/document creation I've thrown at it.

Only problem is that the trackpad is strawberry floating terrible.

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Wiggy G32
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Wiggy G32 » Sun Oct 03, 2010 11:00 pm

This is something I've been looking into as I'm getting a new netbook end of this month. For me it was tied between the EEE 1215n and the Dell M101z in the end I'm going to get the dell its priced pretty well and it has the dual core Neo in it. Id recommend that if you can get it

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:15 am

Currently compiling a detailed list of all the netbooks available around my area for my budget.

brb, This is exciting.

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Mon Oct 04, 2010 11:54 am

Ok, I've found two 12" netbooks that are just in my budget. I'll spare you the other 20 or so I found because I'll take a 12" over a 10 any time.

One is Acer Aspire One ao752-742 with Intel cm743 processor and dunno what graphics. 2 GB RAM.

The other is, as said above, the Samsung x125, which has a AMD Athlon K125 processor and again dunno what graphics.

Neither have the Atom processor which should make D_M happy.

What should I get?

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Drunken_Master
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Drunken_Master » Mon Oct 04, 2010 1:12 pm

I'd go with the AMD system.

Score for the AMD K125 in Windows 7

3.7

The Intel processor you mentioned in the Acer is this one.


Intel® Celeron® M Processor ULV 723 (1M Cache, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz FSB) with SPEC Code(s) SLGAM, SLGAS

Which gets a 3.1

A single core Atom would be in the region of a 2 score


Moving onto graphics performance.

Graphics

Desktop performance for Windows Aero 3.4
Gaming graphics

3D business and gaming graphics 5

Below is the score for the GMA 4500HD. Bear in mind, this score might not be the same for the laptop you mentioned. This is because the GMA 4500HD will share memory with the computer and the processor this card was coupled with in this score was significantly faster than the Celeron M you mentioned. Desktop performance about the same, in the multimedia one though the ATI card was faster.
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Tue Oct 05, 2010 2:23 pm

It seems the netbooks within my budget (including the Samsung and the Acer I mentioned in my last post) all suffer from not being able to multitask well (or they suck too much power, like the Asus 1201pn). At this point I'm thinking of just getting the cheapest one there is and just keep the cash for my desktop PC...

I'll forget about the 3D gaming, and just hope I can run Matlab and emacs on it at an acceptable rate. I'll just use it as my "download PC".

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gafgalash
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by gafgalash » Sat Oct 09, 2010 10:38 pm

I have an ASUS UL30 and it is pretty swift for a compact (14"). They're fairly good value/money in the 14" range with great battery life, but availability varies for models & countries. Mine (q057) was a little over the price of an iPad.

You say you want to use math programs on it. Most important thing would be to consider whether the math programs you have support multicore. R doesn't and it would make anything less than I have now (SU7300) unbearable. I'd expect Mathlab to support multicore, but maybe student versions or other math programs don't. In that case, find a processor with a little oomph on one core, AMDs tend to fit that bill, I remember. SuperPI benchmarks are interesting in that case. Look into graphics card support as well. The ION powered netbooks mentioned here might be good in that case.

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Sputnik
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PostRe: Recommend a < 13" netbook or notebook
by Sputnik » Mon Oct 11, 2010 2:20 pm

Well, thanks for the replies.

I've decided I'd rather save and just use my home and school PCs. :lol: Sorry.

Hopefully this thread will come in handy for someone else, though.

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