netbook processing power

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jamiewakeham

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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
 
jamiewakeham said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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
 
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
 
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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.
 
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
 
FPjohn said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
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
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
The shift key problem

The shift key problem

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. 🙄
 
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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.
 
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.
 
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