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Hey guys, I hope this is the right part of the forum to post this.
Ok so I am after a new portable, netbook or very portable notebook.
My main criteria is battery life and portability, second to this is performance, third is cost. This has already ruled out a lot of options.
Portability is key because when I am on the train, working with anything over a 12″ notebook is hard unless you find a table. Battery life is also a must. I don’t understand the point in notebooks / ultra portables which have 2-3 hour battery life’s unless you can always find a plug (seems to defeat the object).
I have a decent desktop at home and work so its not a PC replacement. However I do need to run the following applications so I can do work on the move and remotely:
MS office 03/07,
Adobe CS3,
AutoCAD 06/06 (only for viewers and editing basic 2D layouts)
Adobe PDF reader / writer
Internet BrowserMy ideal solution would be the NC10 with 2GB memory.
Having read up on the NC10 and had a play in stores it seems very capable, and had the battery life and portability I need. However, my main concern is that I am not sure it offers the performance I need. I don’t need it to run the above list at blistering speed but I do need to run them ok. Since I can’t get a demo machine to test the software I would use buying one would be a stab in the dark.
The other option appears to be the Samsung Q210 at the moment which, 12″ ultra portable notebook with a pretty decent battery life (5-6 hours). Reviews have been very good. The one I have been looking at is £485 inc vat with spec below and whilst it is bigger than the NC10 its liveable with.
Core 2 Duo T5750 Processor
2GB RAM
160GB Hard Drive
DVD Super-Multi Dual Layer Optical Drive
12†WXGA Display
Nvidia 9200M
Battery – 6 Cell (up to 6 hrs)
Dimensions (W x D x H) – 304 x 226 x 28.7-36.7mm
Weight – 1.95kgYour thoughts would be really appreciated especially on the performance front.
Whilst I have read all the benchmarks of the Atom I know these are not always a true indication of how software can perform since in my experience the software I need will chug along happily on a 1GHZ-1.4Ghz desktop machine. I did read a review which showed the Atom lagging behind a 1.6ghz athlon desktop though. In cost terms the NC10 would be about £335 with the memory & case and then if I get a external dvd (may not need) this could take it to £370 ish so savings wouldn’t be huge over the Q210.
Cheers
p3
the advantage the Q210 has is obviously the Core2Duo, the better graphics card, the built-in optical drive, larger screen and the fact it already has 2Gb ram installed.
However I use my NC10 as a permanent desktop replacement and it is very speedy for everything I need, which is web browsing, dvd playback (I have an external USB DVD and HDD drive), playing a few games and indeed doing a bit of 3d modelling on it.
I have upgraded mine though with a 2Gb stick of RAM, and am running Windows 7 so it does bump up the graphics memory over XP.
Personal preference really. Would you prefer the compactness of the NC10 with it’s 10.2″ screen and keypad which is 93 (or is it 97%) size of that of a normal keypad or would you rather live with a slightly better, slightly larger ‘laptop’ (I personally wouldn’t call anything over 10.2″ screensize a netbook).
Personally if the extra money for the Q210(I assume it is higher) doesn’t bother you I would go for it. 1.8″ more and you get a much more powerful machine. Personally for me I only went with the NC10 instead of a 12″ laptop because of the $1k plus price tag vs the NC10s $500 price tag.
How about both? 🙂
From what I’ve gathered, the Atom is best compared to the Pentium-M, the centrino component found in laptops around 2003 era (height of the Pentium 4 on desktops). In my experience so far with Atom, I would agree with that. I haven’t found it sluggish at all, in fact for most apps I can’t tell a difference between it and my penryn core2 duo at work. Then again I haven’t been using CAD or hardcore photo editors, and my work computer is probably saddled with a lot of crud.
Have you ever run the apps in question on Pentium M or Pentium 4 machines?
FWIW if you take a look at the/my Benchmarking thread you’ll see that Summertan did some back to back tests using Mathematica on Sammy and an AMD Athlon underclocked to1.6 GHz where Sammy performed the calculations quicker than the AMD, most likely because of the way the Atom uses hyperthreading.
I have been desiding the same thing for a while now. I thought about what i want the mashine to do and if the q210 would quickly be superseeded. I camr to the conclusion that the NC10 does everything i want it to do with great battery life. i was going to get the HSDPA but when i found out it was and extra £100 i desided it wasn’t worth it. I have my NC10 now and i love it. I have a 2.8G desktop with two 22″ monitors in my office and was worried that the screen on the nc10 would be too small, but its perfect. and i can conect external monitors ( 32″ lcd tv ) to it at high res if i want a bigger screen. I would think about what your planning to do with it an make a desision based on which would suite your needs best.
Hey thanks for all the replies guys. I think the NC10 will probably do what I need it to for the length of time I will be out of the office and away from my main PCs.
I have seen cad running well (06/07) on some P4 2.0ghzs so by the looks of it the Atom will do the job I need it to.
If not, its at the price point where to sell, it won’t cause me a big loss, equally upgrading to the latest models would be much more palatable.
Will try to post some in depth reviews of it operating with my software I will be using once I get it all up and running.
[quote1232161291=Presci3nt]
Hey thanks for all the replies guys. I think the NC10 will probably do what I need it to for the length of time I will be out of the office and away from my main PCs.I have seen cad running well (06/07) on some P4 2.0ghzs so by the looks of it the Atom will do the job I need it to.
If not, its at the price point where to sell, it won’t cause me a big loss, equally upgrading to the latest models would be much more palatable.
Will try to post some in depth reviews of it operating with my software I will be using once I get it all up and running.
[/quote1232161291]
I would just purchase it from a store with a good return policy, so that way if it doesn’t work for you take it back. In other words DON’T buy it from Newegg!!!
Well I went out and got a black one this morning from Staples (I live in the UK).
None of the staples near me were showing stock last week or even had demo units in the stores, but I went in today and they were £322. This price is the same as Argos (now stocking as of today’s catalogue at £322), whereas Currys, PC World and Dixons had hiked to £329 this week.
Best bit Staples online are £297, which my local store matched without fuss so not a bad price for a black one.
Interestingly the new demo unit appeared to have a western digital hard disk according to the device manager prefix.
Once I open will start posting back with results. I managed to dig out a 2005 version of SIS Sandra which has reference CPUs going back to the old PIIs so will be an interesting comparison.
Staples had the Q210 and NC10 near each other so I got to have a good comparison, from what I can tell the Q210 keyboards is virtually the same size as the NC10 albeit it has the home/end keys
Quick update for you guys, although I will get round to writing a thread for applications.
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Build XP Home SP3
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Western Digital 160GB HD (50GB Primary / 93GB Storage / 6GB Recovery)
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1GB Memory
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Pre Installed with Updater Plus
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No Screen Blotches
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84% Battery charge ready from new
Overall, very impressed, loading applications from a Virtual ISO or Memory Stick is quick enough. Not noticing much difference between this and my desktop on install times.
Feels comparable to my Pentium 1.73m I had in my Dell 630m or my P4 2.4 (socket 278 era)
So Far Applications Tried
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MS office 2003 pro installed, runs very well
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Adobe CS3 Suite (Illustrator / Pro / Dreamweaver…the full works), runs very well. (Especially Illustrator which can be a big resource high and very demanding, installed by increasing res as per the un-checking hide monitor res box)
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McAfee Fully Removed / Avast Installed and running well
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Zone Alarm running well
Tomorrow, I install AutoDesk 2008 Suite to really test it.
I think these things are mis-sold as internet only browsers. They are very capable and a nice size to work on.
[quote1232442236=Presci3nt]
I think these things are mis-sold as internet only browsers. They are very capable and a nice size to work on.
[/quote1232442236]Agreed – you’ll probs see comments from me around the net on NC10 articles saying just that. There is definitely a common perception that these machines aren’t “real” PCs. There are some people quite agressively pushing the “what’s the point of a netbook” angle. Although these devices aren’t for everyone I do find it odd that people are actively trying to persuade others not to buy one!
Wow – another update
Having run SIS Software Sandra (Build 2005.2.10.50 – yes its old but it is so I can compare to that era of machines)
Machine as Vanilla XP Home & 1GB Memory
Results are for CPU Multi Media Benchmark
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Integer iSSE 10099 it/s
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Floating-Point iSSE2 19699 it/s
Results for Arithmetic Benchmark
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Dhrystone ALU 5209 MIPS
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Whetstone FPL 1723/2248 MFLOPS
Roughly comparable with a AMD XP 1800+/2000+ according to Sandra, which still hold their own and they didn’t have hyper threading.
Oh and here is the biggy, AutoDesk 2008 Full Civils Package (for those it means anything too) installed fine and runs very well. Having plenty of experience of Autodesk running on different machines is a very very big test.
To me this proves these are way more than just an internet browser. Ok so it’s not a gaming machine and from what I can tell, this is where the whole ‘it’s a netbook for surfing the net know its limits’ movement seems to come from.
Anyway posting this from my NC10 using my W980i as a modem.
Presci3nt,
Do not load Adobe CS 3 onto the sammy NC10, I did and it was a waste of thime, some of the editing windows do not fit onto the sammy screen correctly,same problem with CS2. I ended up using a stripped out version of Adobe photoshop 6 and every thing works perfect also all the edit windows in adobe 6 fit well on the sammy screen. If you need a raw converter to edit raw files you could get a stand a lone raw converter..[quote1232529228=rallysnapper]
Presci3nt,
Do not load Adobe CS 3 onto the sammy NC10, I did and it was a waste of thime, some of the editing windows do not fit onto the sammy screen correctly,same problem with CS2. I ended up using a stripped out version of Adobe photoshop 6 and every thing works perfect also all the edit windows in adobe 6 fit well on the sammy screen. If you need a raw converter to edit raw files you could get a stand a lone raw converter..
[/quote1232529228]I haven’t had any problems and you can always bump the screen res to 1024 x 768 and scroll for the odd window which really isn’t an issue. I use it more for Illustrator & Dreamweaver than Photoshop and these work fine.
The main thing is actual usability performance is close enough to my desktop but with superb portability. But to be clear this isn’t my main machine, my desktops are. It is perfectly usable though for a train journey or whilst waiting in a coffee shop or just for the sheer I got a better gadget than the next bloke.
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