Asus N10 Review — the First Netbook For Gaming 126
Kim Hawley writes "Mobile Computer has a review of another new netbook from Asus. The N10 comes from Asus’ notebook division rather than its Eee PC division, and has an impressive specification. Most notable are the ExpressCard/34 slot and switchable nVidia GeForce 9300M graphics, and the video shows the N10 playing Call of Duty 4 very smoothly. Pre-orders in the US are around $600 – about the same as the Eee PC 1000. The N10 is closer to a traditional laptop than a true netbook, though – is feature-creep killing this new market already?"
Switchable graphics card? (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
In addition to the same so-so Intel 945 graphics found on other netbooks, the N10 also has a discrete nVidia GeForce 9300M graphics chipset - enabled with the flick of a switch (and a reboot)
Very strange feature, definitely the first I've heard of this. You would really think that they could be able to power down enough of the 9300M to compare with the 945. But I guess they did the math and it makes sense to include two separate graphics controllers?
Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games... but I guess I already do that between Debian/Windows. :-/
--
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Re:Switchable graphics card? (Score:5, Informative)
The tech's been around since the beginning of the year at least. I first ran across this while shopping for a new laptop in February -- some of the Sony Vaio models had come out with it by then. Now a few other people have it as well (obviously). From what I understand, it makes a pretty decent impact on battery life.
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Does this onboard nvidia also have that flaw that gets so much news?
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Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games...
It seems retro to me... sonny.
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Re:Switchable graphics card? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games... but I guess I already do that between Debian/Windows. :-/
That's not how I'd use it. Most of the time, I have my notebook plugged into an outlet, so I'd just use the power-hungry card. I'd reboot any time I plan on using the machine away from an outlet for an extended period of time.
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It's called an MXM slot, and HP laptops have had them for a couple years, now. Their business notebooks like the nx9420 had upgradable graphics cards.
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Especially since it was possible to have two 3d cards in a PC in the past, I had an Ati 3d Charger and a 3DFX Voodoo in the same system and almost always got a drop down box which one to use (modern games still have it, in case you ever wondered why there's a dropdown box with "primary graphics driver: <card name>" in the setup).
Switchable and *NOT* SLI/Crossfire ?!? (Score:2)
You would really think that they could be able to power down enough of the 9300M to compare with the 945. But I guess they did the math and it makes sense to include two separate graphics controllers?
Well, that's even more weird because the current tendency is to put the same brand of chip both on the mother board *AND* on the discrete GFX card. So that the discrete chip and the motherboard chip can collaborate in SLI / CrossFire when the extra power is needed instead of one of the two sitting idle. (Called Hybrid CrossFire and PowerXpress [wikipedia.org] by ATI, and Hybrid SLI [wikipedia.org] by nVidia)
Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games... but I guess I already do that between Debian/Windows. :-/
It's even more weird as usually the same-brand chipset+GPU combination tend to have driver support for on-the-fly switch between chip
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The Intel 945 is an EXTREMELY WEAK integrated GPU. It's only with the x3100 series (hobbled by bad drivers) and more recent integrated chipsets that Intel has managed to produce any sort of reasonably acceptable results. i.e. while Intel may do OK at designing CPUs they, apparently, can't design a GPU to save their lives which would make sense that their pushing for more graphics processing back on CPUs, especially since their hauking >=2 core CPUs in which the beyond one core the rest usually have litt
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Seems like a pain to have to reboot to play games... but I guess I already do that between Debian/Windows. :-/
I wonder if the limitation comes from the BIOS or the operating system, ive always been disapointed in the need to reboot (as far as i could figure it out) to switch from a radeon based system to an flgrx based one, perhaps having 2 actual chips could push developers to find a way to change the graphics driver without restarting the system and just require an X restart or better just a new X session. hell given that their using separate chips wouldn't it be possible (but not easy) to boot up the nvidia card
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hey, that's a feature.
free brazilian bikini wax with each gaming session.
wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally feel laptops aren't good enough for serious gaming. Even though you connect a mouse, the keyboard still cannot match up to a regular size keyboard. There is the issue of heat and needing to be hooked up for max CPU freq and display brightness. Don't get me wrong - I love gaming laptops - they make great machines for development and running VMware images but in general I laugh at the idea of gaming laptops (upgrades? *smirk*).
Gaming netbook though in my opinion borders on ridiculous. The N10 has a 10.2" screen. Checking the AH in wow sure. Using counterstrike as an expensive chat client while you idle in the start zone? Sure. Playing Solitaire and Bejewelled? Sure. Serious gaming? F that.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a friend who has a 17" gaming laptop and on occastion we'll hook up at the coffee shop and play around of Ghost Recon 1. (Yes the original version). I'm usually playing on a 12.1" PowerBook and there is a hell of a difference. He can snipe me down because he can easily see the movement on his screen. There are places where he can be running and I can barely make him out.
Same if I play Halo on the Mac, but not quite as bad.
I know, 2001 called and want their games back, but my point is that 17" vs. 12" screens do make a difference..
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powerbook - so I'm guessing no...
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I know, 2001 called and want their games back, but my point is that 17" vs. 12" screens do make a difference..
I remember, oh, in 2002 or 2003 I upgraded from my 15" (14 viewable) Sony Trinitron CRT. Part of the reason I was hanging on to it for so long was because it was easy to take to LAN parties (easy, relatively speaking). Me and my friends were diehard Quake III players back then. Most of my friends had at least 17" monitors, and a couple had 19" monitors. Let me tell you, I wasn't terrible at Q3A with the Trinitron, but when I upgraded to a 19" Viewsonic CRT, the next LAN was totally a night and day show
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> I know, 2001 called and want their games back
I really love the games from before ~5 years ago. Top-down GTAs, Jedi Knight series, Q3... Say, you can be a serious gamer even with a GeForce 2. You just play games that were released before GeForce 2 was on the market. It isn't like a game that was absolutely brilliant (Diablo 2 for example) suddenly became something less just because a few new ones were released in the meantime.
The most important factor in games is the fun factor, and there are thousands
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My point precisely. I have got a 250 HDD for the laptop, and now I keep installed a lot of games that I liked (GTA3, Thief, Deus Ex, Jedi Knight, Psychonauts, etc). The laptop (X1600 card) runs them like a breeze, and it's nice to always have them there, be able to fire them up and have a walk around.
Crysis probably won't run. Who cares.
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Also, not a Halo fan, if that wasn't obvious.
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Plus, laptops are awesome for LAN parties (less power consumption, smaller size, etc)
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but some people enjoy using a laptop for everything
Most college students who travel great distances to their schools, like myself, have laptops. I'm not a gamer (though I do enjoy the occasional game of Halo), but bringing a desktop & monitor cross country seems kind of inconvenient, regardless of how much of a gamer one is.
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No reason you can't bring along an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse and just use the laptop in a shut configuration. That's what I do when I'm at work anyway. It's still easier carrying around a laptop bag than a medium sized desktop case. You'd still have to bring along a monitor unless you want to risk leaving the laptop open to food/drink as you say, but if that is a problem, just be thankful that you don't have to lug around CRTs anymore! 21" CRTs are crazy heavy :P
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IIRC some laptops use the keyboard as a cooling vent so I would be wary of running laptops closed under heavy load.
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True, I leave my MBP open at about 20 degrees here at work even when running with all external input/output gubbins, otherwise it gets rather noisy!
I keep my drinks on the other side of the desk though :)
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1: When someone tips over a can of coke, your laptop is dead.
not true, i once spilt a full can of coke in to my laptop keyboard, (it was in a very big cup)
the laptop died, but after an hour of being upside down to drain it worked fine, but now my tab is all crappy
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For someone with the username 'atari2600', you have an odd idea of what constitutes serious gaming. Any netbook should have enough power to run any atari 2600, 8 bit, 16 bit, and many DOS games. There are a lot of hardcore SHMUPs, RPGs, and platform games you can play on a netbook. Why does this not constitute "serious" gaming?
IMO any serious gamer cares less about graphics than gameplay. Have you played Elite? Ultima IV? Sam & Max? X-Com UFO Defense? These are all serious games that you can play
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I believe that in the context of computers, serious gaming is running the latest games and pushing the hardware and, as a bonus, you might get a good plot. That is why gaming PCs and laptops are extremely expensive. Netbooks and gaming in this context do not go together. It sounds like they are trying to reinvent the laptop and the direction they are taking is leading them right to what laptops are, not something different.
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I'm sure your gaming rig does real well on space conservation and portability.
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Or you can do what I do and use a docking station, so I use my logitech keyboard/mouse and 21" monitor. My fujitsu t4010 has a 12" screen, weighs about 3.5 pounds, is a tablet PC, and can play Spore and Sins of a Solar Empire on low settings.
17"-ers play games just fine, except for the heat (Score:1, Redundant)
The real problem is heat dissipation. Until now, only 17" form factor laptops could (theoretically) tolerate such heat. Even the 17" Dells are having huge failure rates due to their insuffic
Re:17"-ers play games just fine, except for the he (Score:4, Funny)
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They're called laptops for a reason! Except these ones are netbooks. So perhaps they are to be rested on top of a modem and held like a book.
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Cheers
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Meh, I'd never really thought about it before. Try this Dell link [dell.com]. Notebooks, subnotebooks etc are still all just subcategories of 'laptop', and a desktop is still a desktop even if it goes under your desk :p Some other poster pointed out that some manufacturers may be scared of lawsuits about burned laps and such so that's why the term laptop isn't used as often. Perhaps for the Dell US site they avoid the term completely, but people in the UK still haven't given in to the sue-happy culture quite yet (thou
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They stopped calling them 'laptops' in favor of 'notebooks' years ago for precisely this reason. Granted I'm typing this from a MBP that's doing a fine job to keep my nuts warm (through a blanket so I don't actually burn my legs), but the computer industry has long since accepted that the devices almost universally are too hot to be marketed as a laptop computer.
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Actually if you check my post just above [slashdot.org] you'll see that Dell still call them laptops - and you don't get much bigger or more common than Dell when it comes to home computing..
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Thanks, got one of those (Score:2)
I type this laying on my bed - with my "laptop" lying next to me. And before you guys make the predictable "that's all you'll ever have lying next to you" jokes, I first got this laptop so I could play video games lying next to my girlfriend as she does her homework on her laptop.
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Hot.
I'm intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your cam feed.
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My Dell M170 video card and mobo choked after about a year and a half due to heat. Fortunately, I had a two year warranty. After that mess was cleared up, I extended the warranty out another 3 years, the max I could buy for that machine.
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It's a matter of context. This isn't designed to play Crysis by a long shot, but the fact that it can run COD4 fairly well (a game that's not even a year old) is pretty remarkable. As I said, it's not going to play crysis, it's not going to be a replacement for a good desktop experience, but it's small and light enough that you can conceivably carry it wherever you go, which is more than can be said for any "serious" gaming device.
I can easily picture myself completing Half Life 1 on that machine (hell, I b
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I just replaced a Toshiba X201 series with an Asus gaming notebook. My last one had an nVidia 8700, new one is a 9700. Went for a smaller screen on the new one as I was tired of lugging a 17 inch laptop around the world. There is literally nothing out that I can't play perfectly. Gotta hook it up? Same thing with a pc. I use the built in keyboard most times, occasionaly an external if I feel like having the screen a little further away. Don't care about upgrades. This laptop cost me 1200 bucks. In a y
Not really. (Score:2)
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Yeah, it will take some space, but if you set it up on a desk, it'll fit all right. And then you could even put the laptop under your desk so that it won't interfere..
Hmm... (Score:4, Interesting)
Feature creep can hardly be said to be "killing" the netbook market, as long as cheap low end netbooks continue to be sold; but one does get the impression that Asus et al. would love for you to consider something a little more expensive. The market that toys like this will probably kill is the ultra-high-end mini notebook segment.
The high end mini notebook market has been around for years, Sony probably being the most notable. Classic netbooks are a threat, in that they skim off the people who want portability but don't need high end features but might have purchased a mini notebook because they were the only thing going; but they are too wimpy to kill the segment. However, as seems to happen a lot in technology, cheap crap is better at moving upmarket while staying cheap than premium gear is at moving downmarket while staying good. With the vast bulk of 300-400 dollar netbooks floating around, modest upgrades in spec and build quality, like the device reviewed in TFA, are still cheap and small; but are almost as good is the high end mini notebooks of old.
I'm not predicting the total doom of that segment, some people are still willing to pay a premium for the best; but I suspect that this system, and others like it, really annoy the traditional makers of high end mini notebooks.
"The Innovator's Dilemma" (Score:4, Interesting)
This is something that has been extensively and well discussed in this book [businessweek.com]. Traditional companies always have a lot of difficulty trying to compete with new products that come from "below", i.e. have less features but are cheaper than the current products.
Mini-computers killed almost all of the old mainframe manufacturers, just like personal computers put the mini-computer sellers out of business. Now it's the time for the PC manufacturers to feel the heat, I expect a big restructuring of the whole industry in the next few years.
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"Generally disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued onl
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However, as seems to happen a lot in technology, cheap crap is better at moving upmarket while staying cheap than premium gear is at moving downmarket while staying good.
There's a term for that [wikipedia.org].
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Well I guess it's because what I really want is the Acer Aspire One I am typing this on, but it would be nice if it had a 2GHz plus dualcore CPU, a faster SSD drive or a bigger spinning disk, and a faster video card and a battery to last the whole of a longhaul international flight.
But then it would be a $3000+ macbook air, not a $600 netbook 8)
Nonsense! (Score:4, Funny)
You want a netbook for gaming?! The Eee does it all! Perfect controller as well!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QSW9qOM6FM [youtube.com]
"about the same as the Eee PC 1000" ?? (Score:2)
The Eee PC 1000 should be much less than $600. I live in Europe so I am not sure about the prices in the US, but here in EU it's one of the cheapest laptopsin general, let alone among the ultraportables!
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I'm seeing it for 449$ USD, so it's not expensive at all.
Granted this is for the 80GB XP version, but still, you could easily load it with linux if that's what you want.
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Odds are they'll charge more than that anyway.
Perfect for me (Score:2, Interesting)
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Be sure you get one of the models with the nVidia graphics card, then. Notice that the cheapest model, the $599 N10EA1, does NOT have it:
http://www.jr.com/product/productListing.jsp?Ntt=asus+n10 [jr.com]
more of a preview (Score:3, Informative)
Notebooks coming back in 2009 (Score:2)
When the EEE was announced I made a bet with a friend as to whether netbooks would shake the notebook market up and turn it a little inside out, and yes, they did.
But looking at what I feel I would buy when I wanted a portable computer, during all of 2008 I strongly felt I'd get some kind of netbook (I particularily had my eye on the Acer devices), but now i feel that I'd really want a normal work machin
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My main plans are a portable device for email and chat... the MSI Wind can handle thunderbird, xchat and pidgin fine. No
Someone needs to define "market" for submitter (Score:2)
The market will define itself, not what hand-wringers think it should be. If the slightly-larded up Netbooks sell, well then, that's the market. If the race to the bottom, barebones lappies are what people want, then that will be what the market produces.
Markets don't die, they adapt to what consumers want, not how neato some people think a sub-$500 laptop is for society.
Market As Religion. (Score:2)
Pardon my rant; it is not directed at you necessarily, but I'm so fed up with this whole "Free Market As Religion" nonsense that your little blurb broke my camel's back today.
Why do people get so pentecostal about it? It's like waxing poetic about gravity or something. --Except Newton wasn't pushing his theory for manipulative reasons. Take a look at the original proponents of Free Market theory; they're in tight with the Reagan/Bush family tree, and now we have Bush back-pedaling on the theory with his
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Trouble in Canada. . . (Score:2)
There is plenty evidence showing the current problem is from government intervention in getting banks to make loans to people that are overly risky.
Okay, did you actually, really just try to blame the current economic crisis on people who didn't follow the strictures of the 'Free Market' obediently enough?
That is the most bugged-out bit of spin-doctored delusional insanity I've heard today, --and it's pushing 1 o'clock, so I've already heard a ton of bullshit! "Government intervention in getting banks to m
stop it (Score:5, Insightful)
Do we care more about having a lot of different options for the user, or about protecting this "new market"?
I really don't think that every new useful product has to become part of some special "market" just because reviewers and marketing people feel the need to categorize and simplify absolutely everything.
I've seen too many good, innovative products die on the vine because the PR machine didn't quite know what to do with it. And have no doubt, sites like Mobile Computing, Engadget, Gizmodo, are nothing but cogs in the giant Moloch of the marketing departments and soap peddlers who have created this consumerist dystopia.
If it's a good product, it doesn't have to be destroyed just because it doesn't fit neatly on a tab of some big box store's website.
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Aye. I second that.
I personally like it. It is a small cheap laptop with power.
I personally would go for it if it was not for the fact I currently have a good laptop I use for gaming.
Gamebook (Score:2)
Yeah, but it seems to me the whole concept was that these are ultra-cheap PCs that aren't really good for a whole lot of serious computing, but are perfectly fine for surfing the net. Hence, "netbook."
If this thing is even half good enough for its intended purpose, isn't it sort of a ... gamebook, or something?
Further, I always thought "gamer PC" meant "tricked-out, high performance machine with emphasis on the graphics card and a bunch of blue LEDs in the case." The concept of marketing a "gamer system" th
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The "whole concept" ought to be whatever consumers find useful. Who really cares what the original idea of netbooks was? That "idea" was only the product of a marketing dept anyway.
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sometimes it really seems like people are just here to serve the economy rather than the other way around. that's why i'm always baffled when governments pursue policies that are supposed to "strengthen the economy" but which run against public interest.
personally, gaming laptops hold no appeal to me, but i've seen countless other great products fail because they were the victim of poor marketing. it's sad when marketing/advertising determines the success of a product rather than its technological/practical
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> just because reviewers and marketing people feel the need
> to categorize and simplify absolutely everything.
Oh dude. That reminds me of how I was enraged when I saw a Linkin Park album labeled as "Heavy Metal". Then a man came to me and said that it's only the narrow-minded people who need to categorize everything.
> If it's a good product, it doesn't have to be destroyed just because
> it doesn't fit neatly on a tab of some big box store's website.
You made me want to start writing songs again (
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Harry, that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.
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It's just a matter of the submitter wanting to seem important and relevant so they had to come up with an inane editorial comment/question. I don't think anybody else really cares whether or not you can pidgeonhole a new product.
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I wish it was only that, dreamchaser, but it's easy to come up with a list of great products that disappeared because the retail mechanism didn't know what to do with them (but we did).
The Apple Newton comes to mind. How many years did it take for Apple to even try a handheld platform again?
Whatever Happened To (Score:2)
Whatever happened to that bullshit from AMD where you could run integrated graphics, and switch over to discrete graphics when the need arose.
I believe they also let you run crossfire across them, though it was immature and you'd get anywhere from a ~10% increase to a ~20% decrease.
One of the neat things was that the discrete gpu would be nearly dead when not in use, but would automatically come to life when you needed it.
I guess that all hinged on AMD getting a chipset that was worth a damn to market. Hyb
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No /. Article is Complete without a Leading ? (Score:3, Insightful)
New Journalism (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's say you have an incredibly dumb hypothesis, but you don't want to claim it. Add a question mark, and you can still say the same thing and you can pretend you're still a news organization rather than the National Enquirer.
"Obama is a Muslim" turns into "Is Obama a Muslim?"
"Palin Faked Preganancy" turns into "Did Palin Fake Her Pregnancy?"
As with all asinine journalistic methods, this was mainstreamed by Fox News, and covered hilariously by the Daily Show. It's supposed to hook people with outrageous and patently false statements to boost ratings. Instead of information you get speculation, which is worthless.
The last safe haven is NPR. Why? Public funding allows journalists to be journalists and not just the lapdogs of marketing departments. This is also why the BBC remains one of the most trusted news organizations in the world.
Terrible n10/n20 graphic chart. (Score:2)
What's with the terrible no contrast image? [mobilecomputermag.co.uk] Who on earth thought of that one?
Maybe it's a test for people who want to spend all day squinting at a tiny 10 inch laptop screen.
Link Error (Score:2)
403 Forbidden
Real GPU Swapping (Score:2)
is feature-creep killing this new market (Score:1)
How do you `kill` a market? There's a demand for small, cheap PCs. I bought one (the Aspire One). It's great. If people want to produce PCs which are bigger and more expensive then they're not really netbooks any longer, but they're not killing anything either.
Great way to learn Linux. If Linux people really want to turn people away from Windows I'd make sure they stay on top of all the questions in the Aspire and EEE forums and make sure people don't get pissed off when they have to type stuff to make the
is feature-creep killing this new market? (Score:1)
The key definers for a "netbook" are weight, size and stamina - battery life. And of course some sort of mobile "net" capability.
As long as these are respected, then bring the features on - doesn't that go without saying?
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Seriously - Psion? Welcome to this century.
Wikipedia will catch up with what we all actually mean by netbook, and it obviously isn't the definition linked.
And "moving parts" is only a preference or opinion - as long as portability and longevity are respected. It doesn't matter if the storage media spins as long as the portability and longevity aren't compromised to do it.
Clearly portability is limited by shock proof media, but not constrained by it.
I think I'll stick... (Score:1)
Raon Everrun Note -- AMD based netbook? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been considering getting a netbook, and noticed that while most are based around Intel's integrated GMA graphics, there was another unusual exception -- the Raon Everrun Note [umpcportal.com]. Almost every netbook out there is based around Intel's Atom CPU, with occasional Core/Celeron ones.
This one was unusual in that it is equipped with an AMD Turion64 x2 CPU paired with ATI RS690E graphics. The RS690SE is integrated, but supposedly much faster than Intel's, and comes with dedicated graphics memory (what they call "sideport"). It looks like it should be a pretty good performer for a netbook -- so right now for me it is a tossup between this and the N10.
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That's a very interesting looking device. What's most interesting is that it's absolutely tiny - smaller than any netbook I've ever seen.
I'm in the market for a netbook myself, but that one is a little too small for my liking, so it looks like the N10 might be the one for me.
Atom for gaming? (Score:2)
I'm surprised... (Score:2)
That it can't do 720p video when my EEE 900 can using mplayer. The biggest problem I encounter is that it gets glitchy at times because the SSD can't keep up...
netbook $300 is not a netbook! (Score:1)
For me a netbook is also defined by it's pricetag. If it's cheap enough you don't get worried of thieves, you can take it everywhere. If it ever gets lost, there's no $2000 (vaio) gone.
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But does it have software cracks? (Score:1)
true 8-bit screen? (Score:2)
My wife has an expensive Vaio with a true 8-bit screen. She laughes at my other notebooks with the dark tiny graphics which just suck for games or even using ms word for extended periods of time.
Does this unit have a true 8-bit screen or is it a 6-bit screen which emulates 8 bit in software that creates a bad picture?
Is it even possible to even buy a true notebook with 8bit graphics anymore? I want to know as her vaio is dying and I am looking to replace it.
8-bit is essential for any game. Any environment w
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So small netbooks (fuck that term) suck.
Large notebooks (fuck that term, it's a laptop, fix the heat issues so you don't get sued when someone burns their thigh or shows a tenuous link to a temporary reduction in sperm count) suck.
The only thing that's worth a damn is what you personally like. Makes sense.
I hate the tiny laptop craze. I want them to get off of my fucking lawn. I think it's a fad and the market will soon reach saturation / suffer from "feature-creep" as TFS mentions. I have no use for on
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if people are willing to type on the qwerty keyboards on smartphones, then i'm sure a mini-notebook is plenty ergonomically functional.
you prefer mid-sized notebooks, personally? well of course. that's probably what most people prefer as well. that's why they're the mid-size.
but it's not inconceivable that someone might need/want something a little bigger or a little smaller than your personal preference.
personally, i'm looking to get a tablet. i don't do any gaming, but as a graphic designer i need a large
Re:Netbooks have no reason to live. (Score:5, Informative)
My daughter has two laptops, an IBM T30 and an Asus EEE. The T30 stays in her room and is used for movies, itunes, homework. The EEE stays in her purse and is used for web, chat, email when she's out of the house, and occasionally to do homework when she wants to work on the kitchen table or upstairs in front of the TV. Before she got the EEE, she tried carrying around the T30, but size, weight and battery life made this a real chore.
Trying to develop C++ applications or run Halo 3 is not what these netbooks were designed for, and they -- still -- do what they *are* designed for very well. Trying to push them into areas they were not meant to go will -- duh -- give you questionable results. Like Max Payne running on a Surf, it's amazing that it works at all.
Yes, the keyboard kinda sucks and the screen is small. But the T30 won't fit in a purse, and my Latitude D620 *certainly* won't fit. When you need to look something up or send an email, any computer is better than no computer at all, and your big fancy white-hot dual core monster sitting at home isn't going to be any help when you're sitting here right now. The best computer is the one within reach, and the netbook is more likely to be with you when you're out of the building.
Moreover, the EEE will keep going long after the others have gone dark. For this reason, I sometimes borrow it for times when I won't be near a power source. (I wish she hadn't picked pink, though.)
And as cramped as the EEE is, it's still a damned site better than my Treo for web.
There may be a need for a bigger screen and better keyboard amongst those looking for a portable web appliance, but if it substantially increases the footprint, it breaks the paradigm. Moreover, I suspect that letting the price creep up makes it less attractive for people looking for an additional device, more portable than their mongo laptop but providing a better experience than their cell phone.
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I was able to use the keyboard on a Psion 5 (and before that a 3) with no problems. OK, I have smll hands but there was guy in my office who had hands like bunches of bananas and he had no problems either.
For me something like the EEE falls between two stools - it's big enough that it needs a bag (the Psion would fit in a suit jacket or cargo pants) so at that point you might as well go for a bigger one that's more usable.
Now if there was an EEE-alike that could also be used as a tablet, that I might consi
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Gaming laptop != gaming NETbook.
Re:your netbook (Score:5, Funny)
Powerful introduction, but a touch weak on the finish. Nice reinforcement of their promiscuity with the copulative verb. This post failed to reach its potential, some homosexual references and threats may have helped here.
Disappointing. Two stars.