First Look At Latest Ion-Infused Asus Eee PC 323
Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
from the its-got-what-plants-crave dept.
from the its-got-what-plants-crave dept.
MojoKid writes "Atom-based netbooks have come a long way since they were first introduced. 7 and 8-inch netbooks are no longer the norm, and availability of 12-inch netbooks is on the rise. The newest member of the Asus Eee PC lineup is the Eee PC 1201N, and it really stands out in the crowd of netbook in terms of specifications. The machine features a 12.1" HD display, new dual-core Atom 330 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, an HDMI output and NVIDIA's Ion chipset with integrated GPU. HotHardware was able to demo the system's ability to handle more advanced benchmarks, thanks in part to the Ion GPU. It's also the first netbook they tested that could actually play older 3D titles respectably. You won't get Crysis running but lighter duty titles can be played back nicely if you tone the details down and lower the resolution. The 1201N also played back 720p and 1080p content without stuttering, and the dual-core CPU allowed enough headroom to multitask while videos were playing."
Left out of the summary (Score:3, Interesting)
ASUS Eee PC quality is better than ever (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:More power is nice, but has everyone forgotten. (Score:3, Interesting)
"I think a regular old PC would do what you want. Any recent Nvidia card will get you vdpau."
I already have one. I just don't want another one in my living room. I also want to retain the portability so that I can simply hook up to someone else's TV as well (Grandma's...Her vision ain't so hot, so she has a bigass TV. I want to be able to surf with her without buying her a PC).
Re:More power is nice, but has everyone forgotten. (Score:3, Interesting)
I disagree. For my needs, 12" would be the sweet spot. It's big enough to actually use and feel viable without being full-size. I recall that the HP DV2 was a 12" laptop, and it felt awesome. It's just too bad it only had a single-core processor.
Wow (Score:3, Interesting)
The most interesting benchmark in the article is the effect that the Ion GPU has. There's another netbook review that is linked in the article to an $800 machine with a beefier CPU, the ASUS CLUV. That machine is unable to play 1080p video clips without stuttering.
Yet this beast of a netbook can do it easily, using no more than 50% CPU in windows media player. That ION GPU must be doing a heck of a lot of the calculations in order to make this possible.
Only problem : not all video codecs are accelerated this well. Do any players/codecs out there let you watch the usual x264 video clips that pirates put up on the net with Ion GPU acceleration? Historically, Windows Media Player generally doesn't natively play anything but WMV and old codec files.
Those 1080p movie trailers that Apple likes to release will play just fine, however.
The biggest problem with the machine is that it still uses a mechanical hard drive. It would be a heck of a lot faster and more responsive if it had a clean bare-bones install of Win 7 and an SSD. (no, not Linux...Linux might boot and run faster but it takes more time to tinker with it and fight to get things to run than you save, unless you are a Linux expert)
Problem is, you gotta pay for the cost of that useless 5400 rpm drive when you buy this thing. Maybe you could pick up an external enclosure off newegg along with an SSD, and put the mechanical drive to use as a backup disk. Put in an OCZ vertex SSD, and make this machine scream.
The 2GB ram limitation is also a problem, though...For long term use, you really want at least 4-8 GB....
Long live the 8.9 inch netbook... (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm glad I got my EEE PP 900 ha before the 8.9 inch models were killed off.
My person rule is "if it gets bigger than 10 inches, it aint a netbook and I might as well spring for a full featured/powered notebook."
I'm also glad I skipped the rehash that is Windows 7. "Now you can squander 10+ gigs of your small hard drive for this bloated new OS that features DirectX 10, even though you can't use DX10."
Re:Great hardware specs (Score:5, Interesting)
Originally called Alumium by Davy then changed... (Score:3, Interesting)
According to World Wide Words [worldwidewords.org], "Sir Humphry made a bit of a mess of naming this new element, at first spelling it alumium (this was in 1807) then changing it to aluminum, and finally settling on aluminium in 1812. His classically educated scientific colleagues preferred aluminium right from the start, because it had more of a classical ring, and chimed harmoniously with many other elements whose names ended in –ium, like potassium, sodium, and magnesium, all of which had been named by Davy."
Re:Great hardware specs (Score:3, Interesting)
In addition:
Actinium, americium, Barium, berkelium, beryllium, bohrium, cadmium, cesium, calcium, californium, cerium, chromium, curium, darmstadtium, dubnium, dysprosium, einsteinium, erbium, europium, fermium, francium, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, hafnium, hassium, helium, holmium, indium, iridium, lawrencium, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, meitnerium, mendelevium, neodymium, neptunium, niobium, nobelium, osmium, palladium, plutonium, polonium, potassium, praseodymium, promethium, protactinium, radium, rhenium, rhodium, roentgenium, rubidium, ruthenium, rutherfordium, samarium, scandium, seaborgium, selenium, sodium, strontium, technetium, tellurium, terbium, thallium, thorium, thulium, titanium, uranium, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zirconium.
VS:
Aluminum, lanthanum, molybdenum, platinum, tantalum.
I can see why some people would assume that a -ium suffix would be proper.
Aluminum should rightly be called aluminum not for reasons of 'sounding latin' but by way of the standard of using an element's oxide name to determine the pure element's suffix.
From Wikipedia:
The -um suffix is consistent with the universal spelling alumina for the oxide, as lanthana is the oxide of lanthanum, and magnesia, ceria, and thoria are the oxides of magnesium, cerium, and thorium respectively.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium#Etymology)
List of element name etymologies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_chemical_element_name_etymologies [wikipedia.org]
Also of note: The Art of Chemistry: Myths, Medicines, and Materials by Arthur Greenberg
-b