ASUS Eee PC 1201N: Dual-Core Atom + ION FTW?

@marcreichman what's insane is that you can get that much compute in blades now as well

@anshelsag haha yeah, too late, clicked the wrong button :)

Will be doing power and perf comparison between the old and new configs over the coming weeks. For now, it's bedtime

That was high-end back in 2006 - 8 cores in a 4U box, now we have 12 in a 2U box

Finally carried our old DB server up to the lab: four socket, dual-core Opteron 880 based HP ProLiant DL585 http://t.co/ftyi8BPF

@ozym4ndias @wilshipley @pmod not really, not internal at least. here's a hint: http://t.co/iv6wXn7I :)

@RandomMegaBytes the 512GB drive won't actually update to the latest firmware, but the 128/256GB drives are very quick

@pmod IVB gives you the same memory bandwidth as SNB, likely see DDR3-1600 in mobile

@wilshipley @pmod remember with Ivy Bridge TDPs don't actually go down, in 2013 that will change though...

@wilshipley @pmod The Pro won't go away entirely, but we will see a trend towards thinner notebooks in general.

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Mobile use let down by LCD by YpoCaramel on Friday, January 22, 2010

130cd/m2 is too dim for portable use. These levels might be useful for getting accurate color in lighting controlled rooms, but most ultra-portables don't have that luxury. Even if they are kept indoors they will encounter a variety of lighting conditions, some of which will make the screen quite difficult to see at such low brightness. What's worse, the screen is reflective. Sufficient brightness can minimize reflections, but the 1210N just doesn't have the brightness. The competition can do better - even old the eeePC 1000H.

YpoCaramel

Pre-Ordered Today by darkryft on Monday, December 28, 2009

I personally feel the 1201N is a great evolution for the netbook, but probably represents the limit. To go any further in size any number of other features would drive the cost to where it is no longer a netbook, it's a laptop.

There are some drawbacks, yes, and there are laptops that can be had for nearly the same money the perform better, but this is a fantastic feature set in the ultra-portable class. I'm personally phasing myself out of PC gaming and desktop computing as a whole, and I will probably invest in a full-on laptop at some point, but for documents, music, and netsurfing this will easily handle the tasks.

If only it were cost-feasible to drop a Patriot Torqx in this thing.

darkryft

Why would you... by SmCaudata on Saturday, December 26, 2009

The ASUS 14" laptop seems like the best portable out there right now. The battery life is good enough were you really don't need to bring your charger everywhere and it's price is not much more than this dual core netbook for much better performace. There are a few select situations where one may absolutely need 11" or smaller, but for 99% of the users out there I cannot imagine that the 14" thin and light ASUS is too big. If I were in the market for a laptop it is certainly the one that I would buy.

SmCaudata

Intel GMA 4500MHD by Rsaeire on Saturday, December 26, 2009

"...video decoding and in particular gaming are too much for the 4500MHD."

The Intel GMA 4500MHD supports full hardware acceleration of HD video codecs, MPEG-2, VC-1 and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.

Rsaeire

RE: Intel GMA 4500MHD by JarredWalton on Saturday, December 26, 2009

Yes, but Flash 10.1 still struggles on HD movies.

JarredWalton

RE: Intel GMA 4500MHD by LoneWolf15 on Monday, December 28, 2009

Yes, but Flash 10.1 is currently at beta 2, a full-featured release isn't available yet.

LoneWolf15

RE: Intel GMA 4500MHD by JarredWalton on Monday, December 28, 2009

Exactly, and do you buy something with GMA 4500MHD with the hope that everything gets worked out in the next couple of months as far as Flash goes, or do you wait and see first, or do you go with ION? I'm inclined to take one of the latter two approaches, as buying something with the assumption that it will work later (see GMA 500 -- no recent XP driver updates, and as far as I can tell the Acer 751h still has major issues with stability) isn't a great plan.

Alternately, I might just wait for something like this.

http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/Broadcom...">http://www.windowsfordevices.com/c/a/News/Broadcom...

Actually, having seen Adobe in action, I'd probably wait. Haven't seen too many things they can't break to some degree, even sometimes after they have fixed them.

Ion is cool, don't get me wrong. However, Intel's 4500 onboard video has been the first video product I've seen from them that seems to work well for almost everything except gaming. I rarely switch on my Radeon 3470 mobile graphics (I have a ThinkPad with switchable graphics) for this reason. If I was in the market, I'd rather get an SU2300 laptop than an N330 once I've seen what Flash 10.1 release looks like --and your review actually convinced me of that, as I'd have been on the fence before.

RE: Intel GMA 4500MHD by Spivonious on Monday, December 28, 2009

But that's not due to the 4500MHD, it's due to Flash not taking advantage of it.

Spivonious

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ASUS Eee PC 1201N Test System
Processor	Intel Atom 330 (2x1.6GHz + SMT, 45nm, 2x512KB L2, 533FSB, 8W)
Memory	1x2GB DDR2-667 (Max 1x2GB)
Graphics	NVIDIA ION (16 SPs)
Display	12.1" LED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768)
Hard Drive(s)	250GB 5400RPM HDD
Optical Drive	N/A
Battery	6-Cell, 11.25V, 5600mAh, 63Wh
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit
Pricing	Available Online starting at $471

Gateway EC5409u Test System
Processor	Intel Pentium SU4100 (2x1.3GHz, 45nm, 2MB L2, 800FSB, 10W)
Memory	2x2GB DDR3-1066 (Max 2x4GB)
Graphics	Intel GMA 4500MHD IGP
Display	15.6" LED Glossy 16:9 768p (1366x768)
Hard Drive(s)	320GB 5400RPM HDD
Optical Drive	8x DVDR SuperMulti
Battery	6-Cell, 11.1V, 5600mAh, 62Wh
Operating System	Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Pricing	Available Online starting at $620