The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook has been on the market for a while. I first reviewed this laptop in the summer of 2009. But Lenovo recently sent me an updated model with NVIDIA ION graphics to review. As promised, the NVIDIA graphics give the laptop an extra boost for watching HD video or playing games with 3D graphics.

But as with other ION based systems I’ve tested, I found that the computer was actually slower at some everyday tasks than a notebook with an Intel Atom processor and integrated graphics. I blame this on the fact that the ION graphics processor only kicks into high gear for certain tasks, which means that for many activities you’re left relying on the relatively slow CPU.

To see how the IdeaPad S12 with NVIDIA ION graphics compares to other notebooks in its class, read on.

The demo unit I reviewed has a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, ION graphics, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, a 6 cell, 52Whr battery, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Lenovo sells this configuration for $599.

Design

Superficially, the NVIDIA ION powered version of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 is identical to the model I reviewed in July. It has the same 12.1 inch display, 1280 x 800 pixel display and the same full sized keyboard. And both of those are good things. The display is comfortable to read without being too sharp. And the keyboard is comfortable to type on — especially if you’re used to Lenovo keyboard which place the Fn key in the lower left corner — to the left of the Ctrl key.

If I have any complaint with the physical design of the IdeaPad S12, it’s the battery which sticks out of the back of the laptop like a tumor. Sure, you won’t actually have to look at the battery while you’re using the laptop. But I would have preferred a battery like the one used on the Lenovo IdeaPad U150, which rests entirely under the body of the laptop without taking up any extra space in the rear.

There is one external difference between the NVIDIA ION model and the version with integrated graphics. The ION version of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 has an HDMI port, which takes up the space occupied by an ExpressCard/34 slot on the other model. In other words, there’s no room for an ExpressCard slot on this model, but you do get HDMI output for pumping out HD video to an external display.

Rounding out the rest of the ports are 3 USB ports, a VGA output, Ethernet jack, microphone and headphone ports, and an SD card slot. There’s also a switch on the left side of the computer that you can use to turn the wireless features on and off.

The IdeaPad S12 is available in black or white. Both models have glossy lids, although I feel like the black cover shows fingerprints more easily. The case isn’t a solid color though. While it’s kind of hard to spot from a distance, when you look at the laptop up close you see a textured pattern of circles.

On the bottom of the laptop you’ll find two access panels which you can open up to upgrade or replace the RAM or add a PCIe card. One nice thing about the IdeaPad S12 is that unlike many netbooks, it has 2 RAM slots, making it easy to upgrade the memory.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The IdeaPad S12 is larger than a typical netbook thanks to its 12.1 inch display. And that leaves plenty of room for a full sized keyboard. I found typing on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 to be quite comfortable — although I’m still not a big fan of Lenovo’s decision to place the Fn key to the left of the Ctrl key in the lower left corner of the keyboard.

Arrow, Page Up, Page Down, brightness and volume keys are all located in the bottom right corner of the keyboard. But for some reason Lenovo offers some buttons with duplicate functionality in a row just above the keyboard, where you’ll find volume and mute buttons.

This extra row of buttons also features the power button, a QuickStart button, and a OneKey recovery button. The QuickStart software lets you boot into a fast-loading Linux environment based on Splashtop. This way you can load a web browser, Skype, or a handful of other application about 10-20 seconds after hitting the power button instead of waiting for Windows to boot.

The OneKey recovery software lets you restore your computer to the factory default condition or restore from a user-created backup. If you hit the OneKey button when Windows is running, it will fire up the recovery software from within Windows — without the option to restore to the initial state. But if you turn off the computer and then hit the OneKey button instead of the power button, you can do a full system restore.

The touchpad is nice and wide and features two distinct buttons for left and right presses. While the touchpad doesn’t support multitouch gestures, it does allow you to swipe your finger across the bottom or right sides to scroll left, right, up or down.

Performance

Aside from the 12.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, the defining characteristic of this laptop is the fact that it scraps Intel’s integrated graphics and replaces the chipset with NVIDIA ION. This gives the laptop more than enough power to handle 1080p HD video playback in a wide range of formats – including HD Flash video if you have Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta installed. The computer also scores significantly higher on 3D graphics benchmarks than a typical Intel Atom netbook with integrated graphics. You’re not necessarily going to want to play bleeding edge video games on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with NVIDIA ION, but you shouldn’t have problems running many older games.

The laptop has an Intel Atom N270 processor — the same chip that’s been used in dozens, if not hundred of netbooks released over the past two years. The CPU is capable of handling light weight tasks without much trouble. And it’s reasonably efficient at multitasking. You shouldn’t have any problems surfing the web with a few browser tabs open while listening to music, for example.

But while the IdeaPad S12’s NVIDIA graphics helped it outperform standard netbooks in the graphics department, I found that for other tasks it sometimes felt a little sluggish. For instance, there was an unusually large amount of lag when I was reading news using Google Reader. I’m used to being able to jump from one article to the next almost instantaneously, but with the IdeaPad S12, sometimes I would hit the next button and have to wait a second for the next article to load. I don’t mean to single the IdeaPad S12 out here. I’ve noticed similar problems on other laptops with larger displays. I can’t say for certain whether it’s the display resolution or NVIDIA ION that’s a problem here, but the powerful graphics processor clearly doesn’t help when it comes to rendering Javascript-heavy web pages.

3DMark06 (higher is better)

I ran a series of benchmarks on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 and compared the results with three other laptops. The HP Mini 311 is probably the closest comparison, as it has the same NVIDIA ION chipset and Intel Atom N270 processor as the S12. The Asus Eee PC 1201N has a dual core Atom 330 processor and ION graphics. And for comparison’s sake, I threw in the Asus UL20A, which has a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CULV processor and GMA 4500MHD graphics. In other words, the UL20A has a much more powerful processor than the IdeaPad S12, and less powerful graphics, which becomes very apparent when you look at the 3DMark06 scores above.

MediaCoder test (lower is better)

While the NVIDIA ION chipset lags behind the Intel CULV platform in CPU speed, thing get interesting when you run applications that can take advantage of GPU acceleration. Video transcoding application MediaCoder, for example, allows you to use GPU acceleration on graphics cards that support NVIDIA’s CUDA technology. So while the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 took a ridiculously long time to transcode a four and a half minute video clip using the standard MediaCoder transcoder, when you switch to the CUDA encoder, the S12 completed the job faster than the Asus UL20A, which couldn’t use the CUDA encoder.

Liliputing benchmarks (lower is better)

I also ran a series of benchmarks to test the general performance of the IdeaPad S12. These included transcoding the same 4:34 video clip to Xvid using VirtualDub, transcoding a 13 minute audio file, and copying and zipping the contents of a large folder with over 2,000 files in it.

As you can see, the S12 outperformed the HP Mini 311 in most of these tasks, but trailed behind the dual core Asus Eee PC 1201N and Intel CULV powered Asus UL20A.

Application load speed test

Of course, odds are you won’t spend a lot of time transcoding audio or video files on a thin and light portable netbook. So I ran one more test, which measures how long it takes to launch two of the slowest-loading application I regularly use: image editing application GIMP and office suite OpenOffice.org. The IdeaPad S12 held its own here, performing almost as well as the Asus UL20A.

Battery

The laptop’s 6 cell, 52Whr battery is a bit of an eyesore, sticking out of the back of the laptop. But I wouldn’t want to use this laptop with a smaller battery. Even with a 6 cell battery, I was only able to get about 3 to 4 hours of run time while surfing the web over WiFi.

Expect lower battery life if you plan to spend a lot of time watching videos, playing games, or performing other tasks that will tax the CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics.

It’s interesting to note that the battery life on the NVIDIA ION model isn’t that much worse than the standard version of this notebook. During one battery run down test, I managed to get about 4:15 of run time. The best I managed with the IdeaPad S12 with integrated graphics was 4:27.

Verdict

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with NVIDIA ION graphics costs about $170 more than the version with integrated graphics. Is it worth the extra price? That depends on how important the extra graphics capabilities are to you. In terms of everyday performance, you probably won’t notice a difference between the two machines. But if you want a model that can reliably handle HD video, Flash video, and some 3D gaming, as well as pump out video to an HDTV via an HDMI port, the NVIDIA ION model is the way to go.

That extra money doesn’t just pay for the graphics processor. This model also has more RAM and a larger hard drive than the model I reviewed last summer. And it ships with Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Windows XP.

But with a starting price of around $599, I can’t think of many reasons to pick up the NVIDIA ION version of the IdeaPad S12 instead of a computer like the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 with an Intel CULV processor which offers better overall performance, even if it doesn’t score quite as highly on graphics benchmarks.

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Lenovo IdeaPad S12 (NVIDIA ION) review

The Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 is Lenovo’s third netbook in the IdeaPad line. But you could probably have guessed that from the name. Here’s what you might not know: It’s the best looking 10 inch netbook Lenovo has released to date, and it’s the first with a new Intel Atom N450 Pine Trail processor.

The netbook is thin and light, and comes with a choice of a black or red cover featuring a textured, fingerprint-resistant cover. But in order to keep the laptop as small as possible while providing a nearly full sized keyboard, Lenovo chose to build left and right buttons into the touchpad, making it difficult to use.

The demo unit Lenovo sent me to review features a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, Windows 7 Starter Edition, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 6 cell battery, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth 2.1.

Design

At 10.6″ x 6.6″ 1″ the IdeaPad S10-3 is one of the smallest 10 inch netbooks I’ve tested. It weighs 2.8 pounds with a 6 cell battery, which is about par for the course.

But it’s not the size or weight that make the IdePad S10-3 stand out. It’s the distinctive design element such as the textured pattern on the black or red lids that gives the laptop an almost carbon fiber coated look. At a time when many netbook makers are putting glossy, fingerprint magnet lids on their netbooks, this attractive matte finish is a nice touch.

The palm rest area below the keyboard has a brushed metal look which even extends onto the touchpad. And the keyboard features flat, island-style keys with rounded edges on the bottom. In fact, the keyboard is very similar to the one designed for the new Lenovo ThinkPad X100e thin and light business notebook.

In order to reduce the size of the netbook, Lenovo made two interesting design decisions. The mouse buttons have been integrated with the touchpad. And the power, Quick Start, and recovery keys have been integrated into the bezel around the display. Normally these buttons are placed in a row just above the Fn keys on the keyboard. The first few times I used the notebook, it took me a second to remember where the power button was located, but it didn’t take long to get used to.

The 6 cell battery juts out a little bit from the bottom of the netbook, which means the back of the keboard is tilted up a little bit when you place the S10-3 on a tablet. But the battery is definitely less of an eyesore than the batteries on previous IdeaPad S10 netbooks.

On the bottom of the computer there’s a single large access panel which you can open to replace or upgrade the hard drive and memory.

Around the sides of the laptop you’ll find 3 USB ports, an flash card reader, and VGA, mic, headphone and Ethernet ports. There’s also a switch you can use to toggle the WiFi on and off.

Despite the matte finish on the lid and palm rest, the display and screen bezel are both glossy, which means the laptop casts a decent amount of glare when used in direct sunlight.

Keyboard and TouchPad

Lenovo says the IdeaPad S10-3t keyboard is 98% full sized. The isolation-style keyboard features flat keys with a small space between each key making it easy to find the correct key without looking at your fingers.

Like all Lenovo keyboards, the Fn key is located in the bottom left corner, to the left of the Ctrl key. If you’re used to using computers from virtually any other company, it might take you a little while to get used to this. But having tested a number of Lenovo laptops recently, I find that this key placement doesn’t bother me as much as it used to.

While the keyboard is attractive and hits all the right buttons for me (chiclet style keys, nearly full sized), I found that I was a little more likely to make mistakes when typing on the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 than on some other netbook keyboars. I scored about 90 words per minute in an online typing test. That’s not bad, but it’s about 5 to 10 words per minute slower than my typical score.

The touchpad, on the other hand, may be one of the worst that I’ve ever used.

I get that Lenovo was looking to save space by eliminating the right and left buttons. But I found it incredibly difficult to use the click sections of the touchpad. You have to press the touchpad in exactly the right location, or the left and right clicks won’t register at all. And since you can use the right side of the keyboard as a scroll-wheel, I often accidentally wound up scrolling when I meant to right-click.

It’s also incredibly difficult to perform any action that requires clicking and dragging at the same time. For instance, when trying to crop an image using Irfanview, I typically click the left mouse button and drag a box around the area I want to select. When trying this on the IdeaPad S10-3, the shape of that box kept shifting in an almost spontaneous fashion that had little to do with the direction I was dragging my finger in.

After a while I did start to get the hang of using the touchpad, but I still find the laptop much easier to use with a USB mouse. While I’m not a fan of the HP Mini 110-style buttons on the left and right side of a touchpad instead of below it, I think Lenovo would have been better off saving space by moving the buttons to the sides of the touchpad rather than integrating them. As far as touchpads go, physical buttons are much better than integrated buttons.

It’s probably worth pointing out that I’ve used three other laptops with integrated touchpad buttons: The Dell Inspiron Mini 10v, Inspiron Mini 10, and Inspiron 11z. While I wasn’t a fan of the integrated buttons on those models either, I found them all easier to use than the touchpad on  Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3.

Performance and Battery Life

In terms of day to day performance, the Lenovo Ideapad S10-3 felt a lot like other netbooks with Intel Atom Pine Trail netbooks I’ve tested — which is to say it feels a lot like most of the netbooks I’ve tested over the past 2 years. The 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor gives the netbook enough power to handle most everday tasks such as surfing the web, chatting, listening to music, or watching some movies.

What you shouldn’t expect is great support for HD video playback, resource-intensive apps, or 3D video games. While the notebook can handle 720p HD video playback in some formats, 1080p video is just out of reach (although it’s possible that you might be able to enable 1080p support by installing the Jolicloud Linux operating system or other software that should enable HD video playback using the integrated GMA 3150 graphics).

Windows 7 gives the Ideapad S10-3 an Experience Index of 2.3, with the lowest score going to the Intel Atom processor. The graphics scores aren’t much higher. The computer gets 3.0 scores for both gaming and standard graphics. But the hard drive and memory get respectable scores of 5.7 and 4.4 respectively.

Lenovo claims you should be able to get about 7 hours from the 6 cell, 48Whr battery. In my tests, I came pretty close, getting about 6:45 of run time while doing some light web browsing and document editing over WiFi.

The S10-3 comes with Lenovo’s typical netbook software suite, including the Lenovo QuickStart software that lets you boot into a light weight, Linux-based operating system for web browsing, instant messaging, listening to music, and performing some other tasks without waiting for Windows to boot.

The computer also comes with Lenovo’s OneKey recovery software which lets you backup and restore your computer’s settings. You can also restore your computer to its factory default state by shutting down your PC and then hitting the OneKey button on the display instead of the power or QuickStart buttons.

Verdict

There’s a lot to like about the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3. It’s attractive, small, and light. And it offers decent performance and battery life (while falling far short of the 10+ hours of run time offered by some of its competitors).

But there’s one major problem with the S10-3, and that’s the awful touchpad. If you’re a USB mouse kind of person, or if you don’t have a problem with integrated mouse buttons, then the Lenovo ideaPad S10-3 is definitely worth checking out. But if you have the opportunity, I’d recommend spending a few minutes playing with the touchpad before purchasing this netbook.

Post from: Liliputing

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3 review

The Archos 5 Internet Tablet is the first Google Android powered tablet from Archos, a company best known for making MP3 players and portable media players. And at it’s core, the Archos 5 Internet tablet is a pretty good media player. It offers all the features you would expect including excellent audio and video playback capabilities and access to online media and files stored on your home network. It even has a built in FM radio tuner.

But what makes the Archos 5 Internet Tablet special is the underlying operating system which allows you to run thousands of Android applications. Out of the box, the tablet has a few Android apps installed including the Android web browser and the eBuddy instant message client. A few hundred more are available from the AppsLib app store. But with a little tweaking you can install the full Android Market, granting you access to many of the 16,000+ applications available for Google Android smartphones.

All this without the need to sign up for a contract with a mobile broadband provider. The lack of a service plan alone would make the Archos 5 one of the cheapest devices to run Google Android, since most Android Smartphones will end up costing you thousands of dollars over a 2 year contract. But with prices ranging between $250 and $500, this Android powered WiFi slate is truly one of the most affordable internet tablets around.

The folks at Archos were kind enough to lend me an internet tablet to review. The demo unit I received has 32GB of storage, an 800MHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU, 256MB of RAM, 802/11b/g/n WiFi, a USB port, and runs Android 1.6 plus some custom Archos software. You can read the complete review at mobiputing.

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Archos 5 Internet Tablet review

At first glance, the Asus Eee PC 1201N looks virtually identical to several other 12 inch laptops from Asus including the UL20A and 1201HA thin and light laptops. But while the Asus Eee PC 1201N may have the same chassis as other Asus notebooks, it still breaks the mold in a few important respects.

This is the first notebook from Asus to offer NVIDIA ION graphics instead of the integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics that typically come bundled with first generation Intel Atom processors. Second, this is one of the only laptops on the market with a dual core Atom 330 processor. The CPU was initially designed for low-powered mini-desktop computers called nettops. But the Atom 330 is still a relatively low power CPU. And in the Eee PC 1201N it offers just a little bit of a performance boost, which helps this notebook to outperform other 11 and 12 inch notebooks with NVIDIA ION graphics and single core processors.

On the other hand, the Atom 330 is a bit more power-hungry than a single core Atom chip, and the Eee PC 1201N doesn’t get the same kind of battery life I’ve come to expect from Atom powered notebooks.

The demo unit Asus sent me to review features a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual core CPU, NVIDIA ION graphics, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium.  It has 802.11b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth and a 0.3MP webcam.

Design

The Eee PC 1201N comes with either a black or silver case. The demo unit I received has a glossy black cover. The bottom of the computer has a matte finish, as does the battery, but the palm rest and bezel around the screen are the same glossy black plastic as the lid. It’s attractive enough, until the shiny plastic starts to show your fingerprints.

The screen is also glossy, which means it can function as a mirror when the display is off. But while I wouldn’t recommend using the Eee PC 1201N outdoors, the screen is bright enough to be used in most indoor settings. The 1366 x 768 pixel display is sharp and clear, without being too sharp. I’m not a big fan of high resolution displays on 10 inch netbooks, but this laptop’s 12.1 inch screen is the perfect size for the HD screen. You can play 720p video in full screen mode and enjoy every last pixel.

The computer does get a little hotter than other 10 and 12 inch low power laptops I’ve tested. I’m betting that the combination of the dual core Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics are to blame, but the long and short of it is that I wouldn’t recommend putting this notebook on your lap for an extended period of time while wearing shorts. But a good pair of jeans or thick trousers should protect you from the extra heat, which is most noticeable on the bottom of the computer. The keyboard and touchpad area don’t get too hot.

On the bottom of the Eee PC 1201N you’ll find a single access panel, which you can open to access 2 RAM slots. The notebook can handle up to 4GB of memory. The hard drive and other internal components are not easily accessible, so if you were hoping to swap out the HDD for an SSD or perform some other upgrades, you’ll need to open up the laptop case.

Around the sides of the notebook you’ll find VGA and HDMI outputs, as well as 3 USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, an SDHC card reader and an Ethernet port.

At the back of the laptop the battery sticks out a little bit from the base, which makes the Eee PC 1201N a tiny bit thicker at the rear than in the front.

Keyboard and TouchPad

The keyboard on the Eee PC 1201n is pretty much indistinguishable from the one on the Asus UL20A, which is to say I’m pretty happy with it. The island-style keyboard features flat keys with a little space between each key, making it easy to find the edges of the keys without looking down at the keyboard.

Because the Eee PC 1201N is a little larger than a typical 10 inch netbook, there’s also room for a dedicated line of keys on the right side of the keyboard for PgUp, PgDn, Home, and End functions. The arrow keys in the bottom right corner double up as multimedia playback controls when you hold down the Fn button. And the Fn keys at the top of the screen allow you to adjust the volume, brightness, and several other settings.

Above the keyboard there are two buttons. You can press the one on the right to boot the PC. The button on the left toggles the touchpad. If you’re using a mouse or watching a movie, you can turn off the touchpad. Just press the button again to turn it on.

The touchpad, at least on the unit I tested, is more like the one on the Eee PC 1005/1008 series of 10 inch netbooks than the Asus UL20A touchpad. It’s made of the same black plastic as the palm rest area and has no physical border separating it from the palm rest. But the touchpad features a raised bumpy texture which provides a little friction and makes it easy to detect where the touchpad begins and ends.

There’s a single wide button below the touchpad, with a rocker in the middle, allowing you press down on the left or right side to register a right of left click.

I found the touchpad reasonably easy to use, but I prefer the feel of the Asus UL20A touch area. The difference is that instead of raised bumps, the UL20A has small indents, or dimples. .

Performance

The Eee PC 1201N isn’t the first notebook with NVIDIA ION graphics to hit the market. But it is the first with ION graphics and a dual core Atom 330 CPU. And that makes a modest but noticable difference in everyday performance. While the HP Mini 311 felt a little sluggish when performing tasks that didn’t take advantage of GPU-acceleration, the Asus Eee PC 1201N feels just as snappy as any Atom-powered netbook with a smaller screen.

For day to day tasks such as surfing the web over WiFi or editing documents, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the sub-$500 Asus Eee PC 1201N and a much more expensive system. But when it comes to activities that put more strain on the CPU or GPU, the Eee PC 1201N excels in some areas and struggles in others.

For instance, the Asus Eee PC 1201N fared better than the HP Mini 311 in my app launching test, where I time how long it takes to load image editor GIMP 2.6.7 and office suite OpenOffice.org. But this computer wasn’t as fast as the Asus Eee PC 1005PE with a single core Atom N450 processor, the Asus UL20A with a Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU, or even the ASRock ION 330 nettop which is similarly outfitted with an Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics.

Cinebench

Another benchmarking tool, Cinebench tells a somewhat more complex story. This test measures single-core CPU and multi-core CPU performance as well as OpenGL graphics performance. The Eee PC 1201N came in dead last in the single-core test, but outperformed the HP Mini 311 notebook and ASRock ION 330 nettop in the multi-core test. The Asus UL20A with its dual core Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU trounced all three in the CPU tests.

But where the NVIDIA ION platform really shines is in graphics performance. The Eee PC 1201N got the lowest score in the OpenGL test of any ION system I’ve tested to date, but it still came in far ahead of the Asus UL20A in this test.

3DMark06

In the 3DMark06 benchmark, the Asus Eee PC 1201N bested the HP Mini 311 in every test, including the CPU and overall 3DMark score. It also came out ahead of the ASRock ION 330, even though the ION 330 notched a slightly better CPU score. And the Asus UL20A had the highest CPU score of all, but the integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics were no match for NVIDIA ION.

In other words, the Eee PC 1201N should have enough graphical prowess to play some modern 3D video games by offloading much of the heavy lifting to the graphics processor. But while the GeForce 9400M (ION) graphics blows away the integrated graphics Intel offers for its Atom and CULV chips, it’s not exactly bleeding edge. If you plan to watch 1080p HD video, you don’t really need anything more powerful than ION. If you want to play Modern Warfare 2 or Left 4 Dead 2, you might want to opt for a higher end system like the Alienware M11x.

MediaCoder test

NVIDIA’s ION platform also has another trick up its sleeve. NVIDIA’s CUDA technology allows you to use the GPU to process some tasks that would normally be handled by the CPU. For instance, it took 8:13 to transcode a 4:34 video file using MediaCoder with a standard H.264 video encoder. When I used a CUDA-enabled encoder with MediaCoder, the time was cut to 2:58. That’s on par with the results I got from the ASRock ION 330 and noticeably faster than the amount of time it took to transcode the same clip with the Asus UL20A (4:48) and HP Mini 311 (15:48 with the basic encoder and 3:17 with the CUDA encoder).

Battery

The notebook comes with a 6 cell, 63Whr, 5600mAh battery. I was only able to squeeze about 4 hours and 10 minutes of run time out of the Asus Eee PC 1201N while surfing the web with WiFi on. I suspect that number would be even lower if I was using the notebook to play games or watch videos.

The battery actually holds a bit more power than the 47Whr battery that ships with the Asus UL20A in the US. But due to differences in the processor and graphics, the UL20A actually runs for longer on a charge than the Eee PC 1201N. The Eee PC UL20A has a dual core Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU and integrated GMA 3150 graphics, while the Eee PC 1201N has a dual core Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics.

As I discovered recently, it turns out the batteries for these two notebooks are interchangeable, so if you’re looking for a higher capacity battery for your UL20A, you might want to consider looking for a 1201N replacement battery. I suppose you could also use a UL20A battery in your Eee PC 1201N if you want less battery life, but I don’t see any good reason to do that.

Verdict

The Asus Eee PC 1201N is the first notebook with an Atom processor and NVIDIA ION graphics that I’ve tested that doesn’t feel slower than a typical 10 inch Atom powered netbook at day to day tasks. Sure, the HP Mini 311 and other ION-powered systems can play modern video games and stream HD video. But they’re kind of sluggish for web browsing. That’s not true with the Asus Eee PC 1201N, which is likely due to the dual core Atom 330 CPU.

But if you’re primarily looking for a machine for surfing the web, you might want to consider a smaller netbook with an Atom N450 processor or an 11 or 12 inch model with a CULV processor. Both options are likely to net you significantly better battery life. The reason to consider the Eee PC 1201N is if you want a notebook with decent everyday performance, and above average graphics capabilities.

When it comes to HD video playback and handling 3D graphics, the Eee PC 1201N comes out significantly ahead of the Asus UL20A and similar notebooks with CULV processors. And if you’re looking for a budget ultraportable that can handle some modern gaming, you’re not likely to find one that comes much cheaper than the Eee PC 1201N, which sells for under $500 on Amazon.

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Asus Eee PC 1201N review

The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 features an 11.6 inch screen and an Intel CULV processor. It’s available in a variety of configurations with up to 4GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive, and a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU, and a choice of a 3 or 6 cell battery.

There are a lot of things to like about the IdeaPad U150. It has an distinctive textured lid, an attractive two-tone keyboard, and a combo eSATA/USB port, which is something you won’t find on a lot of ultraportable laptops. But there are a few down sides as well. While the laptop gets decent battery life, it doesn’t last as long as I’ve come to expect of a laptop with an Intel CULV processor. And while the keyboard is attractive, I found it mildly uncomfortable to use.

The unit Lenovo sent me to review features a 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 dual core CPU, GMA 4500MHD graphics, a4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and a 6 cell battery. It features 802.11b/g/n WiFi and runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit and has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display. This model is available from Lenovo for a starting price of $749, but there’s also a $649 model with a slower processor, less RAM and storage.

Design

The Lenovo IdeaPad U150  is an attractive thin and light laptop. It’s textured lid features a raised pattern that is pretty good at resisting fingerprints, although I did notice that after handling the notebook for a while you could see some smudges. With a 6 cell battery, the notebook measure 11.4″ x 7.6″ x 1.3″ and weighs about 3.3 pounds.

Around the sides of the laptop you’ll find VGA, HDMI, and audio ports as well as 2 USB ports and a combination USB/eSATA connector.

There’s a switch on the right side for toggling the WiFi on and off, and in the front of the laptop you’ll find an SD card slot.

The IdeaPad U150’s 57Whr battery is a rather unusual shape, but it’s designed to take up less space on the bottom of the laptop that many 6 cell batteries, which means the computer doesn’t tilt uncomfortably when placed on a table. The battery also doesn’t stick out of the back of the laptop like the battery on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12.

There are two large access panels on the base of the IdeaPad U150. One makes it easy to replace or upgrade the RAM and hard drive, while the other provides access to the WLAN hardware and a spare expansion slot. The U150 has two RAM slots, which makes memory upgrades a breeze.

The 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display has a shiny black plastic bezel around it. Like the bezel, the screen is glossy, which means that when the display is dark, the computer can serve double duty as a mirror in bright environments. While that could come in handy if you’re shaving, it’s not something I normally consider a selling point. Fortunately, Lenovo gives you a fair bit of control over the backlight, and I didn’t have any real problems reading the screen in most situations. I wouldn’t recommend using the laptop in direct sunlight though.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard features a distinctive two-town design. The top row of keys, which includes the Fn, Esc, and Delete keys as well as a few others are in black with white lettering. The rest of the keyboard is a gray/silver color with black and/or orange letters. My only complaint with this layout is that I keep forgetting the Delete key is in the top row just above Backspace. And since it’s hanging out with a bunch of keys that I don’t use very often such as insert and Print Screen, it always takes me a moment to find the button. This probably wouldn’t be a problem if the IdeaPad U150 were the only laptop I used, but since it’s not… it is.

Another problem I have with all Lenovo keyboards is the placement of the Ctrl and Fn keys. Most laptops put the Ctrl key in the bottom left corner of the keyboard and place the Fn key to its right. Lenovo puts the Fn key on the outside and the Ctrl key next to it on the right. I had to spend about a week using this keyboard before I stopped hitting Fn+C every time I wanted to copy text or Fn+T when I wanted to open a new browser tab. Again, this isn’t a problem if you’re used to Lenovo keyboards. But if you’re not, it will take some getting used to.

Finally, the keys just don’t feel as snappy and responsive as I’ve come to expect from a keyboard. Laptop Magazine describes the U150 keyboard as “mushy,” and I have a hard time coming up with a better word than that. I described the keys as “cheap” feeling in my unboxing video, and several readers took issue with that characterization. And cheap’s probably not the right word. I’m sure the plastic in these keys costs just as much as that in most other low cost notebook keyboards. But I generally didn’t find typing on the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 to be all that pleasant. The keyboard is also a little on the noisy side.

I was able to achieve a score of 90 words per minute in an online typing test. While that’s not bad, it’s about 10 word per minute slower than I’ve gotten on several other keyboards. Your result may vary.

Above the keyboard are three buttons: a power button, a mute button, and a little key with an arrow on it that you can press to fire up Lenovo’s backup and restore software.

The touchpad is nice and wide and features two distinct buttons for left and right clicks. The buttons feature a soft touch. In other words, “click” might not be the right word to use, as you probably won’t hear anything at all when you pres the buttons below the keyboard.

I found the touchpad had a little more friction than I like, which made it a tad difficult to use. But not too difficult. It supports multitouch gestures such as two-finger scrolling and pinching to zoom in some applications.

Performance

The demo unit I tested came with a 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor and GMA 4500MHD graphics. That’s the same chipset found in the Asus UL20A which I reviewed last year. For the most part, the two laptops notched similar scores on a series of tests I ran, but the U150 consistently came in just a little behind the UL20A. Both netbooks are considerably faster than an average 10 inch netbook with a low power Intel Atom processor. But the U150 is designed to be a thin and light machine with reasonably good battery life and if you’relooking for a high end gaming machine, this isn’t it.

With that in mind, here’s how the IdeaPad U150 stacks up against a few similarly priced thin and light machines with similar specs.

The tests involve transcoding a 4:34 video file and a 13:24 audio file and copying and zipping a 478MB folder containing 2186 files. I have no idea why the IdeaPad U150 was so much faster than the other laptops at the folder copy test, but you can see that on the CPU-intensive tasks such as transcoding files the U150 was a few seconds behind the Asus UL20A.

For reference, the Acer Aspire 1410 featured in the chart had a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 dual core CPU and GMA 4500MHD graphics, while the Dell Inspiron 11z had a 1.3GHz Pentium Dual Core SU4100 processor and GMA 4500MHD graphics.

The results were a bit more mixed when I ran a test to see how long it takes to open two notoriously slow-loading programs: GIMP and Openoffice.org. While the Ideapad U150 opened image editing application GIMP faster than the UL20A, it was slower to launch OpenOffice.org. Both computers were noticeably faster at launching both apps than the Dell Inspiron 11z which has a slower processor.

While the IdeaPad U150 has the same CPU and GPU as the Asus UL20A, it got a significantly lower score on the 3DMark06 graphics benchmark. In fact, the U150’s score was closer to the Dell Inspiron 11z’s than to the UL20s, even though the Dell laptop has a slower processor. I added the results for the HP Mini 311, which has NVIDIA ION graphics. While the HP notebook has a much slower Intel Atom N270 CPU, the high performance graphics makes a huge difference when it comes to playing games.

That said, the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 was able to handle a few 1080p HD video clips in my tests, including HD Flash video (once I installed Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta). The computer feels reasonably fast and is more than capable of handling most office software, and a reasonable level of multitasking such as surfing the web with multiple browser tabs open while listening to music in a media player application and chatting with friends or colleagues over an instant messenger. The U150 may not be the fastest machine around, but it’s got enough oomph to get some work (and play) done.

Battery

The IdeaPad U150 comes with a 6 cell, 57Whr battery. Lenovo says it should be good for up to 7 hours of run time, but I typically got about 5 hours of battery life before the computer shut itself off. That was when surfing the web with WiFi on, and maybe watching a handful of short YouTube videos. If you plan to watch a continuous loop of video, expect the battery to run down more quickly.

The spec sheet I have says that the laptop is also available with a 3 cell battery, but I haven’t seen that option on Lenovo’s order page. The only real advantage to a 3 cell battery is that it sits flush with the base of the laptop, taking up less space. But the funny-shaped 6 cell battery isn’t really all that cumbersome.

The notebook weighs 3.3 pounds with a 6 cell battery and just under 3 pounds with a 3 cell battery. The back of the computer bumps from 0.96 inches to m to 1.35 inches when you move from the 3 to 6 cell batteries. But as I said, I’m not really sure where you’d find a model with the 3 cell battery if you wanted one.

Verdict

The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 is a good looking thin and light laptop that’s a reasonably powerful alternative to a 10 inch Atom powered netbook. But it’s not the fastest system I’ve tested with an Intel CULV processor, and while it has enough graphics prowess to play some games and watch HD video, it’s not ready to challenge an NVIDIA ION system like the HP Mini 311 in the graphics department.

I’ve also come to expect better battery life from notebooks with Intel CULV processor. So while 5 hours is certainly pretty good, I would have been a bit happier if the notebook could run for 6 or more hours on a charge.

But for the most part I’m nitpicking here. The laptop is reasonably portable, responsive, and powerful. The biggest problem is the price tag. With a starting price of about $650, the Lenovo IdeaPad U150 is considerably more expensive than similar laptops from Acer, Asus, Dell, Toshiba, and others. Fortunately Lenovo has a habit of offering coupons that help bring the price down, so if you really have you heart set on the U150, you might want to keep an eye out for a discount code before making a purchase.

For a bit of a closer look at the computer, you can check out a video mini-review below.

Post from: Liliputing

Lenovo Ideapad U150 thin and light notebook review

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 with an Atom N450 processor is just the latest Dell laptop to bear the Mini 10 name. It follows the Dell Mini 10 and Mini 10v, which had Atom Z520 and N270 processors, respectively.

Performance-wise, the new Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is a lot like the recently retired Mini 10v. But thanks to the new energy-sipping CPU, it gets significantly better battery life. And Dell has given the 10 inch mini-laptop a major design overhaul as well.

That includes a battery that no longer sticks out of the bottom of the laptop, and a new keyboard layout. Unfortunately one thing that hasn’t received a major update is the touchpad, which features difficult-to-use integrated click areas instead of dedicated left and right buttons.

The unit featured in this review has a 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, an HSPA modem, 1GB of RAM, and a 250GB hard drive. It runs Windows 7 Starter Edition.

Design

Dell pretty much broke the mold with the new Inspiron Mini 10. The company’s previous netbooks looked great with a low capacity 3 cell battery. But when you added a high capacity 6 cell battery, your netbook looked like it had a cancerous growth near its rear. The new Mini 10 does away with that. Both the 3 and 6 cell batteries sit flush with the base of the computer.

But the way Dell accomplished this is by redesigning the shape of the laptop to give it a bit more junk in the trunk. Basically, the base of the laptop is now bigger than the lid. This means that when the lid is closed, you can see a bit of the base. And when you open the lid to use the laptop, the screen no longer rests behind the notebook. Instead the hinge rests on top of the netbook base.

I’ve heard a lot of people complain that this design is just as unattractive as the enormous battery found on earlier netbook models, but it sort of grew on me. While the laptop might not look quite as slim as some netbooks on the market, I appreciate the effort that Dell put into making the new Mini 10 look better.

And there’s an unexpected benefit to the extra space behind the lid: I found it provided a perfect place to put my thumb when picking up the laptop with one hand. That makes it much easier to move the Mini 10 from room to room without closing the lid and putting the computer to sleep first.

The demo unit Dell sent me has a shiny white plastic case and a black interior finish with a textured pattern printed on the palm rest and other areas surrounding the keyboard. The cover is surprisingly adept at not showing fingerprints. I’m not sure if this is due to the color or the finish. The laptop is also available with red, blue, pink, green, purple, or black lids.

Around the sides of the laptop you’ll find 3 USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet, and mic and headphone jacks. There’s also card reader for SD and MS flash media.

The display is glossy, but easily readable under most indoor lighting conditions. The shiny black bezel around the lid, on the other hand, is quite reflective.

Hidden in the battery compartment is a SIM card slot, at least on the demo unit I received. The 3G HSPA modem is an optional component that won’t ship with all models.

On the bottom of the laptop you’ll find some vents, but no access panel. That means you’re going to have to perform some minor surgery on this laptop if you want to upgrade the RAM or other components.

One nice touch that Dell adds is single-piece power adapter. While most laptops come with a power brick and a separate cable, the Dell Mini 10 comes with just a single cord (with a rather bulky plug), making travel a little bit easier. The picture above shows the Dell Mini 10 power adapter on the left, and the adapter for a Lenovo IdeaPad S12 on the right. As you can see, they’re both about the same size. But it’s a lot easier to carry around a one piece solution.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The new Dell Mini 10 has a new keyboard that’s not that different from the keyboard used in earlier netbooks from Dell. The new design features keys with raised areas. The result is that the keys almost touch each other, but there’s space between the typing surface of each key. It’s sort of like a cross between one of those island-style keyboards that are all the rage these days and the original Dell Mini 10 keyboard which featured flat keys with little distance between them.

I like the keyboard, and in an online typing test I was able to eke out a score of 102 words per minute using this netbook. Your results may vary, but the keyboard certainly didn’t seem to slow me down any.

Dell takes an unusual approach to the top row of keys on its netbooks. While most companies provide you with a series of Fn keys that let you trigger alternate actions such as adjusting the volume or display brightness by hitting Fn+a Fn key, by default Dell’s top row of keys control those other functions. In other words, you hit F4 or F5 to adjust the screen brightness. If you’re using a program that actually requires you to use the F5 key, you’ll need to hit Fn+F5 to trigger that action. This makes sense, since most people probably use the brightness, volume, wireless , and other buttons more often than the Fn keys.

While I really like the keyboard, I really dislike the touchpad. In order to increase the surface area of the touchpad, Dell integrated the left and right buttons directly into the touchpad itself. Instead of pushing a separate button to click, you press down on the bottom right or bottom left corner of the touchpad.

This generally works well enough if you’re only using a single hand on the touchpad. You move the cursor around, lift your hand and move your finger to the bottom to click. But if you’re using two fingers to perform an action like dragging and dropping, you might run into some problems. I frequently had trouble clicking down on the touchpad with one finger while trying to drag a program or icon using the other finger. And if you have a tendency to hover your trigger finger over the mouse button while scrolling, you’d best be careful not to set your finger down lest the cursor should jump away just before you can click.

This short video should give you a sense of what I’m talking about, even though I don’t experience too many problems in the video itself. It turns out it’s kind of hard to reproduce these touchpad problems on demand. They only really occur when you’re trying to do something else.

Dell has also chosen to drop support for multitouch gestures. You can scroll up and down and left to right by moving your finger over the right or bottom edges of the touchpad. But there’s no support for two-finger scrolling or pinching to zoom.

Performance

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 performs pretty much as you’d expect from a netbook with Intel Atom N450 processor and GMA 3150 graphics. It can handle 720p HD video playback, but 1080p HD video is a non-starter, as if HD Flash video.

Dell will soon offer users the option of ordering the Mini 10 with a Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator which will add support for HD video playback. Right now that means local videos only, but Adobe and Broadcom are working to add support for HD Flash video in the upcoming Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta 3.

The Mini 10 got got a score of 2.3 on the Windows 7 Experience Index, with the low CPU score counting as the weakest link.

I ran a handful of tests on the netbook to test its performance at transcoding audio and video files, launching resource-intensive applications, and copying and zipping files. Overall, the Mini 10’s scores were pretty close to those of the Asus Eee PC 1005PE, another netbook with an Atom N450 CPU and GMA 3150 graphics. Which is to say, the performance is pretty much on par with what you’d expect from any netbook released in the past two years with an Intel Atom Nxx series processor.

The tests involve transcoding a 4 minute, 34 second video file using VirtualDub and a 13:24 audio clip using WinLAME. The folder copy and zip tests involve copying a folder with 2186 files totaling 478MB to a new folder and then creating a zip file containing all those files using 7-zip.

Of course, you’re probably not going to spend a lot of time transcoding audio and video files on a netbook. But as with most Atom powered netbooks, I had no difficulty surfing the web using Firefox or Google Chrome with multiple tabs open. Skype video call quality was passable, if not great. And resource-intensive applications such as image editor GIMP and Openoffice.org opened reasonably quickly, as you can see in the chart below.

Battery

While the new Dell Mini 10 performs about the same as the earlier Mini 10v with an Atom N270 processor, there’s one major difference: The new model gets significantly better battery life. When I tested the Mini 10v, I was able to get between 6 and 7 hours of run time on a charge by surfing the web over WiFi with the screen brightness hovering somewhere near the middle setting. Under the same conditions, I’ve been getting about 9 hours of run time out of the new Mini 10.

Both netbooks ship with optional 6 cell, 56Whr batteries, so the improved run time isn’t coming from the battery. It’s hard to say if the new Pine Trail processor is the only reason for the improved battery life. It could also be software-related. The new Mini 10 ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition while the Mini 10v came with Windows XP. Whatever the reason, the new Mini 10 gets significantly better battery life, and that’s a good thing.

The Dell Inspiron Mini 10 is also available with a 3 cell, 28Whr battery which should be good for around 4 to 4.5 hours of run time.

Software

The demo unit Dell sent me to review came preloaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition and a handful of programs from Dell and third parties. That includes the McAfee Security suite, which seemed to bog down the system. The first time I ran my benchmarks, for example, the video transcoding test took 475 seconds. After removing McAfee, the score dropped to 427 seconds. I’d recommend using a lighter weight anti-virus application such as Microsoft Security Essentials, which also happens to be available as a free download.

Dell also loads up the Mini 10 with the Dell Dock application. I’m personally not a huge fan of docks, and I find this one to be particularly annoying since I accidentally wind up pulling it up every time I move the cursor to the top of the screen with the intention of clicking on a program window. So I disabled the dock at the first opportunity. But if you prefer an OS X-style dock to the Windows 7 Start Menu, you might find the Dell Dock to be useful.

Verdict

The new Dell Mini 10 is a bit thicker and heavier than many contemporary laptops. It measures about 10.5″ x 9.2″ x 1.4″ and weighs just over 3 pounds with a 6 cell battery. But I appreciate the way Dell has designed the laptop so that it looks no different with a 6 cell battery than with a lower capacity 3 cell battery. The shiny, but fingerprint-free lid is also a nice touch.

Performance-wise, there’s no real reason to choose the Mini 10 over any other Atom Pine Trail netbook. But with over 9 hours of battery life, the new Mini 10 is one of the best laptops around when it comes to endurance. And Dell is expected to offer a number of customization options soon including a model with a higher resolution 1366 x 768 pixel display and Broadcom Crystal HD video accelerator, the 3G modem option found in the unit reviewed here, and a number of color choices for the lid (although I have no idea why you’d want to spend $40 to change the lid color on a $299 netbook).

Post from: Liliputing

Dell Inspiron Mini 10 Pine Trail netbook review

Asus has been pumping out netbooks for longer than anyone. And in a lot of ways, the Asus Eee PC 1005PE is just an incremental update over previous models. The laptop still has a 10 inch screen, chiclet-style keyboard and Intel Atom processor. But as the first Eee PC with an Atom N450 Pine Trail CPU, the Eee PC 1005PE represents the biggest change in the Eee PC line since the jump from 7 inch screens to 9 and 10 inch models in 2008.

Fortunately, Asus got a lot of things right in the latest update. The laptop is thin and light, and while it gets stellar battery life, the battery doesn’t jut too far out from the bottom of the laptop. The keyboard is very easy to use, and the textured touchpad supports multitouch gestures.

As for the new processor, it’s a mixed bag. It doesn’t offer much of a performance boost, and the PC actually feels like it might be slower at some tasks than one with an Atom N270 or N280 processor. But Intel’s goal wasn’t so much to boost performance with the new CPU, but to improve power consumption. And the Asus Eee PC 1005PE gets the kind of battery life that will let you use your laptop on a cross-country trip from New York to LA… twice.

The demo unit Asus sent me to review came equipped with a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, GMA 3150 graphics, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, and Windows 7 Starter Edition. It has a 6 cell, 5800mAh, 63Whr battery. You can pick one up for under $370 from Amazon.

Design

The Asus Eee PC 1005PE measures 10.2″ x 6.9″ x 1.4″ and weighs about 2.8 pounds. It’s almost exactly the same size and shape as its predecessor, the Eee PC 1005HA. The primary physical difference is that the new model has an updated chiclet-style keyboard with more space between the keys.

Along the sides of the laptop you’ll find 3 USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet jack, and mic and headphone jacks. There’s also an SDHC card slot.

The 10.1 inch display is reasonably bright. It features a glossy finish, which looks fairly decent in  a dimly lit room. But the screen has a tendency to turn into a mirror in direct sunlight.

The laptop is available in several colors. The review unit I received is blue, but you can also find the Eee PC 1005PE in black or white. All three models feature a shiny finish, which is attractive enough until you start to notice your fingerprints all over the lid.

Like the Asus Eee PC 1005HA, the Eee PC 1005PE is designed so that the 6 cell battery doesn’t take up a lot of space on the bottom of the unit. While some netbook batteries are awkwardly placed to resemble cancerous growths out of the back or bottom of a laptop, the Eee PC 1005PE battery is just a small round bump that gives the back of the laptop a little bit of elevation when placed on a table.

On the base of the unit you’ll find a single access panel for upgrading the RAM.

Keyboard and TouchPad

I’m a fan of chiclet-style keyboards for small laptops like the 10 inch Eee PC 1005PE. While the keyboard isn’t quite full size, the chiclet arrangement allows each key to have a decent amount of surface space while still leaving space between keys so that your fingers won’t accidentally slip onto an adjacent key.

I took a typing test using the keyboard and notched a score of 96 words per minute, which is about as high as I can get on any keyboard. Your results may vary.

A number of keys serve multiple purposes. For example, hitting the Fn key plus the F5 or F6 buttons will adjust the display brightness. Fn + the right arrow key = End, while the left arrow key does double duty as a Home key.

The touchpad is flush with the palm rest area of the laptop, but features a bumpy surface which makes it easy to detect the edges. Because the touchpad supports multitouch gestures such a pinching to zoom in some applications, or two-finger scrolling in most applications, it’s not really that important to be able to detect the edge of the touch area. I don’t miss searching for just the right spot to move my finger up and down to initiate a scrolling action.

Underneath the touchpad is a single large button with a rocker in the middle. It’s not that hard to register a left or right click, but I generally prefer two individual buttons.

The touchpad supports multitouch gestures such as placing two fingers on the pad and dragging up or down to scroll or pinching to zoom.

Above the keyboard there are essentially two power buttons. Press the one on the right side and Windows 7 boots up. Hit the one on the left, and you’ll boot into the Splashtop quick-boot environment that lets you launch a web browser, Skype, or a handful of other applications without waiting for Windows to load.

Performance

The Asus Eee PC 1005PE is the first laptop I’ve tested that has Intel’s new Atom N450 Pine Trail processor and GMA 3150 graphics. In a nutshell, the performance is almost exactly what you would expect from a netbook with an Atom N270 or N280 processor and GMA 950 graphics. In other words, the Eee PC 1005PE isn’t significantly faster than any other netbook that’s been released over the past year or two.

What is different is that Intel has combined the graphics, memory, and CPU functions onto a single chip. And that helps reduce energy consumption and increase battery life — without sacrificing performance.

I ran my standard raft of benchmarks, and found that while the Asus Eee PC 1005PE outperforms an Atom N280-based system in some respects, it’s a tiny bit slower in others. Basically, I’d say things are about a wash.

The chart below shows compares the results for this notebook with those for an Asus Eee PC 1008HA, a similar netbook with an Atom N280 CPU, GMA 950 graphics, and Windows 7 Starter Edition.

The tests involve transcoding a 4:34 video using VirtualDub, a 13:24 audio clip using WinLAME, and copying and zipping the contents of a 478MB folder containing 2186 files.

I’ve also added a few new tests to my routine, including timing how long it takes to open two of the slowest-loading program I use on a regular basis: GIMP and OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately I never got around to running this test on the Asus Eee PC 1008HA, but I did grab a stopwatch and time the HP Mini 311, which features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU. Here’s how the Asus Eee PC 1005PE stacks up against that notebook.

The Asus netbook sort of wiped the floor with the HP model here, but it’s probably worth pointing out that I found the Mini 311 to be overall pretty sluggish for an Atom powered netbook, possibly due to its high resolution display. Of course, the HP Mini 311 also has NVIDIA ION graphics, which give it a huge performance boost when it comes to playing HD video, 3D video games, or performing other tasks that take advantage of NVIDIA’s CUDA technology.

The netbook was able to handle smooth playback of a 720p HD video I grabbed from the Windows Media HD Showcase, although CPU usage was stuck at around 90% or higher throughout the clip. 1080p HD video was another story. While the sample video started playing smoothly, after a few seconds the audio and video were out of sync, and about 10 seconds into the clip the movie turned into a slideshow.

HD Flash video is out of the question, since there’s no Adobe Flash acceleration for the integrated GMA 3150 graphics. But standard definition Flash videos looked good in both windowed and full screen modes.

Overall, the netbook has plenty of power to handle day to day tasks such as surfing the web or editing documents. But you shouldn’t expect miracles. It’s not going to play Call of Duty 4. The PC also felt a bit sluggish with some Javascript-heavy pages such as Google Reader.

Battery

Asus describes the 63Whr battery that comes with this version of the Asus Eee PC 1005PE as a “14 hour” battery. It’s not. But it’s easily a 10+ hour battery.

In fact, I’ve had a pretty difficult time getting this battery to die. Rather than run specific, unrealistic battery benchmarks, I’ve taken to turning on a netbook at the start of a work day, using it for web surfing, some light viewing of online videos, and other tasks throughout the day until the battery dies. This one just doesn’t.

After using the laptop for about 7 hours one day, Windows reported that it had about 3 hours left to go.

Asus also loads up the Eee PC 1005PE with its Super Hybrid Engine utility which lets you adjust the processor clock speed. If you need a bit of a performance boost, you can use the High Performance or Super Performance modes, which run the Atom N450 processor at full speed or at a slightly overclocked speed. If you want to squeeze even more battery life out of the computer, you can switch to Power Saving mode, which underclocks the CPU. You’ll take a bit of a performance hit, but as long as you’re not watching video, you probably won’t notice much difference.

Software

Like most netbooks on the market today, the Asus Eee PC 1005PE ships with Windows 7 Starter Edition. This means you get many of the benefits of Windows 7 including the new and improved start menu and taskbar and the ability to resize windows by dragging them to the left or right edge of your display. But as the cheapest version of Windows 7, Starter Edition lacks some functionality, such as the ability to change your desktop background.

Asus also loads up the Eee PC 1005PE with its standard compliment of netbook software. Most of these applications I could live without. I see absolutely no use for the Eee Dock, for instance, which lets you access Eee PC utilities all in one place by scrolling over the top of your screen. That’s what the Windows Start Menu is for.

But the most useful application Asus installs on all of its netbooks is the Super Hybrid Engine, which allows you to overclock or underclock the CPU depending on whether you need to improve performance or battery life. You can also leave it on auto mode so that the utility will underclock the CPU while you’re on battery power and run at full speed when plugged in.

Verdict

If you have an Asus Eee PC 1005HA or 1008HA and you’re looking for a reason to upgrade to the latest model, there’s only one here: The Asus Eee PC 1005PE gets spectacular battery life. Performance-wise, it functions like virtually every other netbook that’s been released since mid-2008.

That said, if you’re in the market for a new netbook, the Eee PC 1005PE is a strong contender. It has an excellent keyboard and touchpad, a slim and attractive design, and it offers decent performance for an Intel Atom powered netbook. The sub-$370 price tag doesn’t hurt either.

The mdoel featured in this review is the Eee PC 1005-PE-PU17. There’s also a cheaper version called the Eee PC 1005PE-MU17 which comes with a lower capacity battery and lacks Bluetooth. You can pick up that model from Amazon for about $331.

Post from: Liliputing

Asus Eee PC 1005PE review

The Dell Inspiron 11z is a thin and light laptop with an 11.6 inch display. It’s a bit larger than Dell’s Inspiron Mini netbook line, and it comes with an Intel CULV processor, which provides more power than the Atom chips found in Dell’s netbooks. But the Inspiron 11z is still portable, cheap, and a little slow compared with many of the company’s larger laptops.

The laptop comes with a variety of configuration options. Dell sent me a review unit with a 1.3GHz dual core Intel Pentium SU4100 processor, Windows 7 Home Premium, a 250GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and a 6 cell battery. This configuration sells for $544 (or actually, $584, since this model has a $40 jade green lid), but the base model is available for just $379.

Of course, to get the lower price, you’ll have to settle for a 3 cell battery, single core processor, smaller hard drive, and Windows Vista.

Design

The Dell Inspiron 11z looks virtually identical to the Inspiron Mini 10v netbook. The main difference is that the 11z sports an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display while the Mini 10v has a smaller 10.1 inch, 1024 x 600 screen. Along with the larger screen, you also get a larger computer chassis, a wider touchpad, and a full sized keyboard. The larger model also has an HDMI port.

Left: Inspiron 11z / Right: Insprion Mini 10v

Overall, the Inspiron 11z has the same simple look as its little sibling. There’s only a single status LED, for example. The black plastic around the keyboard has a matte feel while the silver colored palm rest is shiny (although it doesn’t attract fingerprints.

The base model comes with a black lid. For about $40 more you can get a pink, green, blue, red, purple, or white lid. Or you can use the Dell Design Studio to choose from more than 200 case designs.

Around the sides of the computer you’ll find the usual array of ports including 3 USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, a memory card reader, Ethernet jack, and HDMI port.

There are no access panels on the bottom of the laptop, which means if you want to upgrade the RAM or hard drive, you’re going to have to disassemble the PC and perform some minor surgery. Fortunately the base model ships with 2GB of RAM. But if you think you might want more memory, it might be a good idea to order it when you purchase the computer if you’re not comfortable opening up your PC case.

The Dell Inspiron 11z is designed so that a 3 cell battery will sit flush with the base of the laptop. The 6 cell battery, on the other hand, sticks out like 3 or 4 sore thumbs.

With a 3 cell battery, the laptop is just under an inch thick. But a 6 cell battery adds almost an inch to the height of the laptop in the rear. That causes the keyboard to tilt at an almost-but-not-quite uncomfortable angle. While it’s fairly common for PC makers to add a little tilt to the keyboard, I don’t think I’ve ever used a PC with a keyboard angled quite as sharply as the one on the Dell Inspiron 11z.

On the bright side, because the battery juts straight down, it doesn’t add any space to the back of the laptop. And that allows the screen to open a little wider than the screens on many laptops.

Keyboard and TouchPad

The Dell Inspiron 11z’s touchpad is pretty much the same one used on the Inspiron Mini 10v, but bigger. You would have thought Dell could have used that extra space to place right and left buttons below the touchpad instead of integrating them into the touch area. But they didn’t. And so find this touchpad just as frustrating to use as the one on Dell’s 10 inch netbook.

The idea is that Dell can provide a larger touch surface by using integrated buttons. But this means that in order to click, you need to move your finger to the lower right or left portion of the touchpad and press down. It also means that you have to be very careful not to move the finger you’re using to click, lest you should accidentally move the cursor.

The touchpad does support multitouch gestures such as two-finger scrolling and pinching to zoom.

While the touchpad is an acquired taste (and I do know some people that actually like this style of touchpad), the keyboard is quite nice.

The keys are reasonably sized and very responsive. I didn’t notice much flex in the keyboard, and there’s room for not only full shift keys on the left and right sides, but also a dedicated set of buttons for Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End.

The Fn and arrow keys on the Inspiron Mini 10v were half-sized, but the 11z provides full sized versions of these keys.

Performance

While the bade model of this laptop is available with a single core 1.3GHz Intel Celeron 743 CULV processor, the version I tested had a dual core Intel Pentium SU4100 CPU. I was particularly interested in testing this model because it’s the first laptop I’ve used with that processor.

As it turns out, it performs pretty much exactly as I would have expected. In a series of benchmarks, the Inspiron 11z fell somewhere between a notebook with an Intel Celeron SU2300 CULV processor and one with a more powerful Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU. But to be honest, the performance gap wasn’t that big.

For instance, I tested an Acer Aspire 1410 with an SU2300 CPU, an Asus UL20A with an SU7300 processor, and the Inspiron 11z with the SU4100 CPU. All three models were running Windows 7Home Premium, allowing me to compare their Windows Experience Index scores.

The Acer laptop got a 3.9 CPU subscore, while the Dell hit 4.0 and the Asus UL20A notched a 4.1.

But what does that mean in real-world performance?

I ran my standard set of benchmarks on all three computers. This involves transcoding a 4:34 video using VirtualDub, transcoding a 13:24 audio clip using WinLAME, and copying and zipping a 478MB folder containing 2186 files.

The two tasks that rely most heavily on the CPU are the audio and video transcoding jobs. As the chart shows, the computers lined up in predictable order. The Asus UL20A completed each task the fastest, while the Acer Aspire 1410 was the slowest. The Dell Inspiron 11z was in the middle. But again, the differences weren’t that great.

I’m not sure why the Dell laptop performed so poorly on the folder copy and folder zip tests. My guess was that the hard drive might be a bit slower, but Windows gives the HDD a score of 5.5, which is pretty respectable.

I’ve started running additional benchmarks recently. While I don’t have results for the Acer Aspire 1410, I can compare the Dell Inspiron 11z with the Asus UL20A.

This first chart shows how long it takes to open two of the slowest-loading applications I use on a regular basis: GIMP and OpenOffice.org.

The Dell Inspiron 11z wasn’t quite as fast as the Asus UL20A, but these times are pretty respectable. For comparison’s sake, it took 33 seconds to open GIMP on an HP Mini 311 with an Intel Atom processor. OpenOffice.org took 23 seconds to open on that laptop.

I also had no problem surfing the web with multiple browser tabs open. And thanks to the integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics, the Dell Inspiron 11z was capable of handling 720p and 1080p HD video playback. That includes Flash video as long as you have Adobe Flash Player 10.1 installed. I was able to stream HD video from vimeo.com/hd without any noticeable stuttering.

Finally, I ran a series of third party benchmarks, including PassMark PerformanceTest, Cinebench, and 3DMark06. For comparison’s sake, I’m also including the HP Mini 311 here. While the HP laptop has an Intel Atom N270 processor, it also has NVIDIA ION graphics. That helps it trounce the CULV-powered notebooks in 3D graphics tests, although the HP loses hands down when it comes to CPU-intensive tests.

In all of the charts that follow, higher scores are better.

The HP Mini 311 came out ahead in the OpenGL 3D graphics test, but its Atom N270 CPU wasn’t fast enough to keep up with the other two laptops when it came to rendering high quality images.

The PassMark PerformanceTest 7 benchmark also includes a 3D graphics test, but it consistently seems to give computers with integrated graphics higher scores than those with dedicated graphics such as NVIDIA ION. So I’m going to stop paying attention to that test. In fact, I may just drop PassMark PerformanceTest altogether.

The final test really shows where the HP Mini 311 with NVIDIA ION graphics has the edge: 3D graphics performance. But I was surprised to see that while the Dell Inspiron 11z and Asus UL20A notch similar scores in the CPU section of the 3DMark06 benchmark, the UL0A comes out quite a bit ahead of the Dell notebook in the overall scores. That’s despite the fact that they both feature the same GMA4500MHD graphics. Perhaps whatever factors were affecting the folder copy and zip tests also come into play here.

Overall, the Dell Inspiron 11z performs reasonably well for a thin and light computer. Sure, a PC with a faster SU7300 processor such as the Asus UL20A is going to be a bit faster. But for day to day use, you’d be hard pressed to notice the difference.

Battery

While the 6 cell battery is ugly and gives the keyboard a bit more tilt than I’d like, it does run for a reasonably long time. I was able to get about 5 hours and 40 minutes of run time.

If you pick up this laptop with a 3 cell battery, you can probably cut that run time in half. So if battery life matters to you, I’d suggest going with the higher capacity battery.

You could probably also eke out a little extra run time if you opt for the single core Intel Celeron 743 processor instead of the dual core Pentium SU4100. But you’ll probably also take a performance hit.

Software

The Dell Inspiron 11z ships with Windows 7 Home Premium and all the goodies that come with it including Aero Desktop effects, Windows Media Center functionality, and the new and mostly improved Windows taskbar and start menu. The computer also comes bundled with Microsoft Works, a trial version of McAfee Security, and a number of Dell applications.

Some, such as the Dell DataSafe local backup utility actually might come in handy. Others, such as the Dell Dock can be annoying as all get out.

I have no idea why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to place a docking application near the edge of the screen where it will pop up every time you move your mouse in that direction. I can’t count the number of times I tried to click on the top of an application window only to bring up the Dell Dock instead.

That said, you can change the location of the dock by tweaking the settings. And as dock-style application launchers go, the Dell Dock is reasonably good. You can add or remove shortcuts, for example, by dragging and dropping. You can also just uninstall the Dell Dock if you don’t like it.

Verdict

Like a netbook, the Dell Inspiron 11z is aimed at the sweet spot between price, performance, and portability. But it’s aimed a little higher than a netbook. It’s larger and more expensive, but it offers significantly better performance for everyday tasks such as watching HD video and for less common tasks like transcoding video.

While most people wouldn’t pick up a netbook as a primary machine, if you don’t need a blazing fast processor, the Dell Inspiron 11z with a dual core Pentium SU4100 could in fact function as a primary computer. Its high resolution display features plenty of space to display web pages, HD movies, and other content. And the CPU offers respectable performance.

On the other hand, this laptop has a rather unattractive battery, and one of the worst touchpads I’ve ever used. And while the base model with a single core Celeron processor starts at $379, once you add the $75 dual core CPU option, $35 6 cell battery and $30 Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade, the price starts to approach more expensive laptops such as the Acer Aspire 1810TZ or Asus UL20A.

Post from: Liliputing

Dell Inspiron 11z review

The ASRock ION 330 nettop is a small desktop PC that’s not much wider than a typical optical disc drive. It’s a bit chunkier than some nettops from MSI, Asus, and other companies, but unlike many of those models, the ION 330 actually makes room for a DVD burner as well as a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual core CPU, and NVIDIA ION graphics.

ASRock sells the ION 330 nettop as a barebones unit, which means that it comes with everything but the operating system. The model NVIDIA sent me to review came loaded with Windows 7 RC, but I’m not going to spend too much time dwelling on the software in this review.

The model I tested also had 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, Ethernet and HDMI ports, but no WiFi. Other versions of this nettop may be available with media center remote controls, WiFi, Blu-Ray drives, and other options.

Design

The computer is a small box that bears a more than passing resemblance to a Mac Mini. It measures 7.7″ x 7.3″ x 2.8″ and weighs about 3.8 pounds. The computer is available in black or white.

The front of the ASRock ION 330 features a power button that glows blue when the PC is on and a tray-style disc drive. And that’s about it. There’s nothing on the sides, top, or bottom.

There’s much more going on in the back of the unit, where you’ll find 6 USB ports, mic, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, mic, line, headphone, and S/PDIF ports.

You can open the top of the computer case by removing two screws, but there’s not a lot of space on the inside, and the first thing you’ll be confronted with is the top of the disc drive. So if you want to spend some time modifying this nettop, you’re going to need to be able to maneuver in a pretty tight space.

After opening up the ASRock ION 330 once, I went ahead and closed the lid and decided to test the computer as is.

Performance

The ASRock ION 330 isn’t a speed demon, and it wasn’t designed to be one. While the dual core Intel Atom 330 CPU gives this nettop a bit of a boost over a system with a single core Atom processor in some areas, in others the difference is barely noticeable. The Windows Experience Index for the computer is well above the netbook average. But as with most netbooks and nettops, it’s the CPU that receives the lowest score, thus dragging down the performance rating to 3.3

The computer is more than capable of handling day to day tasks such as surfing the web with multiple browser tabs open. It can also handle some light weight multitasking, such as running an audio player in the background while surfing the web and editing a document.

But where things get really interesting is when you look at applications and benchmarks that can take advantage of dual core processors. For instance, the Cinebench benchmarking utility consists of three tests. The first test looks at OpenGL 3D graphics performance. The remaining tests involve rendering a high quality image. The test is run once using a single CPU, and then run again using multiple CPUs. Higher scores are better.

As you can see, the ASRock ION 330 with its dual core processor scored much HP Mini 311 with a single core Atom N270 CPU. But neither came close to the score notched by the Asus UL20A, a computer with a much faster Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor.

Likewise, when I ran the PassMark Performance 7 benchmark, the ASRock wiped the floor with the HP Mini 311 in the CPU test, but the UL20A still came out on top.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in the graphics scores in PassMark test, as I don’t think the benchmark plays nicely with the NVIDIA ION graphics.

In terms of real-world performance though, what do these benchmarks mean? To be honest, not that much. As I mentioned, the computer feels fairly snappy when surfing the web or editing documents. But to be honest, so do most computers with single-core Atom processors. And while some tasks will see marked improvement thanks to the dual core processor, others won’t.

I ran my standard battery of benchmarks on the ASRock ION 330 and a few similar computers including the HP Mini 311 which also has ION graphics, but a single core Atom N270 CPU and my aging Asus Eee PC 1000H with an Atom N270 CPU and integrated GMA 950 graphics (and an 18 month old hard drive, which explains the folder copy and zip scores).

While the ASRock nettop was significantly faster than the other computers in the folder zip test, the differences in the other CPU-heavy tasks such as the audio transcode and video transcode tests are negligible (no, I don’t know why the HP Mini 311 was so slow in the video transcode test).

Here’s a brief summary of what these tests entail:

• Video transcode: Converting a 4:34 video file using the Xvid codec using VirtualDub
• Audio transcode: Converting 13:24 WAV file to MP3 using WinLAME
• File copy: Copying a 478MB folder filled with 2186 files
• File zip: Zipping that same folder using 7-zip

Finally, I timed the same three computers to see how long it would take to launch two of the slowest-loading programs I regularly use: OpenOffice.org and GIMP, an open source image editing application.



The ASRock ION 330 does appear to have a clear edge here, although it still takes a ridiculously long time to launch GIMP on any computer with an Atom processor.

Graphics

Aside from the dual core Atom processor, the ASRock ION 330 has another trick up its sleeve. Like the HP Mini 311 mentioned above, it has NVIDIA ION graphics. That means this nettop an handle many relatively recent games with 3D graphics as well as 1080p HD video playback. Although the model featured in this review comes with a DVD drive, the ION chipset is also capable of decoding Blu-Ray discs if you happen to have a Blu-Ray drive.

In terms of 3D graphics performance, the ASRock ION scored higher in the 3DMark06 benchmark than either the Asus UL20A with integrated GMA 3150 graphics or the HP Mini 311 with ION graphics but a single core CPU.

3DMark06

The ION chipset also helps out when you’re running software that can take advantage of GPU acceleration features of NVIDIA’s CUDA platform. That includes HD Flash video playback using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta. I was able to stream several 720p and 1080p HD Flash video clips from YouTube on this system while connected to a 1280 x 1024 pixel monitor.

I also ran another video transcoding test using MediaCoder, which has a CUDA encoder for H.264 videos. In other words, while the test in the previous section shows how long it takes to transcode a video from an uncompressed AVI file to an Xvid file using an application that relies solely on the CPU, this test shows how much faster a similar job goes when using a GPU accelerated encoder.

MediaCoder

The long and short of it is, the dual core processor helps a lot with CPU-intensive tasks that take advantage of both cores. It helps even more if you’re using an application which can use both a dual core CPU and NVIDIA’s CUDA technology to really speed things up. You’d need a computer with a much faster processor if you wanted to be able to transcode a4:34 video file in just 2:23 without GPU acceleration.

Oh yeah, it can play games too. I’m not very good at the style of games that really show off the 3D graphics capabilities, but here’s a shot from the beginning of Portal, which played quite smoothly:

That’s the ASRock ION 330 sitting in the lower right corner next to my 17″ display. I also tested out browser-based Battlefield Heroes, and despite some slow load times which I attribute to the internet connection, it also played quite nicely.

While the ASRock ION 330 isn’t exactly a high end gaming rig, it certainly has enough oomph in the graphics department to handle games that would choke up a netbook or nettop with an Atom N270 CPU and integrated GMA 950 graphics.

The machine also has more than enough oomph to function as a home theater PC, or HTPC.

I tested the ASRock ION 330 with an ATSC TV tuner and a digital antenna, and while the reception in my office is pretty horrid, I was able to pick up a few signals from my area public television station. The nettop had no problems playing or recording live TV, and the transitions and other visual effects in Windows Media Center looked great.

Using Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta, I was also able to stream Flash video in full screen mode without any stuttering. That’s something that most computers with Intel Atom processors struggle with when you add a high resolution display. You can check out a video of the ASRock ION 330 functioning as a media center PC here.

Verdict

The ASRock ION 330 isn’t the cheapest nettop around. With prices regularly exceeding $400, it’s not even the cheapest model with a dual core Atom processor and ION graphics. But there are few nettops on the market with ION, dual core Atom processors and optical disc drives, and the ASRock ION 330 has all three.

With CES just around the corner, you can expect a flood of new mini-desktops with the updated Intel Atom D410 and D510 processors. But while these systems will likely consume less power than the Atom 330 chip found in the ASRock ION 330, overall performance should be similar.

If you’re in the market for a small form factor machine for basic desktop computing, light weight gaming, or for turning into a home theater PC you might want to wait a few weeks to see if something better comes along. But as long as you don’t expect miracles from a low power machine like the ION 330, I don’t think you’d be disappointed if you picked one up without waiting to get a model with a new CPU.

Post from: Liliputing

ASRock ION 330 dual core w/NVIDIA ION nettop review

The HP Mini 311 was the first notebook with NVIDIA ION graphics to hit the United States. While this 11.6 inch notebook has a little competition today, it’s still the cheapest NVIDIA ION powered ultraportable, with a starting price of just $399.99. And that could make the HP Mini 311 an attractive computer for anyone looking for a machine with better-than-netbook graphics at a netbook-like price.

But while the NVIDIA graphics certainly give the computer a boost when it comes to HD video playback, 3D graphics performance, and any other activities that can take advantage of GPU acceleration features, the HP Mini 311 has the same 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU that graces nearly every netbook released in the last 18 months.

And that means that for every day activities such as web surfing, the HP Mini 311 is no better than an average netbook, albeit one with a high resolution display. And in some ways, it might actually not even be as good.

NVIDIA sent me a demo unit to review. The model tested for this review features an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, NVIDIA ION graphics, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium. It has a 6 cell, 55Whr battery and weighs 3.5 pounds.

The HP Mini 311 is available from HP.com for $399.99 and up. At the time of this review, the unit I’m configuring goes for about $510.

Design

The HP Mini 311 is a nice looking machine. Basically, if you took the HP Mini 110 and stretched it out, this is what you’d end up with. The glossy lid will collect fingerpints, but it features an attractive swirly design as well as the usual HP logo.

The base of the computer features a single access panel that can be opened up by removing two screws. This makes it easy to swap out the RAM or hard drive. There’s also an open PCIe slot that can be used to add a 3G module or another accessory.

Around the sides of the notebook you’ll find 3 USB ports, an Ethernet jack, VGA port, SDHC/MS/XD card slot, and an HDMI output.

The speakers are located underneath the netbook near the front, and they’re reasonably loud and clear. The 6 cell battery sits flush with the bottom of the case, so you don’t have to worry about any ugly bulge near the back of this notebook.

Aside from the NVIDIA ION graphics processor though, the HP Mini 311’s defining feature is probably its 11.6 inch display. This glossy screen has a native resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. That means it can display 720p HD video without any quality reduction. But it also means that you’ll spend a lot less time scrolling to view web sites or applications that don’t fit on a typical 1024 x 600 pixel netbook display.

As I mentioned, the screen is glossy and you can definitely see yourself it in it if the display is dark. But the HP Mini 311 display is hardly the worst offender I’ve seen in this area, and the screen looks great when looking at pictures, movies, or video games.

The notebook measures 11.4″ x 8″ x 1.2″ and weighs 3.5 pounds, which makes it a bit larger and heavier than a typical 10 inch netbook. But it’s not a lot bigger or heavier.

The fan can get a little loud at times, but that’s hardly surprising for a thin and light computer with a decent graphics processor. While a quieter fan would be nice, I can’t imagine building this computer without some kind of fan to help keep the internal components from overheating.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the HP Mini 311 is almost identical to that on the smaller HP Mini 110. The only real difference is that the edges have been rounded to give the keyboard an interesting visual effect.

Thing is, while the HP Mini 110 has a pretty good keyboard for a netbook, it’s only 92% the size of a full sized keyboard. There’s clearly room for a larger keyboard on the HP Mini 311 and it would have been nice if HP had used the extra space. I got a chance to ask an HP representative why the company stuck with the smaller model, and was told it was because HP has received such positive feedback on the keyboard.

That said, I found the keyboard to be reasonably responsive and I didn’t have any problems typing on it. But then, I’ve spent much of the last two years typing on small netbook keyboards.

The touchpad is nice and wide, features two distinct buttons, and a clearly marked section on the right side for scrolling. But there’s one major problem: The touchpad software doesn’t have a setting for disabling tapping while you’re typing. You can either disable tapping altogether, which means you can’t simulate a left-click by tapping the touchpad, or you have to type extraordinarily carefully in order to prevent your palm from swiping the touchpad while you’re using the keyboard. Because if you don’t, the cursor is going to jump all over the place which can wreak havoc when you’re trying to type documents, emails, or pretty much anything else.

Fortunately there is a third-party solution. Liliputing reader Steve Ingraham recommended an open source application called touchfreeze which hangs out in your system tray and temporarily freezes touchpad input when you’re typing. It worked like a charm for me and once I installed touchfreeze I never had another jumping cursor error while typing on the HP Mini 311.

Performance and Graphics

The HP Mini 311 has NVIDIA ION graphics. And that means that unlike a typical Intel Atom powered netbook, the computer can handle 1080P HD video playback quiet easily. I had no problem watching videos downloaded from the Microsoft Windows Media HD showcase using Windows Media Player and other video plays.

The latest version of Adobe Flash Player 10.1 beta also supports GPU acceleration from some video cards. And that includes NVIDIA ION, which means you should be able to stream 720p and 1080p HD Flash video either. Right now this feature is a little hit or miss. Some HD YouTube videos played smoothly while others struggled. But I blame the Flash plugin, not the graphics processor. If you have a netbook with an Intel Atom processor and integrated GMA 950 or GMA 500 graphics, you can be pretty certain that no HD Flash video is going to play properly.

The NVIDIA ION chipset also gives the computer a leg up on the competition when it comes to 3D graphics acceleration. I fired up a couple of 3D games including open source first person shooter Blood Frontier, and found that the HP Mini 311 was more than up to the task. I managed to get more than 30 frames per second during the few minutes I played the game before I was put out of my misery by enemy fire. Have I mentioned that I stink at first person shooters?

But it’s not just HD video playback and video games that receive a performance boost from the NVIDIA ION chipset. ION also supports NVIDIA’s CUDA platform, which means that some applications can use GPU acceleration to speed up tasks that would normally bog down the CPU. For instance, video transcoding tool MediaCoder features a CUDA encoder which can make short work of H.264 transcode jobs.

So while it normally takes a very long time to transcode even a short video clip on a machine with a low power Intel Atom processor, the task goes much more quickly when using MediaCoder’s CUDA encoder. To test this out, I transcoded a 4.5 minute clip from uncompressed AVI to H.264 on four different computers:

• HP Mini 311 laptop with Atom N270 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics
• ASRock ION 330 nettop with dual core Atom 330 CPU and NVIDIA ION graphics
• Asus UL20A notebook with Intel CULV processor and integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics (no CUDA capabilities)
• Asus Eee PC 1000H netbook with Atom N270 CPU and integrated GMA 950 graphics (no CUDA capabilities)

As you can see in the chart above, the computers with NVIDIA ION processors were significantly slower at this task than the Asus UL20A when relying solely on the CPU. But using the CUDA encoder, both the HP Mini 311 and the ASRock 311 were able to complete the transcode job much faster than the Asus laptop. Of course, the ASRock ION 330 with its dual core processor was faster than the single-core HP Mini 311 in both versions of the test.

To see how the HP Mini 311 stacks up against the ASRock ION 330 and Asus UL20A in other GPU-intensive benchmarks including 3DMark06 and Cinebench, check out my earlier article on that topic.

But what about tasks that don’t rely on the graphics processor? The chart above shows that the HP Mini 311 was a bit faster than my Asus Eee PC 1000H on basic transcode test. But that netbook has also been running for almost 18 months. The hard drive and other components have seen much more wear and tear than the HP Mini 311, so I’d expect it to score lower on the test. Unfortunately it’s the only other Intel Atom N270 system I have in the office at the moment.

In terms of real-world performance though, here’s what I can tell you about the HP Mini 311: It feels a bit sluggish.

I don’t expect a computer with an Intel Atom processor to work miracles. But I do expect to be able to surf the web with half a dozen browser tabs open or multitask by playing some music, editing an image, and surfing the web simultaneously. And the HP Mini 311 can certainly do those things. But it feels a bit less responsive when doing them than my aging Asus Eee PC 1000H.

The issue is most pronounced for me when running Javascript-heavy web pages. For instance, one of the first things I do when I wake in the morning is log into Google Reader and sift through a few hundred news stories that came in while I was sleeping. On most netbooks, as soon as I hit the key for the next story, the screen advances. But on the HP Mini 311, after going through the first few stories the browser becomes slower and slower to react. Google Reader isn’t unusable. But it’s just slow enough to be annoying.

My best guess as for why this is happening is that the HP Mini 311 has a higher resolution display than most netbooks. A 1366 x 768 pixel display has roughly 70% more pixels than a 1024 x 600 pixel screen. With GPU-accelerated tasks like watching HD video or playing video games, the HP Mini 311 has more than enough oomph to pump out graphics to every last one of those pixels. But for tasks like web browsing that rely solely on the CPU, the Intel Atom N270 chip has to work harder to fill 70% more pixels. And it’s not quite up to the task.

But that’s just my subjective view. To try to get some hard numbers, I ran the standard set of tests that I’ve been using to test netbooks and notebooks for the last few months. Here are the results:

• Audio transcoding test: 1:23 to transcode a 13:24 WAV file to MP3 using WinLAME
• Video transcoding test:  8:49 transcode a 4:34 video file to Xvid using VirtualDub
• Folder copy test: 49 seconds to copy and paste 2186 files totaling 478MB to a new folder
• Folder zip test: 3:29 to create a 453MB ZIP file containing 2186 files using 7-zip

To see how the HP Mini 311 stacked up against similar netbooks, check out the chart below, which includes my 18 month old Asus Eee PC 1005H running Windows XP, a shiny new Asus Eee PC 1008HA with a 1.66GHz Atom N280 CPU, and an Acer Aspire 1410 laptop with a dual core 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 CPU. I threw in the Acer Aspire 1410, because at $399, it has the same starting price as the HP Mini 311. And while it doesn’t have the same graphics capabilities as the HP Mini 311, it performs much better in most CPU related tests.

The HP Mini 311 was the slowest notebook in this raft of tests when it came to transcoding video and audio files. It did beat the Asus Eee PC 100H in the folder zip and folder copy tests, but I blame the 18-month old hard drive in the Eee PC for that.

These tests don’t necessarily require the HP Mini 311 to pump out graphics to the HD display, so my hypothesis that the high resolution screen is to blame could be wrong. But the notebook definitely feels slower than a typical netbook when used for some tests… and that appears to be because it is slower.

I also timed how long it takes to start two of the slowest-loading programs I use: OpenOffice.org and open source photo editing application GIMP.

While the HP Mini 311 was able to launch both of these apps faster than the Asus Eee PC 1000H, it was much slower than the other test machines. Unfortunately, this test wasn’t perfect because as I’ve mentioned the Eee PC has an aging hard drive and other components bogging it down, and it’s running Windows XP while the HP Mini 311 is running Windows 7. But as I get more Atom powered review units, I plan to continue running this test.

stuff

Battery

The HP Mini 311 comes with a 6 cell, 55Whr battery. I was able to get about 4.5 hours of run time out of the battery while using the notebook for web browsing and light weight duties such as editing documents. I watched a few short YouTube videos during the test, but didn’t really push the computer to its limits. I suspect if you use the notebook for gaming or watching HD video, you can expect battery life to dip.

It’s worth noting that my review unit is running Windows 7 Home Premium. The folks at Laptop Magazine recently tested the HP Mini 311 with Windows XP and got 5 hours, 43 minutes of run time. When they tested a newer model with Windows 7, they eked out 4 hours, 52 minutes. While Laptop Magazine’s Windows 7 got a more battery life than I did using Windows 7, the more remarkable fact is that they got nearly an hour of extra run time with Windows XP.

If you Windows 7 for some reason or another, then by all means, order the Windows 7 version of this laptop. But bear in mind, the Windows 7 model costs $50 more than the Windows XP version, and it looks like you’ll lose some battery life with the upgrade.

Software

The computer comes with a number of applications from HP and partners.

I didn’t test the software extensively, but here’s a partial list of what you get:

• CyberLink DVD Suite
• HP QuickSync powered by Syncables
• HP Update
• HP Support Assistant
• HP Game Console
• Microsoft Office 60 day trial
• Microsoft Works
• Norton Internet Security
• HP Recovery Manager and Recovery Disc Creator

Conclusion

The HP Mini 311 is an attractive, affordable, and portable computer. If you’re looking for a low cost system that can play modern video games with 3D graphics, this may be your best bet at the moment. But while the HP Mini 311 is strong in the graphics department, it’s weaker than the average netbook in most other areas.

The keyboard is smaller than it should be given the size of the computer. The touchpad is finicky. And the computer feels a bit sluggish when performing everyday tasks. On the other hand, some people may be willing to put up with that sluggishness in return for the higher resolution display which can show most web pages, application windows, and documents without adding left and right scroll bars.

If gaming performance isn’t at the top of your priority list, you might be better off with a similarly priced computer with an Intel CULV processor such as the Acer Aspire 1410, which has a dual core Intel Celeron SU2300 processor and which also has a starting price of $399. While the Acer 1410 can’t handle all the games that the HP Mini 311 can, it has a faster processor and it’s still capable of HD video playback (although your CPU usage will be much higher than on the HP Mini 311).

If you’re looking for the best of both worlds, you may be better off with the Asus Eee PC 1201N, which has NVIDIA ION graphics and a dual core Atom processor. It’s not as speedy at CPU-intensive tasks as the Acer Aspire 1410 or higher priced CULV powered notebooks. But the Eee PC 1201N will be faster than the HP Mini 311 at most tasks, and should offer similar graphics capabilities. On the down side, that dual core CPU uses more energy than the Atom N270 chip in the HP Mini 311, and most reviewers say you’ll be lucky to get 3.5 hours of run time.

It’s all about tradeoffs.

Post from: Liliputing

HP Mini 311 review

Microsoft’s Zune HD is a touchscreen portable media player that has a number of things going for it. It’s thin, light, and has a brilliant OLED display. It can play 720p WMV and H.264 videos, which means you may be able to copy movies from your collection without transcoding them first. But the device doesn’t actually have an HD display. Instead, it has a 480 x 272 pixel widescreen display that’s actually smaller than the iPod Touch screen, which may come as a surprise to anyone that assumes a devices with HD in its name would actually display HD video.

The Zune HD is also one of the first consumer electronics devices to use the new NVIDIA Tegra platform, which bundles an ARM-based processor with NVIDIA graphics. This is how the low-power media player can play high bitrate HD video flawlessly. The Tegra processor also enables 3D graphics effects which show up in menu animations and in some of the handful of applications currently available for the Zune HD.

The folks at NVIDIA sent me a Zune HD to review for a few weeks. I recently took it on vacation to put it through the paces. The model featured in this review has 16GB of storage. A 32GB version is also available. You can find the complete review at mobiputing.

Post from: Liliputing

Zune HD review

HP has been making all-in-one desktop PCs for a few years, but the HP Pavilion MS214 is one of the company’s first budget models. While other companies including Lenovo, Asus, MSI, and Shuttle have chosen to keep costs down in similar machines by using netbook-like guts including Intel Atom processors and Intel GMA 950 graphics, the HP M214 uses an AMD processor and ATI graphics.

For that reason, it’s easier to compare the Pavilion MS214 to a thin and light notebook than a netbook. In my tests, the computer scroed about as well on most tests as I would expect a notebook with an Intel CULV processor to perform. But the HP Pavilion MS214 isn’t a notebook. It’s a full-fledged desktop computer built into an 18.5 inch widescreen display.

The model featured in this review has an 18.5 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a 1.5GHz AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 3250e processor, and ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics. It 2GB of RAM, a 320GB 7200rpm hard drive, integrated 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and an 8x DVD burner.

The HP Pavilion MS214 is available for about $560.

Design and Display

The HP Pavilion MS214 is an attractive all-in-one desktop. The display has a glossy black border while the base is a metallic silver color. The computer measures just over 2 inches deep, although the base takes up about 8 inches.

The speakers are built into the bottom of the display, while the webcam is located at the top.

Around the sides of the computer you’ll find 2 USB ports, mic and headphone jacks, a multi-format flash card reader, a Super Multi disc burner, and brightness controls. On the back of the computer there are 4 more USB ports, plus an Ethernet jack, a line in jack, and the power jack.

The sturdy base holds the computer steady if you adjust the display position. You can easily tilt the display up or down allowing you to place the computer in a variety of different settings comfortably.

HP ships the Pavilion MS214 with a USB keyboard and USB optical mouse. While this undoubtedly helps keep the costs down, running wires from the back or side of the computer to the mouse and keyboard detracts from the clean aesthetic you get by packing your computer and display into a single piece.

By comparison, the Asus Eee PC Eee Top ET2002 ships with a wireless mouse and keyboard.

The display 18.5 inch screen has a maximum resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. At a time when this screen resolution is increasingly common on 11.6 inch notebooks, I kind of expect a display this large to be 1600 x 900 or higher resolution. But HP isn’t the only company putting out an all-in-one PC with a screen this size and resolution, so you might need to get a larger model if you want a higher resolution display.

The screen looks good at a variety of viewing angles. I found it didn’t really matter whether I tilted the screen all the way up or most of the way down. I didn’t have any problems reading text. And colors are vivid when watching videos.

HP’s higher end all-in-one desktops include touchscreen displays and HP’s TouchSmart software. But the Pavilion MS214 is a budget desktop priced under $600. One of the ways HP cut the cost was to cut out the touchscreen.

Performance and Graphics

While the HP Pavilion MS214 is cheaper than its TouchSmart siblings, the computer is more powerful than a lot of the budget all-in-ones on the market thanks to the its 1.5GHz dual core AMD Athlon X2 processor and integrated ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics.

The computer gets a Windows 7 Experience score of 2.9, with the lowest score gong for desktop graphics performance. It fares much better in the processor, gaming graphics, RAM, and hard drive categories.

For day to day computing tasks, the MS214 has more than enough power. I had no problem surfing the web with a dozen or more browser tabs open while listening to music in the background. And the graphics processor is capable of handling local HD video content as well as some video games.

Playing real-time-strategy game Age of Empires on this computer was a pleasure. With the graphic detail turned all the way up, gameplay was very smooth.

CPU utilization while watching 720p video

Out of the box I had no problem watching 720p or 1080p video using Windows Media Player or the included MediaSmart software, although CPU usage was near 100% for 1080p video and hovered between 50% and 70% for 720p playback.

I was also able to play 720p video from Hulu smoothly in windowed mode, although it started to get choppy when I blew the video up to full screen. Standard definition video from Hulu played well in full screen, something that has long given trouble to computers with Intel Atom processors and GMA 950 graphics.

1080p YouTube video was pretty much unwatchable and 720p video from Vimeo was OK in windowed mode but a little choppy in full screen.

I tried installing the latest ATI drivers and Flash Player 10.1 pre-release to see if it made a difference, but it did not. It’s possible that future versions of Adobe Flash and/or the ATI drivers might improve Flash video performance.

I ran my standard set of benchmarks on the computer. This includes copying and zipping a large folder with many files and transcoding audio and video files. The HP Pavilion MS214 scored much higher than a typical netbook or nettop with an Intel Atom CPU. But it wasn’t quite as fast as some of the newer laptops with Intel Consumer Ultra Low Voltage processors.

The MS214 pretty much tied the Acer Aspire 1410 in the media transcoding tests, but it was noticeably slower in the file copy and file zip tests. For the record, the Acer Aspire 1410 has a a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 dual core CPU which is one of the slowest dual core CULV processors available.

Here’s a brief explanation of the benchmarks:

• Video transcode: Converting a 4:34 video file using the XViD codec using VirtualDub
• Audio transcode: Converting 13:24 WAV file to MP3 using WinLAME
• File copy: Copying a 478MB folder filled with 2186 files
• File zip: Zipping that same folder using 7-zip

I realize that these benchmarks don’t cover every possible activity for this computer. But I’m not really a hardcore gamer, so I don’t have a lot of really GPU-intensive games or other applications lying around to test. And the truth is, if you’re a hardcore gamer, this probably isn’t the computer you’re going to get.

But the HP Pavilion MS214 does have enough oomph for casual computing, playing some recent video games, and HD video (although it still struggles with some HD Flash video from the web).

The computer’s speakers were also fairly loud and clear, although you may want to invest in a pair of external speakers if you care about bass. The speakers sound like good laptop speakers, which is to say they’re good for bad speakers.

The computer is quiet, but not silent. You can definitely hear a low hum coming from the PC as it operates.

Software

While this computer doesn’t have the same TouchSmart software that comes with HP’s touchscreen-toting all-in-one desktops, HP does load it up with MediaSmart software which is sort of HP’s answer to Windows Media Center.

That is to say, MediaSmart features music, movie, and photo applications that are designed to be used in full-screen mode, complete with big icons that are kind of begging to be touched with your fingertip, even if you can only navigate the program with a mouse and keyboard on this model.

You also get HP’s PC Dock application which gives you quick access to MediaSmart and other HP applications. You can also customize the dock with shortcuts to any application by dragging and dropping the shortcut to the dock.

The computer also comes preloaded with Cyberlink DVD Suite, Cyberlink LabelPrint software and a full version of Microsoft Works.

Peripherals

As I mentioned above, the HP Pavilion MS214 comes with a wired mouse and keyboard. They’re pretty standard fare. Honestly I have a hard time telling one USB mouse from another at this point. But this model is an optical USB mouse with two buttons and a scroll wheel.

The keyboard took a little getting used to. The keys are a little harder to press than I would like, and they make a fairly loud clicking noise as you type.

There are dedicated buttons on the keyboard for increasing or decreasing the volume or hitting mute. And the F5 – F8 keys can be used as media playback keys. For example, hitting Fn + F6 triggers the play/pause command.

Wireless peripherals would certainly help reduce the clutter on your desktop, but I suppose you could always buy your own wireless mouse and keyboard if you really dislike the ones that come with the MS214. Of course, that would drive up the overall price a bit, which kind of defeats the purpose of purchasing a budget-priced all-in-one computer.

On the other hand, wireless peripherals use batteries which need to be changed on a regular basis, while the USB mouse and keyboard that come with this computer are battery-free.

Verdict

The HP Pavilion MS214 is an attractive all-in-one computer with a reasonably fast processor and a reasonably low price.

For about the same price you can pick up an Asus Eee Top ET2002 with a larger screen and NVIDIA graphics. But the Asus model is hampered by a slow Intel Atom processor. Or you could just pick up a cheap desktop and monitor for even less, but they’ll take much more space in your home office, bedroom, kitchen, or wherever you plan to put this PC.

The reason I’ve started covering all-in-one computers on Liliputing is that like notebooks, they’ve been impacted by the most important component of the netbook revolution: The idea that customers don’t always need bleeding edge performance in their computers.

Sometimes low cost is more important than high performance. And the MS214 offers decent enough performance for most everyday computing tasks in a sleek package that looks like it should cost much more than $560.

Post from: Liliputing

HP Pavilion MS214 review

The Asus Eee PC 1008HA is one of the thinnest and lightest 10 inch netbooks available. It measures just 1 inch thick and weighs just 2.4 pounds. The netbook is a grand departure from early Asus netbooks including the Eee PC 1000HE which was one of the largest and heaviest 10 inch netbooks around.

Asus has been selling the Eee PC 1008HA since this summer, but the company recently launched an updated version loaded up with Windows 7. In addition to the updated operating system, the new model also has the latest Eee PC software from Asus as well as 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The original model had just 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

That’s pretty much it for the differences, so portions of this review will be copied and pasted from my earlier review of the Asus Eee PC 1008HA. But I’ve updated the software and performance sections as well as some other areas. After all, it’s been five months since I reviewed the Windows XP model, and the netbook space looks a bit different than it did at the time I first reviewed the Eee PC 1008HA.

One thing that immediately sets the updated Eee PC 1008HA apart from the crowd is the fact that it’s one of the only netbooks to ship with Windows 7 Home Premium. Most 10 inch netbooks come with the lower priced Windows 7 Starter Edition.

The model featured in this review has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 CPU, a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, and Bluetooth. It’s available from Amazon for $411.

Design

On paper it’s hard to describe just how small the Asus Eee PC 1008HA is. At less than an inch thick though, it certainly looks and feels smaller than practically any other netbook on the market with a 10 inch display. Sure, it’s a little wider or a little longer than some models.

But in order to find a thinner machine you’d have to look to the Nokia Booklet 3G which has a slower processor and which costs about $200 more (if you buy the Booklet without a subsidy).

At just 2.4 pounds, the Eee PC 1008HA is also quite light, which is a welcome change from earlier Asus netbooks. At 3.2 pounds, the Eee PC 1000H was one of the heaviest netbooks with a 10 inch display and 6 cell battery.

By shaving almost an entire pound off the weight, Asus has now designed one of the lightest. Don’t get me wrong, either netbook is significantly easier to lug around in a bag all day than a 6 pounds laptop with a 15 inch screen. But every ounce makes a difference, and this netbook is definitely easier to carry around.

VGA adapter

In order to keep the case both slim and tidy looking, Asus made a few interesting design choices. First, instead of a full sized VGA port, there’s a proprietary display port that requires an adapter. Fortunately you don’t need to go out and purchase the adapter separately as you did with the HP Mini 1000 (another netbook that was just 1 inch thick, but which has now been discontinued).

Instead, the adapter ships with the computer and fits comfortably into a small compartment on the bottom of the computer. It’s a bit annoying to have to pull out the adapter to plug in an external monitor, but honestly, how often do you expect to use an external display with a netbook anyway?

Asus also chose to cover up most of the ports on the sides of the computer with plastic covers. From a distance, this makes the netbook look like it has almost no ports at all, but the flimsy bits of plastic connecting the covers to the case feel like they’re bound to break within a year or so of regular use.

If you’re careful, that may not happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some people who regularly plug in USB peripherals or headphones find themselves with a missing port cover eventually.

Underneath the unit, you’ll notice there are no access panels for upgrading the RAM, hard drive, or other components. All you’ll find is the VGA adapter. There’s also no way to remove the battery.

While Asus says the battery should be good for several years, if your battery does die you’ll have to send it back to Asus and pay about $129 for a replacement. And if you want to extend your battery life, you’ll have to purchase an external power pack, because there’s no way to replace the battery with one that’s more powerful.

The Eee PC 1008HA has two buttons above the left corner of the keyboard for toggling the wireless and touchpad on and off. On the right is the power button, and in the middle you’ll find a few status LEDs for battery, hard drive activity, wireless, and CAPS lock.

Speaking of LEDs, there’s a big one hanging out at the bottom of the display. When the lid is closed and the computer is in sleep mode, a bright blue light will flash. It’s bright enough that I’ve found that if I’m using the computer before bed I either want to shut it all the way down or take it into another room before I can fall asleep.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard is nice and wide and features a large shift key on each side of the netbook. Gone are the tiny shift keys awkwardly placed on the right side of the screen.

But I’m not in love with the arrow keys on the Eee PC 1008HA and other Asus Eee PC Seashell-series netbooks. The left and right keys, which double up as Home and End keys when you hit the Fn button, are fine. But the up/down and PgUp/PgDn buttons are ridiculously small. It takes a little while to get used to these buttons before you can hit them without looking.

The netbook also has a new touchpad, which fits absolutely flush with the palm rest. But it’s easy to detect the edges of the touchpad with your fingers without looking because the touchpad has a textured, bumpy surface. It takes a little while to get use to the feeling, but the touchpad is fairly responsive.

There’s a single button below the touchpad, with a rocker in the middle, letting you easily make right and left clicks. I’m not generally a fan of using a single button when two will do, but this particular button seems to work quite well, and I have to admit that it does look nicer than two distinct buttons would.

The touchpad supports multitouch gestures for zooming in and out of photos and web pages in certain applications. But unlike the touchpad on the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, there’s also a section on the right side of the touchpad that lets you scroll up and down using a single finger.

Display

When I posted some of the first pictures of the Eee PC 1008HA, one reader commented that it was nice of Asus to throw in a free mirror with the netbook. And indeed, the Eee PC 1008HA has a glossy screen. In fact, the whole computer is shiny, including the glossy plastic lid and even the shiny plastic around the keyboard and palm rest.

The only part of the netbook that’s not shiny is the keyboard itself.

That means that you’re not going to want to use this netbook outdoors in a bright and sunny setting. You can crank the backlight all the way up to make the screen somewhat readable, but you’re probably going to doom yourself to looking at your own face while you type or surf the web.

That said, indirect sunlight isn’t that bad. I’m actually typing this section of the review while sitting in the windows seat of a train on a cloudy day, and while I can see my reflection in the screen, I’, also having no trouble seeing the display with the backlight turned almost all the way down. If I turn the screen brightness up, my reflection goes away.

The netbook has a 10.2 inch, 1024 x 600 pixel display. Asus includes an EeePC Tray utility that makes it possible to use a virtual display resolution of 1024 x 768 in one of two ways. You can either scroll up and down to adjust the screen to see the extra 168 vertical pixels, or you can use software to trick the computer into thinking it has a 1024 x 768 pixel display and squash some of those pixels together.

The result isn’t pretty, but it may help you run some programs that have a minimum screen resolution higher than 1024 x 600.

Software

Since Microsoft released Windows 7 in October, most netbooks have shipped with Windows 7 Starter Edition. This version of Microsoft’s latest operating system features a number of limitations. For example, you can’t change the desktop background, use Windows Media Center, or Windows Aero effects.

But the Asus Eee PC 1008HA comes with Windows 7 Home Premium, which includes these features and others. And it runs just as well on this netbook as Windows 7 Starter runs on other netbooks.

That is to say, it takes a few seconds longer to boot than Windows XP, but overall the computer feels fairly responsive when running Windows 7. That said, the computer does feel a tiny bit more sluggish when multitasking than I remember the Windows XP version feeling.

Still, given the choice between Windows 7 Starter and Windows 7 Home Premium, I’m always going to go with the latter. You don’t realize how useful little things like being able to see live previews of running applications from the taskbar can be until you’re stuck with an operating system that looks virtually identical, but which lacks these features.

Asus also loads its usual suite of netbook applications on the Eee PC 1008HA. That includes the Super Hybrid Engine, which lets you overclock or underclock the CPU. In Power Saving mode, the CPU runs at 1.25GHz. High performance mode brings the clock speed up to 1.66GHz, while Super Performance overclocks the processor to 1.75GHz. This allows you to save energy when you want to extend the computer’s battery life, or give your PC a little speed boost when you need it.

There’s also a utility to resize the system fonts, Eee Splendid, which lets you adjust settings for video playback or for your LCD display generally, and Dr. Eee, a sort of widget engine that lets you dock gadgets to the side of your desktop including a weather app, currency converter, and Skype shortcut.

You also get the Eee Dock utility which gives you quick access to various Asus software by mousing over the top of your screen.

Truth be told, most of these utilities just add clutter to your desktop and I think most users will end up disabling them. But if you’re a happy Eee Dock or Dr. Eee user, feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.

The computer also comes with a free trial of Microsoft Office 2007, Trend Micro Internet Security, and a full version of Microsoft Works.

Performance

The Asus Eee PC 1008HA has a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N280 processor and integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics. That’s pretty much the same hardware you get with almost any netbook purchased in 2009. But the laptop does have 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive, which is a little more memory and storage than you typically get.

I recently started running a standard set of benchmarks on new computers simulating some of the tasks that you’re likely to do in every day life. These including transcoding audio and video files, copying files and folders, and zipping a large number of files.

Not surprisingly, I’ve discovered that most notebooks with faster Intel CULV processors outperform your average netbook. But the Asus Eee PC 1008HA isn’t exactly useless when it comes to these tasks. Here’s a chart showing what happened when I tried performing each of these tasks on the Eee PC 1008HA:

I don’t happen to have an Eee PC 1008HA with Windows XP handy, but if any of my readers does, I’d be very interested in knowing how it scores on my benchmark tests. They’re publicly available for download. Just make sure to read the instructions on the original benchmark post and one of these days I’ll get around to creating a text file with the instructions and re-uploading the benchmarks with it.

Here’s a brief explanation of the benchmarks:

• Video transcode: Converting a 4:34 video file using the XViD codec using VirtualDub
• Audio transcode: Converting 13:24 WAV file to MP3 using WinLAME
• File copy: Copying a 478MB folder filled with 2186 files
• File zip: Zipping that same folder using 7-zip

I’m always a little surprised at how quickly an Intel Atom powered netbook can handle tasks like transcoding audio that I would have thought would have been beyond their reach. As you can see, transcoding even a short video file can take a pretty long time though. I wouldn’t recommend using the Asus Eee PC 1008HA (or any other netbook) for editing your wedding video.

The laptop gets a relatively low Windows Index score of just 2.1 This is due to the low power Intel Atom processor and underwhelming performance of the GMA 950 graphics chipset. But as you can see from the screenshot above and the file copy/zip tests, the RAM and hard drive are pretty solid.

Battery

As mentioned above, the Eee PC 1008HA battery is not removable. If it dies you’ll need to send the computer back to Asus for repair. And if you want to use an extended third party battery, you’re out of luck (unless you’re cool with an external battery pack that plugs into the power port).

While the Windows XP model of the Asus Eee PC 1008Ha was able to get over 5 hours of battery life, the Windows 7 version doesn’t even come close. In Power Saving Mode, I got about 4 hours and 20 minutes of run time while surfing the web over WiFi.

With High Performance mode enabled and the CPU running at 1.66GHz, the battery died after just 3 hours and 55 minutes.

I checked with Asus, and it doesn’t appear that the new model has a lower capacity. This means that Windows 7 is using more power than Windows XP. It’s possible that you could prolong battery life by disabling some of the animations and graphic effects in Windows 7. But I’ve noticed that even netbooks running the pared down Windows 7 Starter Edition which doesn’t have all the fancy effects found in Windows 7 Home Premium get less battery life than their Windows XP counterparts.

Using Battery Eater Pro, a test that puts constant strain on the CPU until the battery dries up, the Asus Eee PC 1008HA with Windows 7 ran for just about 3 hours. The Windows XP version lasted for 3 hours and 50 minutes using the same test.

Verdict

The Asus Eee PC 1008HA with Windows 7 may have more RAM and hard drive space than the Windows XP model. But it gets an hour or two less battery life, which is disappointing, especially since the battery is not user-replaceable.

It’s possible that this may be addressed by future software updates, but right now you have a choice to make if you’re interested in this slim and light netbook: Do you want a model with the latest Windows operating system, or do you want one that has a 5+ hour battery?

Fortunately the Windows XP model is still available at a number of retail outlets. So you really do have a choice. And now that there’s a new model out, you can often find a good deal on the Windows XP model. For instance, Amazon sells it for as low as $345.

If you’re OK with the relatively low (for a netbook) battery life, you’d be hard pressed to find a 10 inch netbook that’s as slim and light as the Eee PC 1008HA. But if you want a higher capacity, user replaceable battery, or a netbook that doesn’t require you to use an adapter to plug in a monitor, you might want to check out the Eee PC 1005HA, which is a bit thicker and heavier, but which has a much higher capacity battery that can be easily replaced.

Post from: Liliputing

Asus Eee PC 1008HA (Windows 7 version) review

The Asus UL20A is a 12.1 inch laptop that offers many of the advantages of a full sized notebook in package that’s not much larger than a typical netbook. It’s small, light, and gets good battery life compared to many larger laptops, but it offers significantly faster performance, better graphics, and a larger, higher resolution display than most netbooks.

The UL20A is the cheapest and smallest member of the new Asus UL line of netbooks. I recently reviewed the 13 inch UL30A, which has a larger screen, a higher capacity battery, more RAM, and a larger hard drive than the UL20A. The UL30A also has Bluetooth, and an HDMI output, both of which are missing on the smaller model. But the Asus UL20A sells for about $200 less than its bigger sibling. Are those features worth an extra $200? Probably. But if you’re looking for something smaller and lighter with a price tag near the upper range of the typical netbook, the UL20A is certainly worth considering.

The model featured in this review has a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, a dual core 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 CPU, integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi.

You can pick up the Asus UL20A from Amazon for $581. There’s currently a promotion where you can get a $75 Amazon gift card for free when you purchase the notebook, effectively bringing the price down to $506.

Design

The notebook measures 11.6″ x 8.3″ x 1″. While that’s small by notebook standards, it’s pretty large for a netbook. But that extra inch or two around the sides means there’s room for a 12.1 inch screen, a roomy keyboard, and a decent keyboard.

The computer is black and gray, or what some people might call silver. The lid has a brushed aluminum feel to it, but the rest of the case appears to be made of plastic. The chassis has a nice solid feel overall.

Along the sides you’ll find 3 USB ports, a VGA port, Ethernet jack, and a flash card reader that can handle SDHC and Memory Stick formats. There are also mic and headphone jacks, but no HDMI output even though the laptop is capable of handling HD video.

The speakers are located near the front of the notebook underneath the palm rest area. On the bottom there’s a single large access panel secured by three screws. Once you remove them you can access the RAM and 2.5″  hard drive. The Asus UL20A ships with a single 2GB RAM stick, but it can support up to 4GB. Fortunately there’s an empty slot so upgrading the RAM should be easy.

The battery doesn’t quite sit flush with the base of the unit, but it doesn’t stuck out very far either. Because of this, the laptop is a little thicker near the back than the front and this provides a little tilt to the keyboard.

Display

The notebook features a 12.1 inch, 1366 x 768 glossy display. Although the screen is glossy and will reflect some light, it’s not nearly as glare-inducing as some other screens I’ve used. Still, the Asus UL20A might not be the best choice if you’re looking for a laptop that you will regularly use outdoors.

The screen is sharp, but not too sharp. I’ve seen some 10 inch laptops with 1366 x 768 pixel displays and my eyes hurt just thinking about the dot pitch on those models. During the week that I tested the Asus UL20A I never found myself squinting or moving my face closer to the display in order to read text. And if you do think the screen is too sharp, you can always tweak your settings to adjust the DPI, something which Windows 7 makes easier to do than ever — just type “display” into the Windows start menu, and change the setting from Smaller to Medium.

The viewing angles for the screen are fairly decent and I didn’t have any trouble reading web sites when looking at the computer from a bit to the right or left, or with the screen tilted up or down.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Asus went with a chiclet-style keyboard for the UL20A. It’s nearly identical to the keyboard used on the Asus UL30A. But because this notebook is smaller, the keyboard is as well.

At first, I thought that was a big problem, because the UL30A has a dedicated row of keys on the right side for Home, PgUp, PgDn, and End. That makes sense on a 13.3 inch laptop that has room for a full sized keyboard. But on a 12 inch model, I was concerned that there wouldn’t be enough room for the rest of the more commonly used keys. But after a day or two of using the Asus UL20A, I was in love with the keyboard.

I don’t find the keyboard too small, which probably has something to do with the fact that you could chop off the extra row of keys on the right side and the keyboard would still be about the same size as a typical 10 inch netbook keyboard, if not bigger.

In fact, if you take a look at this photo comparing the smaller Asus Eee PC 1008HA keyboard with the Asus UL20A keyboard, it’s pretty clear that the Ul20A has a larger keyboard even without the extra keys on the side:

Having dedicated Page, Home, and End buttons also means that Asus could assign extra features to the Arrow keys. On Asus netbooks, these buttons often serve double duty as Home, End, and Page keys. But on the Asus UL20A, the arrow keys act as media buttons. For example, Fn+Down arrow is the play/pause button while Fn+Up is the stop button.

Having gotten quite used to having media playback buttons on my 15.6 inch laptop, I didn’t realize how much I missed them on ultraportables until I spent some time working on the Asus UL20A while listening to music. I was able to pause Windows Media Player in a split second to take a phone call, and then start it up again just as quickly when I was done.

In a typing test, I managed to tap out about 90 words per minutes, which is pretty close to my average typing speed.

The touchpad is also very similar to the one on the Asus UL30A, but a bit smaller. It features a textured, bumpy surface that makes it easy to detect where the palm rest ends and the touchpad begins without recessing the trackpad. There’s a single button below the touchpad with a rocker to let you register left and right clicks. I’d prefer two distinct buttons, but this one gets the job done.

One strange thing is that while the touchpad is capable of supporting multitouch gestures such as pinch to zoom, the drivers included on my review unit didn’t support two-finger scrolling. The Asus UL30A could handle two-finger scrolling out of the box. Instead of scrolling up and down in web pages, documents, pictures, or other applications by moving your finger up and down the right edge of the touchpad, two-finger scrolling lets you scroll by placing two fingers anywhere on the touchpad and moving up and down.

After digging around in the included Synaptics touchpad settings console for a while, I decided to try downloading the generic Synaptics touchpad software from the Synaptics web site, and that worked like a charm. While Synaptics suggests using drivers from your computer manufacturer instead of the generic drive, in this case the generic driver is definitely the way to go.

Once I installed the generic driver, the touchpad was just as easy to use as the one on the Asus UL30A, if a bit smaller.

Performance

Like the Asus UL30A, the UL20A has a 1.3GHz dual core Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor and integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics. If you’d expect it to get similar performance based on those specs, you’d be absolutely right. The UL20A was able to handle 720p and 1080p HD video playback with ease, as well as 720p HD Flash video content from the web.

But the SU7300 is designed to offer decent performance without taxing your battery too much. It’s not a miracle worker. For instance, YouTube announced this week that it’s going to start hosting some Flash videos with 1080p resolutions, and when I checked out a sample video with the Asus UL20A, playback was choppy as all get out. If you want to watch 1080p Flash video you’re either going to need a faster processor or a laptop with a dedicated video card that will work with the new GPU-accelerated version of Flash Player 10.1 that Adobe is expected to launch soon. Update: I just learned that the new Flash Player 10.1 will support GMA X4500MHD graphics. That solves one problem!

Asus makes it easy to adjust the processor speed in order to boost performance or battery life depending on your needs. Using the Power4Gear Hybrid Engine, you can choose from four modes: High Performance, Entertainment, Quiet Office, and Battery Saving.

The first two will basically offer the best performance, while the latter two severely underclock the CPU and adjust Windows 7 graphics and other settings in order to squeeze out extra battery life.

The end result is that while you can definitely surf the web, edit documents, and perform other netbook-like tasks with in Battery Saving mode, HD Flash video playback and other CPU-intensive tasks may be out of the question.

For comparison’s sake, I ran a series of benchmarks on the Asus UL20A in High Performance and Battery saving mode. These are the same tests I ran on the Asus UL30A and the Acer Aspire One 1410 with a dual core Intel Celeron SU2300 processor.

Here’s  a quick summary of the benchmarks: The audio transcode test involves converting a 13 minute, 24 second audio clip from WAV to MP3 using WinLAME. The video test involves transcoding a 4 minute, 34 second video file to XViD using VirtualDub. And the folder copy and zip tests involve copying the contents of a folder (478MB, 2186 files) into a new folder and then creating a ZIP file containing those files using 7-Zip.

I’m pretty certain that the 10 second score shown for the Asus UL30A in the folder copy test was a freak accident, so I make sure to run that test a few times now and take the average score.

As you can see from the chart, the Asus UL20A performed almost exactly like the Asus UL30A on the tests, which is to say pretty darn well in high performance mode. In battery saving mode, the processor is underclocked significantly to save battery life, and that takes a hit on performance. As the chart shows, in battery saving mode the Asus UL20A isn’t nearly as fast as even the Acer Aspire 1410 with a slower Intel Celeron SU2300 processor.

But it is worth noting that the audio and video transcode scores in the battery saving test are still far better than what you’d expect from a netbook with an Intel Atom N280 CPU. For instance, the Asus Eee PC 1008HA took 457 seconds to transcode the same video and 73 seconds to transcode the audio file. The folder zip test took 151 seconds on the Eee PC 1008HA, and the folder copy test took 80.

The Asus UL20A did feel a bit more sluggish than the UL30A in day to day use. It took a few seconds longer to boot and resume from hibernation, for instance. There are at least two possible explanations for this. It could be due to the fact that the UL20A has 2GB of RAM while the 13 inch model has twice that.

Or it could be because the Asus UL30A I reviewed had Windows 7 RC installed and didn’t come preloaded with all of the Asus software, security software, and other applications that are on the Asus UL20A. It’s possible that uninstalling some of these utilities could speed up performance a bit.

The computer got a 3.3 on the Windows Experience Index, with the lowest scores coming in the graphics/3D graphics areas. That’s slightly below than the 3.4 the Asus UL30A scored, but not much lower.

I already mentioned that the computer’s media keys come in handy when listening to music. So do the speakers, which are louder than those found on most small notebooks. Of course, they’re still a little tinny and no replacement for a god pair of external speakers.

The 0.3MP webcam is nothing to write home about, but it can snap some quick photos or shoot some video. If you want to do any serious video recording or chatting you might want to invest in a USB webcam. You can watch a video recoded using the Asus UL20A webcam at TechVi.

Battery

The Asus UL30A gets remarkably good battery life, running for up to 10 hours on a charge while surfing the web using WiFi. Unfortunately the Asus UL20A isn’t in the same league when it comes to battery performance.

In high performance mode, I was able to run the Asus UL20A for just 4 hour and 5 minutes while surfing the web over WiFi and watching one short video on YouTube. That’s not bad by 2005 standards, but in 2009 I kind of expect more from an ultraportable laptop.

On the bright side, Asus does offer more. If you flip over to Battery Saving mode, you can squeeze an extra two hours of life out of the battery. I was able to get 6 hours and 1 minute of run time out of the laptop in Battery Saving mode while running a similar web surfing test that included watching one 5 minute YouTube video.

As I mentioned, the computer will take a serious performance hit in Battery Saving or Quiet office modes. But for most tasks, the UL20A still feels pretty responsive even in this mode and will outperform most netbooks at CPU-heavy tasks like transcoding video.

But while you can easily watch 720P Flash video in High Performance mode, the video will look more like a slide show with the Battery Saving features turned on.

Software

Asus crams the UL20A with a number of utilities. Some, like the Power4Gear Hybrid utility that lets you adjust system settings to preserve battery life are extraordinarily useful. others, like ControlDeck, a 3D application for adjusting system settings are simply pointless eye candy. Fortunately, you can uninstall any programs you don’t want or need.

There’s Asus WebStorage, a utility that lets you access web-based storage from the Windows explorer. Asus is offering up to 500GB of online storage space to customers that pick up a number of new Asus notebooks. You also get utilities to backup your files to the cloud if you register for a premium account.

The program also comes with a utility to create backup discs that will restore your computer to its factory default condition as well CyberLink Blu-Ray Disc Suite and trial versions of Trend Micro Internet Security, Microsoft Office 2007.

The Asus UL20A also has Express Gate software, which is based on DeviceVM’s Splashtop. This lets you boot into a light weight Linux desktop that gives you quick and easy access to Firefox, Skype, and a handful of other applications in just a few seconds without waiting for Windows to load.

Verdict

The Asus UL20A is an interesting laptop that’s a bit of a cross between a netbook and a full sized, full power notebook. While it’s not as small or light as a typical netbook, this 12.1 inch laptop has a larger screen and keyboard and it performs CPU-intensive tasks like transcoding video.

And the UL20A’s not that much bigger or heavier than some netbooks. Weighing in at about 3.5 pounds, it’s just 0.3 pounds heavier than the Asus Eee PC 1000H 10 inch netbook I’ve been using for the last year. And it’s just a little larger:

In fact, the Asus Eee PC 1000H is a little thicker in the read than the UL20A, but to be fair, the Asus Eee PC 1000H was one of the largest 10 inch netbooks ever released. You can find more images of the Asus UL20A and the Eee PC 1000H in the gallery below. There are also some comparison shots with the Eee PC 1008HA, which is noticably smaller and slimmer.

On the other hand, the UL20A has a Consumer Ultra Low Voltage processor and integrated graphics. For $500 to $600 you could probably find a lager, more powerful notebook that can handle video games that would make the UL20A choke.

But all things considered, it’s hard to find another laptop that packs this much power into this small and light a package for under $600. The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T is comparable, but I personally prefer the keyboard, touchpad, and general build quality of the Asus UL20A. I also find the 12.1 inch HD display to be a little less painful on the eyes than the 11.6 inch screen on the 11.6 inch Acer Aspire Timeline series of laptops.

You can find more images in the gallery below, and share your thoughts about this notebook in the comments and in the Liliputing Product Database.

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Asus UL20A review

Acer recently updated the Acer Aspire 1410 laptop to include a dual core Intel CULV processor and Windows 7 Home Premium. And for some reason, Acer knocked about $50 off the price at the same time, making this $400 laptop one of the cheapest computers you can find with an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display and a dual core processor.

I reviewed the original version of the Acer Aspire 1410 a few months ago, and the folks at B&H were kind enough to send me an updated model to review. The model featured in this review has a dual core 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 processor and integrated Intel GMA4500MHD graphics. It has 2GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and a 6 cell, 4400mAh battery.

The Acer Aspire 1410 is available for purchase from B&H for $399.99.

For the most part, the hardware is identical to the version of the laptop that I previously reviewed, so portions of this review are taken from that earlier article. The primary differences are with the operating system and processor, so I’ve made significant changes to the performance and software sections, along with minor changes to other departments.

Overview

Superficially, the new version of the Acer Aspire One looks identical to the earlier version. But the new laptop has a smaller hard drive (160GB instead of 250GB), and a 1.2GHz Intel Celeron SU2300 processor instead of the 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Solo SU3500 found in the original version of this laptop.

While the SU3500 has a faster clock speed and is part of the Core 2 family of chips, the new model’s dual core CPU helps the computer to perform better at some CPU-intensive tasks. But the Acer Aspire 1410 is not a high end laptop. It’s just a a bit above your average netbook — although with a $400 price tag, you really do get a noticable performance boost and a high resolution display for a netbook-like price. What’s more, the Acer Aspire 1410 ships with Windows 7 Home Premium instead of the stripped down Windows 7 Starter Edition that comes with most Intel Atom powered netbooks.

Of course, with an 11.6 inch display, the Aspire 1410 is a bit larger than your typical netbook. But it weighs just about 3.1 pounds, which is definitely within the standard netbook range.

But if you’re looking for better performance or longer battery life, Acer also offers the Aspire Timeline 1810T and 1810TZ notebooks which run between $550 and $600 and which have higher performance chips and higher capacity batteries.

Design

The Acer Aspire 1410 measures 11.2″ x 8″ x 1.2″ at its thickest point. The thinnest point is near the front, where the laptop is just 0.9 inches thick with the lid closed. It weighs about 3.1 pounds. All of which is to say, it’s barely any bigger than your typical 10 inch netbook, and it’s actually lighter than some models (Asus Eee PC 1000HE, I’m looking at you).

Around the sides of the computer you’ll find 3 USB ports, a flash card reader, Ethernet jack, VGA port, and an HDMI output.

There are also headphone and mic ports, and it’s worth pointing out that the mic jack actually has a metal rim, which should make it a bit sturdier than the cheap plastic jacks found on most computers. Of course, you’re more likely to use the headphone jack on a regular basis, and that’s made of plastic.

The lid has a glossy finish which will show fingerprints, but it’s not the worst offender I’ve seen.

On the bottom of the unit you’ll find two panels that can be removed to upgrade the hard drive, RAM, or WiFi module. There are two RAM slots, and the laptop can handle up to 4GB of memory.

The speakers are located just under the front of the keyboard and there are two hardware switches on the front of the unit for turning the WiFi and Bluetooth on and off.

Keyboard and TouchPad

The keyboard is pretty much a full sized keyboard. The keys are nice and large with a little space between them, and the keyboard stretches almost from one end of the chassis to the other.

My one and only complaint about the arrow and Page Up and Down keys are crammed into a fairly tiny space in the bottom right corner. The more you use the keyboard, the more you get used to this configuration, which is similar to the layout on Samsung netbooks.

But I often have a hard time hitting the Page Up and Down keys in a hurry. The arrow keys, which also double as volume and screen brightness keys, are a bit easier to use.

I took a 2 minute typing test at TypingTest.com to see how this keyboard stacks up against others I’ve used, and I was able to type about 95 words per minute with 98% accuracy. That definitely makes this one of the better keyboards I’ve used, although I find that keyboard layout can be a matter of taste.

You may find other keyboards more comfortable depending on what you are used to. For instance, the keys on the Acer Aspire 1410 are all flat, and you may be more comfortable with concave keys.

The touchpad is small, but it gets the job done. It supports multitouch gestures such as using two fingers to scroll or pinching to zoom in some applications. You can also scroll through web pages and other content using the right side of the touchpad.

The palm rest area of the laptop features a brushed metal finish, while the touchpad is smooth. From a distance, it’s hard to see where the palm wrest ends and the touchpad begins, but you can feel it when your finger moves from one area to the other.

There are two distinct buttons below the touchpad for right and left clicks, and they work quite well.

Performance and Graphics

This is where things really start to get interesting. The Acer Aspire 1410 with the SU3500 processor is significantly faster than a typical netbook when it comes to CPU-intensive tasks such as playing HD video, video games, or transcoding audio and video files.

The new model with the dual core SU2300 processor performed even better in some cases, but not in every test. For instance:

Video test (transcoding 2:22 file from uncompressed AVI to XViD):

• Windows Vista/SU3500 model: 2 minutes, 41 seconds
• Windows 7/SU2300 model: 2 minutes, 9 seconds

Audio test (Converting 30:03 WAV file to MP3):

• Windows Vista/SU3500 model: 1 minute, 10 seconds
• Windows 7/SU2300 model: 1 minute, 18 seconds

So while the new model was faster at transcoding video using VirtulDub, it was a little slower at transcoding audio using WinLame. It’s possible that your results may vary if you use different audio and video files, different codecs, or different trancoding utilities.

It’s worth pointing out that when I ran the same tests on a netbook with an Intel Atom N270 CPU, they took 2-3 times longer to complete. So both versions of the Acer Aspire 1410 blow away a typical netbook when it comes to this kind of CPU-intensive tasks.

When it comes video playback, the laptop can handle 720p or 1080p video playback fairly well. I felt like there might have been a few dropped frames here and there, but overall playback was smooth and pretty watchable.

The laptop could also handle HD Flash video from YouTube, something which most netbooks with integrated GMA 950 graphics choke on. What’s interesting is that standard definition video from online video site Hulu gave the Aspire 1410 a little more trouble than HD YouTube videos.

Some TV episodes and movies from Hulu played back flawlessly. But others were a bit jumpy. Overall, this laptop performed noticably better with Hulu video than the Windows Vista/SU3500 model and significantly better than most netbooks with Intel Atom processors and 1366 x 768 pixel displays.

But playback wasn’t perfect. So if you’re looking for a machine that can handle Flash video as well as local videos, you might want to spring for one of the higher end models or grab an NVIDIA ION powered netbook like the HP Mini 311.

Right now that ION graphics processor won’t help with Flash video, but Adobe is expected to release an updated version of Flash Player later this year or early next year that will support NVIDIA graphics, enabling 1080p Flash video playback on low power netbooks and notebooks.

I also ran my new set of benchmarks, which I plan to run on most new computers I test, at least until I run out of systems with different processors and graphics (There’s not much point in benchmarking yet another netbook with a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive, and so forth). Here are the results from the new benchmarks:

• Audio transcoding test: 36 seconds to transcode a 13:24 WAV file to MP3
• Video transcoding test:  3:56 to transcode a 4:34 file
• Folder copy: Between 0:55 and 1:05  to copy and paste 2186 files totaling 478MB  (I ran this test several times)
• Folder zip test: 1:38 to create a 453MB ZIP file containing 2186 files

For comparison’s sake, the Asus UL30A, which has a dual core 1.3GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 processor completed the audio test in 32 seconds, the video test in 3:22, the folder copy test in 10 seconds, and the folder zip test in 1:02. The UL30A is clearly faster, but not a lot faster.

On the other hand, the Asus UL30A received a Windows Experience Index score of 3.4 and had higher subscores than the Acer Aspire 1410 in almost every category. The Aspire 1410 got a 3.2, with the lowest scores concentrated in the graphics and gaming graphics areas.

One problem I had with the older version of the Acer Aspire 1410 was that the webcam seemed to have a milky/foggy quality. It turns out there was a tiny piece of plastic covering the camera that I missed. This time around I made sure to remove the plastic, and the webcam image quality improved significantly.

Of course, it doesn’t matter how good the webcam is. If you’re overdue for a haircut, you’re still going to look like you need a haircut.

Display

Aside from the processor and graphics performance, the thing that sets the Acer Aspire 1410 apart from a typical netbook is the 11.6 inch, 1366  x 768 pixel display. And overall, it’s just about the perfect size and resolution for an ultraportable.

I’ve used several 10 inch or smaller netbooks with 1280 x 720 or 1366 x 768 pixel displays, and they usually give me a headache when I stare at the screen too long. To be fair, the problem is with the operating system and software which don’t scale properly, not the screen itself.

But when using Windows Vista XP on a 10 inch netbook, the text tends to be super-sharp and difficult to read from a comfortable distance.

The 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, on the other hand, was sharp, but not too sharp. Text and pictures were crisp and clear, and video looked great, but we’ll get into that more in the performance section.

The screen is glossy, which means that it turns into a bit of mirror in brightly lit settings, especially if the display is turned off.

Software

The main thing that sets the new version of the Acer Aspire 1410 apart from the previous model on the software front is the fact that it runs Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Windows Vista. This is a huge step up, since the laptop generally feels more responsive.

You also get new features like Aero Peek (which lets you look at the desktop by temporarily minimizing all windows for just a second without actually changing their position) and the new and mostly improved Windows taskbar.

Windows 7 Home Premium also includes Windows Media Center functionality, something which you won’t find on the Windows 7 Starter Edition that ships with most netbooks. While Windows Media Center is designed as a full screen interface for music, movies, and photos that looks good on a TV, it also includes some features like an Internet TV section with content from CBS, MSNBC, and others that makes it a welcome addition to a portable notebook like the Acer Aspire 1410.

Acer also made the somewhat baffling decision to throw in a copy of Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 for watching DVDs on this notebook that ships without an optical disc drive.

The rest of the software is pretty much par for the course. You get free trial versions of Microsoft Office 2007, McAfee Internet Security and Norton Online Backup as well as a full version of Microsoft Works.

GridVista

There’s also an Acer Gaming Console to access online games, and GridVista software, which lets you separate your display into zones so that you can snap windows to the right, left, upper right, lower left, or what have you.

Battery

The new processor and operating system doesn’t seem to have affected battery life very much. The US version of the Acer Aspire 1410 comes with a 6 cell, 4400mAh battery. I was able to get 4 hours and 57 minutes of run time when surfing the web and writing some documents with WiFi turned on and the screen brightness set at about 50 percent.

That’s almost identical to the experience I had with the single core version of this notebook when running Windows Vista. Interestingly, when I tried installing Windows 7 RC on the original model, battery life went down by about thirty minutes.

You’re probably not going to get 5 hours of run time if you use the laptop to watch video in a continuous loop. But for light weight tasks like web surfing and maybe watching the occasional online video, you can probably expect 4 to 5 hours from the dual core Acer Aspire 1410.

Verdict

The Acer Aspire One strikes an excellent balance between power, performance, price and battery life. The updated model offers marginally better performance and a much improved operating system at a lower price, which makes this $400 laptop look pretty attractive.

But it’s not perfect. It’s bigger and bulkier than a 10 inch netbook, and there are plenty of other machines that offer better performance or battery life. But I haven’t seen another machine that offers as much as the Aspire 1410 at this price point.

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Acer Aspire 1410 review (dual core version)