Netbook advice.

[Jospeh]

Personally, I bought a 1005PE some time ago and I am very pleased with it. A friend of mine is looking to buy a new netbook and I wonder if anything has changed. If not, I'll suggest the same thing to her.

 

[Adidas4275]

i like the asus 1201 with the ion graphics chipset or the HP mini 210 or 311

but it budget on budget and needs

 

[MC FLMJIG]

1001p

 

[Sly]

u230. Considerably faster than a 1201n, but not so good on battery life. Think of it as an ultra light notebook.

There's also the u250. I'm personally interested in this because of the upgraded GPU, i'll probably sell my u230 for cheap and get the u250.

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodnbspec&maincat_no=135&cat2_no=582&cat3_no=&prod_no=2092

 

[2000teg430]

As a owner of a Asus 1201n I would suggest it. I have loved this thing sense the day i got it. It has been my primary computer for about 4 months now, I deployed in Feb.
MSI
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/408241/review/wind_12_u230040us.html
ASUS
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/product/390888/review/asus_eee_pc_1201n.html

Also if your friend is even a little computer savvy the Asus will OC to 2Ghz easy. Becareful with the reviews your read comparing the MSI to other netbooks. The reviews i found were comparing it to single core atoms not the dual core 330 that is in the 1201n.

 

[2000teg430]

so i was curious and found this

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1269/8/

then ran the wprime benchmark on my OC'ed 1201n.
I got a 53.465, so still not faster but closer. I guess judging from the 3dmark scores, the question is will
your friend be gaming and will batter life or speed matter more?

 

[Sly]

Ok, here's a comparison

L335
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=AMD+Athlon+Neo+X2+Dual+Core+L335

Atom 330
http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_lookup.php?cpu=Intel+Atom+330+@+1.60GHz

Battery life, both the u230 and 1201n are bad at it, the u230 only laster 30 minutes less than the 1201n, many think that's a good tradeoff for the considerably faster CPU.

GPU, you're not gonna be doing any heavy gaming on a netbook. You're gonna rely on the CPU more often than the GPU.

If you google a bit for reviews and forums directly comparing the two, the u230 trumps the 1201n.

 

[2000teg430]

I just got the u230. And frankly, the video playback sucks.

2 out of every 3 of my videos is just a mush of pixels or freezes on the first frame. The only way i can get them to play properly is by disabling DXVA. Doing this means you can't play HD videos and pretty much negates the point of getting an HD3200 netbook.

Sure it'll play DVD and Blueray 1080p, but if you try anything else, 2 out of 3 it won't work.

I wonder if i can still sell this and get an ION.

maybe these two are just too close to call. lol maybe one will be on sale or maybe you dont even need a GPU and should look elsewhere

 

[Sly]

Yep. Unfortunately, it turns out that it's a problem inherent to all ATI GPU's, particularly the mobile ones. ATI's software support simply sucks compared to nVidias. The reason i couldn't let go tho is that after reading some more reviews, it's turning out that GPU aside, the memory and cpu really is on par with a desktop CPU. It's turning out that trading it for an ION would slow down my applications. I'm actually doing 3D modeling and rendering on it right now. The thing is *fast*

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1269/1/

Includes u230 vs 1201n comparison.