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General discussion

Generally, just how capable are netbooks?

by Philip Clift Jul 10, 2009 9:19PM PDT

I've patiently trawled through several reviews, but none of them really answers my question, so I hope someone here can...

My elderly (but expensive at the time) Sony Vaio TR5MP is due to be replaced. It's about five years old, has a Pentium M ULV chip (1.10GHz) and 40GB HDD, 10.6" screen 1280x768. I doubled the RAM from the original 512MB. It runs XP Pro, and Office 2003.

The machine is very slow, despite careful maintenance such as defrag and clean-up routines, possibly because XP today is much more demanding than it was five years ago. I also use Sony Sound Forge (a wave editor) in my work, which it runs tolerably well. I've removed or disabled most of the clever, but resource-sapping, Sony freeware, in the search for better speed, and have run CCleaner. Other obvious resource hogs such as the Windows search indexer are disabled.

On the face of it, the Samsung N110 I'm considering isn't a much better specification - pretty standard modern netbook fodder, really. (1.6GHz Atom, with 1GB RAM, XP Home) But I realise things like chipset efficiency, board architecture and memory speed have moved on - so will it be a lot quicker than my ageing Vaio? And would it be happy running Office 2007?

I've no intention of using it for gaming - it's purely for web browsing, e-mail and document creating/reading, with occasional use with Sound Forge. The light weight, good battery life and small screen are important to me, but I don't want to waste money buying something that'll be nearly as slow as what it's replacing! The reviews all say that, generally, netbooks won't deliver "blistering performance" but do they mean that issues like slow Windows boot-up and annoying delays to open various apps will make it little or no better than what I'm replacing?

To put it another way, should I really bite on the bullet and buy something much more expensive, i.e. an ultra-portable laptop as opposed to a netbook?

Discussion is locked

8 Posts
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Sony Vaio TR5MP
by walderh Jul 11, 2009 12:20AM PDT

Hi Philip

My hint: Switch to Linux, e.g. Ubuntu 9.04. Why?

I own several computers, one of them is a 3 years old aopen MiniPC (same form factor as the Apple Mini Mac). Intel Pentium M, 1.6 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows XP Media Edition pre installed. Terrible slow (boot time more than 6 min.!!) So, I installed the Ubuntu 9.04 distro. Smooth installation, everything works from the beginning. And best of all: It's fast like a rocket (nearly...) and all the programs I use are there!

If you use only Office 2003 you can easily switch to Linux with OpenOffice. At least, before you spend your bucks for a new Netbook, try it out, it's free of charge.

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Agree on aging
by deniceels Jul 11, 2009 4:37PM PDT

laptop as I was running through my brother's 7year old Dell Inspiron 4150 (only 512MB ram). I refreshed everything from top to bottom as, yes, given Xp's age and my brother's specs, it will run slow, just capable of the most basic now. Maybe you would like to give windows7 a try to revive it. Yes, linux is a good option for such if you are confident or willing to try it out (I have tried OpenSuse, Redhax/Fedora, Freespire alongside with MacOSX and Windows), and if you don't want to remove your current XP, there're linux distros which comes all in the CD itself (and runs from it directly) before deciding.

Anyway, newer variations of netbooks not only limits itself to the older Intel Atom N-series processor but, HP also do uses the Nvidia Neo processor, Dell uses the Atom Z-series, Acer Timeline uses the Intel's ULV variations.

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Buy a PC
by Dango517 Jul 17, 2009 3:24PM PDT

laptop = three times the cost, at half or less the performance. With the money you'll be save buy a desk.

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Netbook speed
by Dale E Marcum Jul 17, 2009 5:27PM PDT

I will not get into the arena of windows vs linux but can report my experience with both. I have an Acer aspire 1 netbook with Windows XP Home and Ububtu 8.1 for netbooks in a dual boot configuration. It is fast in both window formats and I can even drag files fom XP to Ubuntu when needed(Doesn't work the other way around.) The netbook has 1.6 atom processor with 1gb ram and 120gb harddrive. Smooth as silk. I will add as soon as the netbook arrived I completely removed McAfee virus protection and installed AVG Free. Also go to tips and tricks for XP to remove stuff that is slowing down your system. I am happy with my performance and the reasonable price for these machines. Remember also most Microsoft Windows compatible programs do not work in Linux. Dale

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Compare
by Dango517 Jul 17, 2009 5:46PM PDT
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Processor
by 3rdalbum Jul 17, 2009 8:10PM PDT

The Atom processor will probably be around the same speed as the Pentium M ULV. The RAM in the netbook is probably faster than what you've got in the laptop, and the SSD will be faster in the long-term as fragmentation doesn't bother it (and Windows loves to get fragmented...).

I can't say whether MS Office 2007 will run well - I use Linux. But Openoffice.org is reasonably snappy on my Aspire One (same specifications but lower RAM as your prospective netbook).

If there is a speed improvement, it won't be by much. If you really want a little more speed, you'd be better off looking at a proper notebook. HP has a notebook that uses an AMD Neo processor - it's like an ultraportable but only about twice the price of a netbook - that I'm thinking of upgrading to, it might be a good option for you if you want the portability.

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Make sure
by samkh Jul 17, 2009 11:49PM PDT

you demo the hp dv2 hands-on before buying. If possible, run it in a quiet room to experience the fan performance and check the heat from its exhaust vent.

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Thank you all - decision made!
by Philip Clift Jul 19, 2009 3:41AM PDT

I value your input, and thank you for taking the time to help me out. I tried out the NC10 (nearest I could find easily to the machine I thought I wanted) and although it was pretty impressive in many ways, the shop assistant admitted it would struggle with more than 3 or 4 browser tabs open if anything slightly demanding was asked of it at the same time...

I'd been toying with buying a Mac Book for some time, and as this is a business purchase, that's the way I went this time. Mac OS takes some getting used to for a Windows user since 3.1, but the capabilities overall suggest it's more up to the job.

I'd have to agree, though, that the netbooks are impressive, and excellent value for money. Were it not for the need to process audio, I'd have gone down that route for sure.

Thanks again, folks, for your help.

Phil

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