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First Look At Latest Ion-Infused Asus Eee PC
MojoKid writes "Atom-based netbooks have come a long way since they were first introduced. 7 and 8-inch netbooks are no longer the norm, and availability of 12-inch netbooks is on the rise. The newest member of the Asus Eee PC lineup is the Eee PC 1201N, and it really stands out in the crowd of netbook in terms of specifications. The machine features a 12.1" HD display, new dual-core Atom 330 CPU, 2GB of DDR2 RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium, an HDMI output and NVIDIA's Ion chipset with integrated GPU. HotHardware was able to demo the system's ability to handle more advanced benchmarks, thanks in part to the Ion GPU. It's also the first netbook they tested that could actually play older 3D titles respectably. You won't get Crysis running but lighter duty titles can be played back nicely if you tone the details down and lower the resolution. The 1201N also played back 720p and 1080p content without stuttering, and the dual-core CPU allowed enough headroom to multitask while videos were playing."
The point of a netbook is size and weight, not speed. More power is nice, but the creep up towards 12" screens is annoying.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
Boy, I can't wait for the 17" netbooks with lots of ram, ssd and fast CPUs. A good video card would be nice, too. Why won't someone make this?
The biggest benefit I see of the Ion is for small form factor desktops to support VDPAU (an API for hardware offloading of video decoding). Majority of the recent small form factor systems (e.g. Dell Studio Hybrid) I've looked into use the Intel 4500 which does support XvMC, but at least in Linux VDPAU is much more usable (larger list of supported codecs, etc.). I moderate the Boxee Linux forum, and I'm seeing a lot of posters using Ion based HTPC's.
Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.
Now if they would just go back to their true *netbook* roots and also offer a Linux + SSD version!! That was a killer combination.
I will stick with my Linux EEE 1000 for now. Better value than the MS-Win version (for me), uncrashable "hard drive", great battery life, nice form factor, decent keyboard, reasonably fast, respectable screen. About the only two annoying things are the right shift key in the wrong place (which really kills me when using vi) and the battery light starting to blink at something like 75% power left (obviously a boo boo).
This netbook has the same screen size, ram, and CPU perforcement as my four year old laptop.
Has my old laptop become a netbook?
It's like bragging about having the largest sub-compact car.
They tested it in the article, and it ran for about 3 hours and 20 minutes. Not the best life, especially for a netbook.