Netbooks and laptops seem to be converging as makers make netbooks bigger, more power hungry, more powerful and more expensive. They seem to be missing the point of a netbook...
The NC20 is available at around the £380 mark from a number of sites, amazon and Dixons being two examples.
I definitely want to see legitimate benchmarks on this puppy though as the £60 difference in price between the NC10 and NC20 would be worth it if the Chrome chipset will handle a bit more than the GMA950. HD video at 1280 x 800 would definitely be a nice thing to have from something that small.
Apparently, from a personal review written by a normal person, the graphics chip in the NC20 is atrocious. The battery life is also not particularly good. The NC10 could really operate for over 6 hours with WiFi on, and general use. With the NC20 it sounds as if it's good for about 4 hours or so, which is quite a bit less
I suppose we'll have to decide upon the NC20 when more people have bought this model but from what I've heard thus far it's really not all that great. Then again, as mentioned, it's a notebook pretty much, not a netbook, given the screen size.
The NC10 'special edition' will be out soon, think personally I'd prefer that over the NC20, unless the screen resolution of 1024xXXX is not suitable for an application I relied upon.
Clearly stung by the scathing comments on your review of the NC10, which was so late that the machine was almost out of production by the time the review appeared, you have done a mini-review of the NC20 almost before it is on sale!
Looking forward to the real review when you actually get one to play with...
You're missing the point, even if it had enough pixels at 12" screen size to display HD res., you'd not be able to discriminate that much detail at that pixel pitch.
What is instead important, is that it have the hardware accelerated ability to run HD video resolutions realtime, then resampled to native screen resolution, so you're not re-encoding everything to a lower resolution just to get it to play on your netbook-performance-level ultraportable.
Looks great in the first picture, looks like a 5-year-olds look-at-me-i've-got-a-laptop-and-it-reads-me-stories-and-makes-funny-noises-laptop from the side.
Why can't anyone beside Apple make a laptop look half decent.
Not beautiful, not sexy, I don't want curves or sticky out bits, I just want it to look good.
I suspect most people would be happier with a 13" notebook.
Maybe we just need a physical switch to turn off power-hungry devices - 3d graphics, higher-res screens (go from 1280x1024 to 1024x768 or 640x480), slow the disks down, in order to get netbook battery-life from better devices.
I know it isn't a small, cheap computer anymore. I haven't missed the point, I just suspect the real market for netbooks is smaller than people think. A higher price is better than a disappointed customer.
Either you read the wrong review, have a very warped understanding of the English language, or skimmed the article so much you only saw the very minor negative comments. How can a review scoring 90% and closing with a comment 'All hail the new netbook champ' be scathing?!
At last, a netbook with a higher-res display and XP. The significance is that Microsoft must have been persuaded to stop trying to cripple or kill off the sector by restricting the hardware on which they'll supply XP. At least with respect to the display resolution.
As for this hardware, I think it's too heavy. Others may think it's too big. What I really want is for someone to back-port the higher-res screen to a 10-inch model, ideally weighing in under a kilo but 1.25kg will do.
I beg to differ, JC. On a 12" screen, I think that you can really discriminate for the extra detail true 720p would offer over a 1280x800 screen.
Besides, wouldn't it be nice if you could hook up this little baby to your 1080p HDTV? I thought that Via's chipset wasn't limited to VGA output only, like Intels are. My point still stands. Would it be too much to expect a DVI/Displayport out on one of these things?
Saying it's HD Capable is just a waste of time otherwise.
(For the record, the Via's 1.3GHz Nano has been shown to have comparable performance to Intel's 1.6Ghz Atom. The chipset and graphics stand out from Intel's though, outperforming it in every respect... Although in this case, as I said, the HD capable aspect is a little useless.)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 1TB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 27" LCD)
HP (Hewlett-Packard) Pavilion p6210f Mini-Tower Desktop (2.6GHz Athlon II X4 620, 6GB DDR2, 640GB HDD, DVD±RW DL, Windows 7 Home Premium)
HP (Hewlett-Packard) Compaq Presario CQ5210F Mini-Tower Desktop (2.7GHz Athlon 64 X2 215, 3GB DDR2, 500GB, DVD±RW DL, Windows 7 Home Premium)
Apple iMac All-In-One Desktop (3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB DDR2, 500GB, DVD+-RW DL, Mac OS X v10.5 Snow Leopard, 21.5" LCD)
Acer SX2800 SFF Core 2 Quad Q8200 2.33GHz/4MBL2/4GB/640GB/SuperMulti/GigNIC/W7HP64
Samsung notebook-not-netbook gets VIA Nano CPU
Anonymous Coward
Missing the point? #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 11:07 GMT
Netbooks and laptops seem to be converging as makers make netbooks bigger, more power hungry, more powerful and more expensive. They seem to be missing the point of a netbook...
Anonymous Coward
Pricing #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 12:29 GMT
The NC20 is available at around the £380 mark from a number of sites, amazon and Dixons being two examples.
I definitely want to see legitimate benchmarks on this puppy though as the £60 difference in price between the NC10 and NC20 would be worth it if the Chrome chipset will handle a bit more than the GMA950. HD video at 1280 x 800 would definitely be a nice thing to have from something that small.
Peter
So hopefully... #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 12:29 GMT
...the price of the NC10, "The new mini-laptop champion", will come down in price, once it's big brother hits the shops?
Anonymous Coward
@AC 10:51 #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 12:29 GMT
when people were looking at the first ees and their equivalent, people were moaning about several things:
keyboard too small,
screen too small
low resolution.
this just lloks like samsung took the concept and sorted out the niggles.
The price hike is probably because of the bigger/better screen...
and it *still* has a similar battery life to the eee.
mind you, the 90X and onwards fixed these things as well.. and are cheaper
Joe K
Want #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 12:29 GMT
Amazon were supposed to start selling it today, but now list it as available Monday.
Review ASAP please.
The only other review out there is a Ukranian one, that says its awesome, and capable of full HD output.
Be interesting to see benchmarks of that "slower" processor too.
Anonymous Coward
Rubbish graphics/battery life #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 12:29 GMT
Apparently, from a personal review written by a normal person, the graphics chip in the NC20 is atrocious. The battery life is also not particularly good. The NC10 could really operate for over 6 hours with WiFi on, and general use. With the NC20 it sounds as if it's good for about 4 hours or so, which is quite a bit less
I suppose we'll have to decide upon the NC20 when more people have bought this model but from what I've heard thus far it's really not all that great. Then again, as mentioned, it's a notebook pretty much, not a netbook, given the screen size.
The NC10 'special edition' will be out soon, think personally I'd prefer that over the NC20, unless the screen resolution of 1024xXXX is not suitable for an application I relied upon.
Wil Hoang
HD capable? #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 14:41 GMT
Why release a notebook that's HD capable without any way of displaying HD content? There's no HDMI out, DVI out, and not even a screen worthy of 720p.
I was very excited at the release of the NC20, but it's just turned out to be a bit of a let-down.
Anonymous Coward
Congratulations! #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 14:41 GMT
Clearly stung by the scathing comments on your review of the NC10, which was so late that the machine was almost out of production by the time the review appeared, you have done a mini-review of the NC20 almost before it is on sale!
Looking forward to the real review when you actually get one to play with...
b
anemic! #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 15:48 GMT
"1.3GHz processor"?!
wtf, that's weak...
get some decent horsepower in there and it will be a player..i suggest *at least* a 1.6ghz atom, preferrably higher..
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum
paul
c7 #
Posted Friday 27th February 2009 16:23 GMT
Is present in my netbook HP 2133. Its not a bad little chip , faster than the atom but gets a bit hotter and slightly worse for the power consumption.
Atom doesn't have out of order execution like the VIA or its bigger intel / amd cousins.
For a £200 its not bad. For a £400 machine , go take a long walk of a short pier samsung.
Anonymous Coward
Shiny screen? #
Posted Saturday 28th February 2009 00:48 GMT
Fucktards.
JC
@ HD Capable #
Posted Saturday 28th February 2009 11:01 GMT
You're missing the point, even if it had enough pixels at 12" screen size to display HD res., you'd not be able to discriminate that much detail at that pixel pitch.
What is instead important, is that it have the hardware accelerated ability to run HD video resolutions realtime, then resampled to native screen resolution, so you're not re-encoding everything to a lower resolution just to get it to play on your netbook-performance-level ultraportable.
Charlie Barnes
Looks #
Posted Monday 2nd March 2009 10:08 GMT
Looks great in the first picture, looks like a 5-year-olds look-at-me-i've-got-a-laptop-and-it-reads-me-stories-and-makes-funny-noises-laptop from the side.
Why can't anyone beside Apple make a laptop look half decent.
Not beautiful, not sexy, I don't want curves or sticky out bits, I just want it to look good.
P. Lee
the problem with netbooks #
Posted Monday 2nd March 2009 10:08 GMT
is that they look like small notebooks.
I suspect most people would be happier with a 13" notebook.
Maybe we just need a physical switch to turn off power-hungry devices - 3d graphics, higher-res screens (go from 1280x1024 to 1024x768 or 640x480), slow the disks down, in order to get netbook battery-life from better devices.
I know it isn't a small, cheap computer anymore. I haven't missed the point, I just suspect the real market for netbooks is smaller than people think. A higher price is better than a disappointed customer.
Monkey
@ AC 'Congratulations' #
Posted Monday 2nd March 2009 10:08 GMT
Either you read the wrong review, have a very warped understanding of the English language, or skimmed the article so much you only saw the very minor negative comments. How can a review scoring 90% and closing with a comment 'All hail the new netbook champ' be scathing?!
Well done!
Nigel
Hooray, a higher-resolution display at last! #
Posted Monday 2nd March 2009 16:28 GMT
At last, a netbook with a higher-res display and XP. The significance is that Microsoft must have been persuaded to stop trying to cripple or kill off the sector by restricting the hardware on which they'll supply XP. At least with respect to the display resolution.
As for this hardware, I think it's too heavy. Others may think it's too big. What I really want is for someone to back-port the higher-res screen to a 10-inch model, ideally weighing in under a kilo but 1.25kg will do.
Wil Hoang
@ HD Capable #
Posted Tuesday 3rd March 2009 15:43 GMT
I beg to differ, JC. On a 12" screen, I think that you can really discriminate for the extra detail true 720p would offer over a 1280x800 screen.
Besides, wouldn't it be nice if you could hook up this little baby to your 1080p HDTV? I thought that Via's chipset wasn't limited to VGA output only, like Intels are. My point still stands. Would it be too much to expect a DVI/Displayport out on one of these things?
Saying it's HD Capable is just a waste of time otherwise.
(For the record, the Via's 1.3GHz Nano has been shown to have comparable performance to Intel's 1.6Ghz Atom. The chipset and graphics stand out from Intel's though, outperforming it in every respect... Although in this case, as I said, the HD capable aspect is a little useless.)