Notebookreview.com's listing of the most popular laptop reviews for September includes three unexpected contenders: Reviews for Atom-powered "netbooks." One of them, the Acer Aspire One, is the second most popular review on the site, with the Asus Eee and Dell Mini 9 taking the seventh and ninth positions, respectively.
The $325 Acer Aspire One premiered on the list this month with a review praising it as the cheapest and best performing netbook so far. But "best performing" is a relative assessment; all netbooks use Intel’s Atom processor, which utilizes a single 1.6ghz core, as opposed to some of the notebooks on the list, which use Intel's far more powerful Core 2 Duo Processor. Where the Aspire One shines compared to other netbooks is in storage space: The model has a 120 gigabyte hard drive option, compared to the other two netbooks' solid-state drives.
The reviews of all three netbooks highlight some surprises dedicated laptop users may run into when converting to netbooks. As The Industry Standard previously pointed out in “Will Atom-equipped netbooks be the catalyst for slimmer Web apps?”, netbooks aren’t meant to approach the power of today’s 12” or larger notebooks. Owners of many netbook models will have to deal with cramped keyboards and relatively limited storage space. All will have to consider Atom's minimum processing power, which is insufficient for heavy-duty apps such as video editing programs.
Still, it seems many readers are anxious to take a peek at the netbooks that slots itself between handheld computers and laptops. While they aren't the same as a laptop, the price is hard to beat.
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Comments
I am one of the happy owners of an Acer Aspire One (AAO) netbook running Linux. I also own a 14" HP notebook (XP) and an older model Mac IBook (OS X). I think that those who look to buy a netbook are those who will use it as a second notebook that is extremely light, mobile and offers the essentials that a notebook offers without the size and weight. With my AAO, I can check my email, browse the internet, IM my contacts, work on my documents and listen to my music. As for storage space, it comes with an 8GB SSD drive, but I have added a 32GB SDHC expansion card which almost quadruples my drive capacity. Additionally, I have not had any problems typing on its 89% keyboard. At $329.00, that's all I need it for. I'm not looking to play games, or video-editing even though there are some pretty decent games on it. At this point it is the best investment I have made in a very long time. I even bought one for my daughter, who is a Mac freak and she loves it.
But there's your problem Chris, 99% of the laptop population DON'T do video editing. Maybe they do Skype which encodes/decodes H.264 640x480 in real-time but that's only for HQ mode and not the standard resolution one. For standard quality video conferencing - which is the most any integrated camera will support - all you need is 320x240 encode/decode which can be handled by a 1.6 GHz hyperthreading Atom processor.
The point is that at $320, something like the Acer Aspire One is a killer laptop (not a typo) and it's as fast or faster than previous generation ultramobile laptops with 1 GHz Pentium M CPUs.
Of course, Intel is afraid that the NetBook market will canibalize the Ultra-notebook market, and to some extent it will, but the NetBook market is going to explode and it will be a high-volume low-margin product that will still be very profitable for Intel.
George Ou
http://www.ForMortals.com
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