Thread: Intel atom

I have been looking at these for some time. I have not heard of the Atom overheating - its primary advantage is low power consumption, which does not gel with overheating.

There are several of things to look out for.

1. There are several versions of the Atom. N2xx, N300 and N4xx with Dxxx announced but not released yet.
From what I have read, you probably want a system using the N300 or N450 rather than N2xx. The N450 only went on sale in January, and probably has only recently appeared in Australia. I have on my desk an Australia Post flyer advertising the Acer AO532 using the N450 for $469. Note that there are two versions of this Acer model, and this is the more upmarket one, with more HD and a larger battery.

2. Apparently Microsoft has placed restrictions on selling Windows at "Netbook" prices, so that if you want to install OEM Windows and only pay a low price, you can only have 1Gb RAM so you can only run a cut down "starter" Windows 7. Although not documented, it seems that in many cases at least you can add more RAM. The downside is that ones with more RAM have prices into regular laptop territory.

This would not bother me, you can run various Linux versions quite happily on 1Gb RAM.

3. Although the Atom is very low power, the associated chipsets have taken a lot more power, until the new chipset released with the N450.

In light of the above, you will probably find quite a few very cheap netbooks with the N2xx processor. These may be adequate for what you want, but will struggle to run even XP, let alone Windows 7. But they will run quite well with special Linux versions, such as Ubuntu Netbook Remix. Somewhat better, but probably still would want to be a bargain would be the ones with the N300 dual processor. I am keeping my eyes open for bargains!

John

I have a little laptop wih an Intel Atom. It is running a version of Debian Linux. It is brilliant. I lent it to a friend who went on an overseas trip and he found it so useful for keeping in touch with friends via free wifi. He was so impressed, he bought one for himself.
Web browsing, email & Skype it is very good. I wouldn't think it would be good for number crunching apps such as photo manipulation and anything Microsoft.
You're better off getting the biggest bang for your buck. There are many other non-atom laptops out there that are reasonably priced. Get the biggest, fastest processor you can afford.
I hope this is helpful
regards
Mick

Very helpful JD

Perhaps I'm mistaking the chipset overheating for something else.

I thought it was something that the earlier Eee-pc's suffered from when they first came out.

can you run all windows associated software on linux? I know nothing about linux but if you can't then this is certainly not an option for me as I have to much windows related software.

Originally Posted by dullbird

Very helpful JD

Perhaps I'm mistaking the chipset overheating for something else.

I thought it was something that the earlier Eee-pc's suffered from when they first came out.

Perhaps the battery? It could have been the chipset not including the Atom processor.

can you run all windows associated software on linux? I know nothing about linux but if you can't then this is certainly not an option for me as I have to much windows related software.

You can't run Windows software on Linux in general, but in most cases there is equivalent software available for download (and almost all Linux software is free). In some cases it will be the same software, for example, Open Office, Firefox. The software I use most is Firefox, Open Office, The Gimp (similar to photoshop), Kmail (similar to Outlook Express), Audacity Sound Editor, Kmymoney (similar to Quicken), K3B (CD & DVD burner).

What you need to realise though is that you are not going to be able to run any very compute intensive software on an Atom processor - web browsing, instant messages, email, writing, this sort of thing, even downloading photos from your camera, but any intensive graphics work is out - would be anyway because of the screen size.

John

you see I do want to be able to use my lightroom on it....so it has to be at least able to handle that.

and that is why I wont go linux as I have programs like Lightroom and smart draw which I do use for college work

I am not familiar with those programs, but I gather they are graphics software, in which case it is very unlikely that they will run satisfactorily on any Atom processor.

John

*sigh* dual core it is then...and a couple of hundred bux on top

Keyboard size can be a bit of problem on a netbook. I seriously doubt any netbook is going to be up to Lightroom.