Intel Atom coming to larger notebooks?
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted Jan 2nd 2009 11:18AM
posted Jan 2nd 2009 11:18AM
Why does Intel have to be so darn stubborn? First it insists on only bundling the Atom processor with their own graphics (simultaneously breaking poor NVIDIA's heart), and then there's whole thing where it restricts the CPU to netbooks under 10.2-inches. But like all good things, this too might someday come to an end. According to Gadget Mix, HP is currently negotiating with the chipmaker with the intent of using the processor in notebooks 13-inches and larger. This isn't without precedent -- the Dell Mini 12 is Atom powered, after all, and there is certainly a market for folks who only need a notebook for web browsing and productivity apps -- but we'll see if people are willing to sacrifice performance without gaining portability.
Yay, now I can have a big underpowered notebook too!
I cant wait! I can replace my Compaq that i got for $400 thats has a dual core and a dedicated NVIDIA Graphics card so i can actually play REAL games with an underpowered laptop that uses WONDERFUL Integrated graphics and a processor that would be considered fast around 8 years ago. But at least i get a little better battery life!
I mean Seriously...Atom wont be any good without NVIDIAs Ion. Cus its totally going to kill their sales....
atom isnt that slow, consider what we had years ago, this is very decent laptop, but the price has to be right.
Just put Win xp and I'll be happy.
Let's hope Windows 7 is as good as Microsoft claims it to be, unlike Vista which wasn't as good as they claimed it to be. (FYI, I am using Vista and with current hardware and those patches and good compatibility from new software it is great)
I'll let Bob Barker decide that.
Is Atom THAT good? If e-mail and web browsing is all you need, PentiumM laptops from a couple of years back would be perfect. Is there any specific reason why anyone should insist on an ATOM?
Much less power consumption, and thus better battery life?
Yes...but, I look at the battery specs of the netbooks and I don't really see huge improvement on battery life.
Atom is pretty nice. It can run Vista pretty nicely on Netbooks as compared to the ones running celeron M 900MHz, which comes with EEE 700 series and EEE 900 (not 900HA). The question is the availability of the drivers by the manufactures
Atom is the new celeron....
Except Atom is slower than Celeron. Ugh. I don't understand the hype around Atom since when they first switched to Atom from Celeron M 900mhz benchmarks showed that at 1.6ghz it was actually slower. I don't understand why anyone would want Atom in anything bigger than a netbook since the battery life is more dependent on the chipset and Core 2 Duos are an order of magnitude faster and with similar battery life. I guess Atom is Intel's attempt to troll the market into buying shittier CPUs, which doesn't make sense to me since they had to do R&D to develop a worse CPU.
Intel should just start their own product line... Honestly, what part of the laptop don't they already manufacture? CPU, GPU, SSD, chipset, wireless chip, ect. I would love to see an Intel OEM laptop.
Intel classmate is a defacto Intel OEM pc.
Ever thought about the amount of battery life you'd get from netbook-specced hardware with a notebook-sized battery pack? I'd love a 13.3" laptop without an optical drive that can go 10+ hours on one charge... hell, I've been dreaming of that for years :)
With a 6-cell 6600mAh battery, you can get around 5-5.5 hours. For 7-8 hour battery life, you will need a 9-cell battery.
Although the EEE 901 can get you 6-7 hours battery life with a 6-cell battery (it comes with 6-cell), but it is not a notebook by any means. It has just 8.9" screen
Thats already available in Japanese laptops from Toshiba, Panasonic, and Sony. Some of their Core 2 ULV ultraportables with larger battery can get up to 8-9 hours with screen brightness turned down. Seriously look it up.. Check out the dynamism.com store. They usually have some good stuff... Its a Japanese electronics importer..
What is the point of notebook if it looks like a 2005-top end, >12 inches laptop?
The predictions are coming true!
"but we'll see if people are willing to sacrifice performance without gaining portability"
I guess that depends on how much extra battery life they get, doesn't it?
The company I work for sells them in dedicated servers, they are selling like mad, and they cost us next to nothing to run.
Eric I am looking for a low energy server to just run two touch screen computers and was looking for an atom based solution. Can you direct me to your business?
Onlookers, Eric has just demonstrated that you can actually promote your products here in a way that contributes to the conversation, generates business for you, and doesn't add the ugliness of spam to the blog.
In no way is it any less shameless or driven by self-interest. Just less annoying, and here it seems to have worked. Bless you, Eric, and happy New Year!
Only if he actually sends me some info on where to look into these atom servers.
Yeah, I know right. I even clicked on his user name and followed the url but the website was 404.
Swing and a miss, Eric. Don't make customers beg you to sell to them. They won't.
I honestly wasn't trying to plug my company, and didn't really think that anyone here would be asking me for info on it :). I have updated my profile with the url, don't want to spam up the comments.
Why not just buy a current, low-end Intel Celeron M laptop. There are so many 13" or 14" laptops that cost $500-700 that we really don't need a slower option for the same price (or more). The battery life isn't much better in Intel Atom notebooks, but mostly because the CPU isn't the only component in laptop that doesn't use power. Unless you combine these Atom notebooks with an LED screen for $700, these laptops won't offer much benefit at all.
Wow... I didn't saw it coming... /sarcasm.
atom is NOT the new Celeron.
Celeron = biggest load of fail ever to take integrated circuitry form.
Isn't a Celeron more powerful than an Atom cpu?
The biggest difference between the two is the power consumption, but the question is if one looks at power/watt will the Atom knock out the Celeron?
Anyways I hate the Atom cpu, underpowered for my day to day needs, Intel has spoiled me with their Core 2's
Not true, Celeron is just regular Pentium chips with less cache, and now Pentium is Core2 chips with less cache. Atom is actually slower than Celeron FYI, so if anything Atom is the biggest and most successful failure of a chip from Intel. I personally think netbooks would be better off switching to ARM like Pandora (http://openpandora.org ) because they could get equivalent performance and much lower power consumption by ditching x86 completely. If you're going to run Linux on a netbook anyway, you don't need to be tied to x86. I would be really interested in seeing netbooks with ARM chips running Linux, now that would give you amazing battery life. The Pandora is projected to have around 10 hours of battery life, and that's in a tiny size but with performance close to Atom, so if they used some 1Ghz+ ARMs in a netbook size with a netbook sized battery we might see 15+ hour battery life, which would be amazing.
@ iOf, i didnt mean fail as in terms of sales, i mean fail as in they've carried on a tradition of being pieces of garbage.
where my 2.8GHz Celeron PC with 256MB RAM runs XP like shit, while my 1.3GHz Pentium 3 with 512MB RAM runs it fine.
yes, the P3 has double the ram, but the Celeron's supposedtobe double the clockspeed and several years newer... what happened?
you never were the brightest cookie in the box, eh?
No matter how fast the CPU is, it cannot make up for the simple fact that XP needs 512MB of ram minimum to run properly in 99.9% of cases.
can Intel really restrict what OEM's do with their chips once money has changed hands? sure they can restrict supply based on availability, but dictate what size of screen an OEM uses? seems like the OEMs themselves would try to limit proliferation of ATOMs into Notebooks to be able to differentiate from Netbooks.
Somehow I doubt this will happen, but it would be nice to see the prices of 14-15" budget notebooks come down if they're using netbook components inside.
More likely, this is an effort by HP to cut costs while marketing these notebooks as "Energy Efficient".
These had better be really cheap.
Oh they'll be cheap alright. The devolution continues: laptop >> netbook >> crapbook.
And the real reason they are doing this -- we can't have laptops powered by excess cycles on the GPU, now can we?
Crap. I do not understand the hype about about, less power is great but Atom isnt a real improvement in any case, the battery life isnt vastly diff. at all.
Up and Atom!
The Atom is a surprisingly powerful processor. When I finally got my Wind, I was surprised to see how well the Atom was able to handle itself, especially considering the low power usage.
Even when I OC it, I still get a couple hours out of it on a 3cell battery. Thats pretty good, then when you add in the low cost and the decent processing power, its even more impressive.
I wont be playing Crysis anytime soon, but I certainly can manage my daily tasks pretty easily.
These ATOM processors are cheap pieces of sh1t that HP is u$ing to cut corner$.
Bingo. Intel is going to charge the same amount or more for these and they'll be making huge profits for a chip that is less powerful than the consumer wants. We're really up sh*t creek if all the notebook manufacturers start selling these in everything.
I think you hit the nail right on the head there. It's a flat out con.
Well, I think this is a great idea for people that cannot afford a larger screen laptop. Intel Atom isn’t made for demanding applications, such as photoshop or something. Its only really great for browsing the net, writing on Microsoft Word or any other type of application. I even thought about buying a netbook, just to have around for when I leave home, I can write on my blog or check my email or something. But I think its great if they get the atom cpu into a laptop with like a 12 or 14 inch screen and still be pretty cheap.
but its just my opinion.
Make them bigger.
And half as thick as the Air!
Anyone who doesn't like this idea is not their target market, and should shuddup and stop complaining.
Choice is good.