Netbook specs have been held in check by Microsoft and Intel's dizzying array of rules and restrictions for low-cost machines, but now that
Windows 7 is out and Intel's getting ready to release the next generation of Atom chips it sounds like things are about to get slightly better. Microsoft has already started allowing netbook manufacturers to load Windows 7 Home Premium on machines without restrictions, and now Fudzilla says Intel will lift the 1GB RAM limit from Atom machines when the 1.83GHz N470
Pine Trail chip hits in March. That means we'll start to see more of a range of netbook specs going forward, but the low-end will probably still be dominated by
Windows 7 Starter and the Atom N450, which will still be limited to 1GB of RAM, so don't expect to be happy with the cheap stuff anytime soon.
[Via
Slashgear]
posted Oct 27th 2009 2:24PM
You mean we just need another 5 months to go from slow to slow+? Sign me up!
so true.
I want a 10" netbook, but I also want a (non-crippled) modern OS, and I want it to be able to dock to my home theatre and do HD output.
bah.
Then put Home Premium/Professional on it. No one's stopping you.
And Engadget: there was never any licensing restriction saying you couldn't put Home Premium/Professional/Business/Pro/whatever other oversion you wanted to on your netbooks; you absolutely could assuming you or your OEM were willing to pay the additional costs, which most OEMs weren't.
What you couldn't and still can't do is put Vista Home Basic/7 Starter on proper laptops/PCs (although I don't see why you'd want to).
Thank you Mark. I've seen them make this mistake a few times. You would think they would get it right at some point. And just to add to what you said...
It isn't INTEL that prevents more than 1gb of ram in netbooks. Microsoft prevents more than 1gb of memory in netbooks that contain Windows xp or Windows 7 Starter. If the manufacturer puts Windows 7 Premium on it, they can put as much memory on it as they want.
Netbooks are perfect for what they are made for- for people that are traveling that don't want to take their regular laptop to check email/surf the net/write a letter.
My VAIO P has an Atom chip and 2GB of RAM.
Intel can't dictate to hardware manufacturers what they can put in their systems, but they can discourage it. Like Microsoft they offer different prices to manufacturers who conform to their system specs. So we get a slew of identical machines from 90% of netbook makers with a handful of higher priced machines, like your VAIO P, that buck the trend.
Someone on Engadget has a Vaio P? Please tell me you got it for free, otherwise I will have lost all faith in humanity.
The VAIO P uses a Z series Atom, though, which has no such restrictions, and never has had such restrictions - it's not meant for netbooks, it's meant for MIDs and UMPCs, and is therefore considered a premium product, not a budget product.
(Also, the Z series is coupled with the US11/15 chipset, which has much less power consumption, although it's crippled in other ways, and has poor driver support for non-Windows OSes.)
OR, we can just use the VIA Nano + ION or VIA Trinity platforms.
Better perf, greener practices, better specs.
Hrm...
We'd be greener if we ddn't keep reinventing the wheel and go back and reuse our old tech.
Well, the new tech does use significantly less power... and Intel has done the "die shrink Dothan and underclock the crap out of it" trick a couple times. The end result was chips that had more power consumption and were slower than Atom.
Not only that, but RoHS and other industrial standards that we apply now in manufacturing processes leave us with products that have less environmental and health effects and can make them potentially more recyclable.
But yes, if we cut our production way back we'd be using less. However, we have to meet demand to continue to grow. Whether or not we should be allowed to grow any further is a question I'm not willing to answer.
I have an HP Mini 311 with ION and 3 gigs of DDR 3 ram and am pretty satisfied with it.
I have been considering it, The Red Monkey, but when I compare it to, say, the HP Dm3t I keep leaning towards the Dm instead of the Mini 311. At just a tad larger, the Dm comes equipped with a core2duo and a beefier graphics card. Plus it is made of aluminum. I am still on the fence, but I am also having to consider the price. The Mini 311 specced the way I want comes out to $660ish while the Dm comes out to approximately $900. What to do...
The Mini is my portable. I have two very capable desktops so it really depends on need. I don't game, mainly school and work related use for travel so the small size was great. I went for the 1.66 upgrade with N and bluetooth. Order the ram and hard drive outside of HP as they will be cheaper and you can get a 7200 RPM drive.
I vote Mini if its not your primary machine for the price. Its done everything I need and with flash going to the GPU soon it will work even better.
Its gonna be on the outside of the case??
Yes.
:)
CULV ftw!
The CULV may test higher than the Atom but they pair it with crap graphics making an ION powered Netbook a better buy.
Hooray for Intel and Microsoft, with their cockblocking! Without them, who knows what kind of horribly fast and feature-packed netbooks we'd be forced to purchase.
Let me guess, these will only be available in a 12" or higher form-factor.
This isn't a netbook, it's an under-powered laptop.
they don't want to cannibalize their laptop sales. don't be h8n
I see a window of opportunity here for AMD & VIA...
"Next-gen Atom N470 to relax netbook spec restrictions slightly further"
slightly further? LOLWUT?
Why? Netbooks don't need >1GB of ram, as they shouldn't be running an OS [read-vista] that requires it to not run worse than a fat kid. All netbooks need which many have is not intel integrated graphics. This is a problem. Ion and other platforms remedy it
As if there ever were more than like 3 netbooks that even ran Vista...
Am I the only one who is rather happy with my netbook's performance?
Sure, it's no gaming machine, but it actually runs things very well. Granted, I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM, and if I need it I send the Atom into overclock mode, but I haven't done that much to it.
BIOS update for legacy models, do want.
A hardware restriction implemented in hardware, wouldn't that suck. I wonder what will happen here.