Netbook Review – Acer, Asus Netbook Review

There was a time when netbooks cost a minimum of $300 and laptops cost a minimum of $1000 (That time was not really that long ago!). Now the lines are kind of blurred. Netbooks like the HP Mini 311 and the ASUS 1201N with nVidia ION graphics and 12 inch screens cost $521 and $484 respectively. On the other hand with netbooks biting into a large portion of their market share, notebooks have dropped drastically in prices. HP, Dell, Acer, Sony and a lot more now all have 15 inch laptops on offer for around the $600 mark.

As an exercise, we decided to take amazon’s current bestselling netbook and notebook and do a comparision. This has us pitting the ASUS Eee PC 1005HA-PU17 against the HP Pavilion DV6-1350US. The ASUS netbook costs $344 and the HP notebook is available for $650 on amazon.

Spec Comparision

Now keep in mind that the netbook is designed for a particular purpose – a spare laptop if you will. It’s advantages are that its battery lasts much longer and its extremely portable. And even if a notebook is much more powerful, that power is required for high-end programs that most people may not even use. If you have to drive 50 metres, it doesn’t make much of a difference whether you use a Toyota or a Ferrari, even though the Ferrari looks way nicer. Similarly for basic tasks like browsing, checking email, working on documents, chatting – you don’t need that extra power supplied by a notebook.

That being said, if the Ferrari costs only slightly more, you’d buy it anyways! And looking at the way netbooks and notebooks are now converging in price, a few questions need to be thrown up (we’ll deal with these at the end).

———————————————————————————————————————

	ASUS 1005HA-PU17	HP PAVILION DV6-1350us
OS	Windows 7 Starter	Windows 7 Home Premium
Processor	1.6GHz Intel Atom N450	2.2Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600
Memory	1GB DDR2 RAM (Max 2GB)	4GB DDR3 RAM (Max 8GB)
Storage	250GB HDD (5400RPM)	320GB HDD (7200RPM)
Screen	10.1 inch 1024 x 600 screen	15.6 inch 1366 x 768
Battery	6-cell (9 hours life)	12-cell (3 hours life)
Dimensions	10 x 7 x 1.3 (inches)	14.1 x 10 x 1.61 (inches)
Weight	2.81 lbs	6.41 lbs

———————————————————————————————————————

• OS

The Starter Edition is very basic and consists of limitations such as an unchangeable desktop background, non-compatibility of external DVD drives which means you CANNOT watch DVDs (that IS crap!), and multi-tasking limitations. Upgrade to Windows Home Premium costs $79.99, a bit steep compared to netbook prices.

• Processor

Remember David vs Goliath. Give Goliath a heat-seeking rocket launcher and you have the 1.6GHz Intel N280 Atom vs the 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T6600. You would need the equivalent of a 10GHz Atom to come close to matching the Core 2, which means the notebook is about 5 times faster than the netbook. This speed is what enables a laptop to deal with larger applications. With a netbook the process would just stall.

• Graphics

The Intel Graphics Media Accelerators or GMA’s are not a very popular option. The 1005HA netbook’s Intel GMA 950 was a second generation chipset (think 10 years ago) and has a pathetic frame rate. The multimedia experience with the 4500MHD isn’t the best either. It’s only half as efficient as the AMD ATI Radeon 3200. But the notebook graphics are undoubtedly much better than the netbooks’.

• Memory

The Pavilion DV6 features DDR3 RAM whose performance is about twice as good as DDR2, and it can be overclocked. Again the notebook features 4GB of RAM compared to the netbooks piddly little 1GB. Maximum RAM is 8GB for the Pavilion compared to 2GB for the 1005HA. This makes the notebook about 8 times faster!

• Hard Drive

There’s more space on the DV6′s drive, and it runs at 7200RPM, which means faster computing than the netbook’s 5400RPM. The speed we discuss is basically interfacing speed and tasking – so a hard drive that runs faster is able to read and transfer more data in the same unit of time. This holds true when discussing most components, not only the hard drive.

• Screen

The resolution makes a difference, as does the fact that the ASUS screen is only 2/3rds the size of the HP Pavilion DV6. The viewing quality of the ASUS netbook is good though. Except for the size, the two screens are comparable.

• Battery

The Pavilion DV6 features a 12-cell battery as opposed to the ASUS 1005HA’s 6-cell. But the netbook is tailored to power conservation, and trumps the DV6 with 3 times the battery life. It’s forte is as a travel companion.

• Dimensions & Weight

As with the battery life, these are the only two areas where the netbook obviously shines. It’s a no brainer – a 10-inch screen netbook with fewer and smaller components is bound to be much smaller and lighter.

Questions and Conclusions

The aim of this post was not really to show how notebooks triumph over netbooks. An interesting thing is just how wide the gap is in components and performance , but how narrow the gap is in terms of cost. If you think about it, just $300 separates a computer powered by a processor meant for a mobile phone, and the fully-outfitted HP Pavilion DV6. Of course, the success of netbooks has to an extent hammered down notebook prices. But by this much? At this rate, netbooks should cost half of what they currently do.

Another question is about the artificial limitations on netbooks imposed by Microsoft. Netbooks could easily be specced out with things like DDR3, a faster HDD and better processor. But then why would anyone buy a larger screened laptop? This is a scenario that can’t carry on for too long. We’ve got price disparities and technology disparities and somethings got to give.

Filed under: Asus Netbook Review, HP Mini Netbook Review, Netbook