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Need a netbook.

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killerkid

Member
Joined
Jul 15, 2003
Hey guys I need a netbook for work. I tune cars for a living and use a laptop to do it. I want something light obviously with extremely good battery life. I have a gateway p6831-fx and it's just a beast to lug around.

The program that I use is called hptuners and is not very demanding, here are the specs.
* 800 MHz CPU
* 256 Mb RAM

So any netbook will be able to handle it lol. My question is, what is the BEST netbook out on the market, and what is the best for the money and what do you guys recommend?

Also, is it possible to play WOW on a netbook at low resolution?
 
The new Dell mini12 with the n540 CPU looks very good to me, it uses way less power then the previous generation, giving it almost twice the battery life.
Really anything with the N540, i just happen to like my dell netbook :p

I doubt WoW will run on a GMA950, maybe at 640x480 super low details.
Now an ION netbook (geforce9300m graphics) with a dual core atom it'd almost certainly run, if poorly.

I'd look for a 12" HD screen (13somethingX768), otherwise you're going to be scrolling like mad through the tuning tables. I would also get an SSD or a netbook that comes with one. Not for speed, but for durability. Being able to drop my mini9 without worrying about chunking a HDD is wonderful.
 
I got mine refurbished, it works great.

Make sure the refurb has the resolution you want though.

When you get it, check all the parts @*$@#& carefully, one of my worse dell experiences was buying a laptop said to contain a 7900gs gpu that contained a 7800.
The netbook i got was exactly as it was supposed to be.


Actually, if the mini9 has a high enough resolution for your program, it'd be a great choice. Get a 16gb drive 1gb ram flavor. SSD is slow, but it is very well built and survives falls nicely.
 
I ended up buying an acer aspire one from staples for 299.99. It's the same one on newegg for the same price, but it saves me shipping and time. It has the N450 1.66ghz cpu, 1gb of ram and a 160gb hard drive with windows 7. The hard drive will be sold and I will drop in a ssd and probably another gig of ram. I highly doubt this will run wow, but it does have a newer igp. Its not the intel gma 995 or w/e, its something different. Either way, it still won't play hd video on youtube, but that doesn't really matter to me considering its a 10inch screen lol.
 
asus on newegg has the 1201n 12.1 inch with nvidia ion $499. It can play wow at about 40 fps or more from what i've seen in review with medium ish graphics.
 
What I don't understand is how the IONs are performing so mediocre, my 17'' HP laptop with a Pentium 4 (Hot as hell) and an ATI X600 could run FEAR/WoW/KOTOR with absolutely no problems.

Does the issue rest with the underpowered CPU in these things?
 
The single core atom performs on par with a 2.4ghz northwood P4 with HT.
 
A single Core atom is basically just a P4 built with the Core architecture instead of the Netburst... so it's a lot more efficient, and not anywhere near as much heat... uses less power too :D
 
What I don't understand is how the IONs are performing so mediocre, my 17'' HP laptop with a Pentium 4 (Hot as hell) and an ATI X600 could run FEAR/WoW/KOTOR with absolutely no problems.

Does the issue rest with the underpowered CPU in these things?
Reviews i've all read says the atom 330 with the ion graphics (asus 1201n) plays wow i think at medium settings with 1024 x 768 i think it is at 40ish to 50ish fps.

So things seems to chug along pretty decent. More powerful then my current desktop lol. Plan on ordering it on friday.
 
I wonder if it'd be better to order a Dell Inspiron 15 instead of a Netbook.

Its $650 instead of $500 for an ION Netbook and comes with the Dual-Core i3's and ATI 4330's
 
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