Netbooks are a convenient way to put fun back into computing. They are specifically designed for you to be able to browse the net on the go, but with a few recent additions to the mixture you’ll be able to do much more than that.
Some older netbooks are perfectly fine to check emails and surf the web. I personally think that they’re good for some office work as well, based on my observations. You can watch movies, as long as they’re not high definition, and you’re also able to play some old games.
Nvidia had always wanted a share of this profitable market, but they had nothing to go with the most popular Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, and they had no super-low consumption chips either. They took a chance and went the other way and that meant upping the performance. Nvidia made the Ion platform and with it they made HD video playback in mini notebooks featuring this chip.
It’s basically an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz processor slapped on top of a 9300M video card. I know this chip, I’ve had it in my old Pi3540 Fujitsu-Siemens notebook, and it kind of owned. I was able to play wow without a problem and it gave me respectable performance in other games as well.
Nvidia made sure there are pieces of software that allow using the video chip in the playback process, and after all, made HD video playback in 1080p possible.
The top mini notebook has to be the Asus 1201n. Asus prides itself as the first to enter the netbook market and it’s been guarding its lead since. With the 1201n they really put something remarkable together. It’s built on the solid 9300M video chip for seamless video playback and proper game performance, and comes with a dual-core Atom processor.
The point of putting two of these relatively slow cores into a netbook is to make multitasking a bit better. One Atom core does fairly well, you won’t have any problems getting some light word processing, spreadsheet hammering job done. A dual core version however is a bit of overkill for those with the average approach.
1201N is as good as a netbook gets today and with a price tag less than $500 I see no good reason to buy something else for ultraportable mobility. It has a 5 hours battery time which is a bit short compared to other Asus netbook models, but it’s still more than what majority of people will ever make use of.
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