Netbook

cuddlyeconomist has been wanting a more portable computer because Rhys likes to do video chat with her regularly. Her current laptop is a great machine, but its a little bulky and while not the heaviest laptop around, the weight does push up her backpack load for a school day to an uncomfortable level especially once you throw in the power brick.

We got a Dell Mini 9 at work to play with, so I brought it home for her to check out. She liked it, but it had a lot of issues for me. Yes it was really light-weight, but the Intel GMA 500 is a sucktastic Intel Integrated Graphics part which does not play well with the already under-powered Atom CPU. It also came preloaded from Dell with half of the 60 GB hard drive hidden for their silly preboot software, which makes the Windows XP OEM image seem really anemic. Flattening it with retail Windows 7 was at least a big improvement. After putting Windows 7 on the Dell Mini 9, it also became apparent that the Intel GMA 500 WDDM drivers were not up to snuff not properly redrawing many parts of the desktop. Getting it to run Direct3D applications was also an experience in sad. The undersized keyboard worked for her, but I can't really type on it with normal adult male sized hands--at least as anything but hunt & peck, and I'm a touch-typist.

I was not impressed. Yes it was super light-weight to carry around all day to check email and browse the web, but it could barely run a Flash website. The Intel Integrated Graphics parts have been a bane on PC desktops for years, but they had a helping hand from dual-core CPUs. Pairing it with an Atom made it just a really big smartphone in terms of power without the ability to text or make a call.

With the release of Windows 7, I was expecting to see some new form-factor machines release and perhaps the netbook could be saved from being one step up from an OLPC machine. Recently someone pointed me at the HP 311. Office Depot is having a sale on the older model (comes with Windows XP, 1 GB of RAM, and NVIDIA's ION LE graphics) for $350. The newer model (Windows 7, 3 GB of RAM, ION) was ~$550 on the HP website. Since I could easily get retail software from the company store, I just picked up an extra 2 GB memory stick for $50 and the result is actually a quite nice machine. The overall size is slightly smaller than the Dell Mini 9, whose battery sticks out a bit, and the NVIDIA ION is a huge step up from the Intel GMA 500. The interface is snappy, and while Direct3D games need to be in the lowest detail settings, they actually can play at a reasonable framerate. The HP 311 is also field upgradeable with easy access to the hard disk, memory expansion slot, and the wireless card.

The only difference between the ION LE and the ION is that ION supports Direct3D 10, while ION LE does not. It seems this is just a driver hack difference as well rather than any actual physical hardware difference, likely to cut off some support costs for what had been a Windows XP only machine. There doesn't seem to be any actual difference in terms of performance, and its not like you'd be wanting to try Crysis on a netbook in any case. It does steal 256 MB of the system RAM for the video, but with 3 GB installed Windows 7 and the usual applications running do fine on the remaining 2.75 GB.

As with all netbooks, it does suffer for not having a CD or DVD player. For most software, you can work around this by having a desktop and a reasonably large USB drive. This also means that most games can't be installed on it because they need the physical CD/DVD for their copy-protection. MMOs work fine of course, and if you just used Steam, Gametap, or no CD cracks then that probably won't stand in your way.

The WinSAT score for the Dell Mini 9 machine came in as:

Processor 1.9; Memory 4.2 (1 GB); Graphics 2.9; Gaming Graphics 2.5; Primary hard disk 4.2

The WinSAT score for the HP 311 machine came in as:

Processor 2.2; Memory 4.5 (3 GB); Graphics 4.5; Gaming Graphics 4.1; Primary hard disk 5.6

For basic operations, it is working out great. It chugs trying to do any real multitasking, but you can avoid that easily enough. Combined with Remote Desktop to my other PCs, its a comfortable way to compute from the living room. HP is selling them as a "PC Companion", and they are definitely not up to the rich-client experience. You could get away with a USB CD/DVD drive instead of having a desktop to get files onto it, but I think the overall experience is much improved when its just another device on your home network rather than trying to use it as your only computer.

In any case Margo is super-pleased with it and talking to Rhys on it right now. I'm tempted to go buy 2 more of the things...

Update: I just got one of these HP Mini 311s for work. I got the newer model spec'd for Windows 7 and the slightly upgraded Atom:

Processor 2.3; Memory 4.6 (3 GB); Graphics 4.8; Gaming Graphics 5.4; Primary hard disk 5.9