Celeron SU2300 & Pentium SU4100 - CULV on netbooks
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We've been surveying the international markets for the best price/performance netbook money can buy – and would like to qualify the Acer Aspire AS1410, which has a Celeron dual core SU2300 CPU as *the netbook* to hold out out for... The question is, will it ever hit Indian shores?
The AS1410 has many configuration options, but here's what comes standard: 11.6-inch screen, 2 GB DDR2 667 memory (upgradeable to 4 GB), HDMI, a full size keyboard, Multi-touch trackpad, 6-cell Li-ion Battery (4400 mAh), and Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. This netbook best shows how far we've come from the first 7-inch Eee PC netbook from Asus. It's selling at Newegg for $400-499. Compare this to whatever is currently on sale in India and weep.
Liliputting has a review up of a $400 version of the AS1410: “When I ran the same tests on a netbook with an Intel Atom N270 CPU, they took 2-3 times longer to complete. So both versions of the Acer Aspire 1410 blow away a typical netbook when it comes to this kind of CPU-intensive tasks.” “I haven’t seen another machine that offers as much as the Aspire 1410 at this price point.” For $100 more, you can get an even more powerful netbook, the AS1810: Pentium SU4100 (1.3GHz), 11.6", 3GB DDR2, 320GB. ($549 on newegg.com)
Not everyone uses a netbook merely for surfing, email, and word. Try running Photoshop, music, multiple tabs and browsers on the Atom (actually, don't). While gaming and Full HD has been supplanted by Ion gen1 netbooks, for most dedicated geeks, a netbook is something you buy for your girlfriend. Here's why. "The performance of the fastest Atom is still beyond the Celeron product line. The 1.6 GHz Atom is for example comparable to a 1.2 GHz Pentium 3-M / Pentium M (performance wise). The Pinetrail Atom CPUs which contain the GMA 3150 GPU and a DDR2 memory controller offer the same performance as the old Atom N280 and GMA 950 combination." While we're fairly excited about Ion 2, it is clear that it's not the graphics, but the Atom CPU which is the bottleneck. Here's how Passmark rates the Atoms.
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On the other hand, the SU2300 gets 911 points at Passmark.com. A couple of years ago, when CULV and Atom CPUs weren't around, netbooks were called ultralights. These ultralight notebooks would cost you something like $2000! So we've come a long way. At a $400 to $500 range, CULV netbooks are a game changing development, and a viable alternative to a full fledged laptop or notebook that would cost you $800 to $1000 right now. We'll keep our eyes peeled for any such models to hit Indian shores. The endgame for netbooks would be something like an Ion 2 + SU2300/SU4100 combo, which would probably work out to be the best netbook ever, obliterating any discernible performance gaps between a full sized laptop and a netbook. But that's probably a few months down the line.
TAGS:
netbook, netbooks, atom, Acer, Acer Aspire, AS1410, Atom, Celeron, CULV, dual core, EEE PC, HDMI, India, Netbook, Newegg, Passmark, Pentium 3-M, Pentium M, Pinetrail, SU2300, Windows 7