What is a Mini Notebook Computer Good For?

A mini notebook PC, aka netbook or subnotebook, is a small portable computer with often a little piece of screen and limited memory, computing powers. A mini is generally under 12' of display size, most often 10' or 11.4'-11.6' or 12' for short. 10' netbooks usually have a 1024 pixel wide screen for best net experience. Most net pages are optimized for 1024 pixels so the de facto standard.

Most netbooks aren't great at sheer computing power, they have an inclination to have 1.3-1.6 ghz single core processor manufactured by either via or Intel. These mobile processors are gutted versions of successful processors manufactured by the maker. Intel thrown everything out that raised energy usage by more than one percent for one percent or less computing speed. Atoms therefore lack out of order execution, but have hyperthreading instead. Both technologies affect the velocity of the processor, out of order execution suggests that the core can jump back and forth in a chain of operations, shortage of it causes mathematical calculations to be slower.

no-one really cares about The speed of scientific calculations in a netbook, though. Hyperthreading copies state-registers, which causes the processor to be able to start executing a program then jump on to another without forgetting where it was with the first thread. With this technology the processor gains about five percent speed in a multitasking environment, which frequently happens while reading the net. Just mull it over for a second, perusing the web, listening to music, running MSN to determine if there are inbound instant messages, a file chief in the background, perhaps a word processor to take notes too. Atom is great at this type of work it doesn't like encoding or decoding streams of data, which makes playing hi-def video stressful or impossible altogether.

a mean netbook has one gigs of memory, some models even have 2 but the commonest is the smaller configuration. Plenty enough to do everything listed above all at the same time and I do not see a reason why any one would expect more than this from a mini notebook computer. Cheap models tend to have 160GB hard drive, that's's enough to store 30 DVD quality flicks uncompressed and the operating software. I have not run straight out of it since I have had my Asus eee 1005ha with the same capacity drive, and I have been driving this thing to the edge and back for almost four months.

What truly sells a netbook is its battery life-span. Asus has led the herd, they also have a model with 10.5 hours claimed up time. Tests imply that they are a little exaggerating, but 9.5-10 hours of reading time is achievable.

It's really great what these small portable computers can do. If you have your expectancies high, expect to be disappointed . If you believe they're no good, get one, I promise you will be in for a surprise.