I want to be able to stream in 720p and 1080p (like Hulu and Youtube). Flash 10.1 is finally out, and mobile GPUs are suddenly a lot more useful. MSI Wind12 U230-040US CPU: 1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo X2 L335 RAM: 2GB (1 x 2GB) DDR2-667 GPU: ATI Radeon HD 3200 (Shared VRAM) Battery Life: 3.5ish WLAN: 802.11b/g/n LAN: 10/100/1000Mbps ASUS Eee PC 1201N-PU17-SL CPU: 1.6GHz Intel Atom N330 RAM: 2GB (2 x 1GB) DDR2-800 GPU: NVIDIA ION (9400M) (Shared VRAM) Battery Life: 4.5ish WLAN: 802.11b/g/n LAN: 10/100Mbps Upgrading the MSI's RAM would be cheaper ($49 for another 2GB stick = 4GB total) than doing so for the ASUS ($90 for two 2GB sticks = 4GB total). The ASUS's RAM runs at DDR2-800, slightly faster than the DDR2-667 on the MSI. I think the NVIDIA ION is faster than the HD3200, but by how much? Would streaming video performance be noticeably faster? Since these are netbooks, battery life is actually kind of important, and the ASUS has the upper hand. The MSI has Gigabit LAN and the ASUS doesn't, but it's not like I'd ever really use it anyway. I'm leaning towards the 1201N, because even though its CPU isn't quite as powerful as the Wind's, it's still dual-core and quite capable for a netbook, and streaming video will probably rely more on the GPU (of which the ASUS's is better) than the CPU, and the battery is longer. Upgrading to 4GB of RAM will be more expensive, but it's also an ASUS, so the product will probably have much better tech support and be of higher quality. MSI price: ($479.99+$48.99)=$528.98 ASUS price: ($489.99+$89.99)=$579.98 I would wait for ION 2 netbooks to come out, but so far all the upcoming netbooks with ION 2 include the N450 (single-core) CPU, which is significantly weaker than the N330 (the current dual-core in the ASUS). Advice? Please share your thoughts.
You'd be hard pressed to stream 720p and 1080p content at all on a netbook. I would probably wait for the next gen of netbooks tbh if you can.
It's all in the hardware acceleration man, HD video is within reach of those two netbooks because of their graphics chipsets. The only issue is the screen size; you'll need an external display to see the improved resolution capability. Personally I'd go for the MSI; the AMD processor in that is considerably more powerful than the N330. I was considering going for that Asus a while back until I noticed the awful CPU performance. I then began looking at netbooks with AMD processors and they seemed a lot better in terms of performance, not so much battery life. I instead got the laptop in my sig instead as I realised I no longer need the portability (finishing A levels, not going for uni so I can have extra power when I decide to go anywhere). The 9400M does have the edge over the HD3200, but they're both pretty low power chipsets regardless. I have the original MSI Wind as well (Atom N270 and GMA945 etc.) and it's never ever let me down, even after a year of being slung in my rucksack and squashed by a pile of textbooks while only in the included sleeve. Do you have a specific budget? There was an HP 13" model I saw whilst looking for a laptop, it cost a bit more (had basically the same spec as that MSI) but it had very good reviews, it even had a free matching external DVD drive. These two links were very useful for making my decision: http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphics-Cards-Benchmark-List.844.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Processors-Benchmarklist.2436.0.html Hope this helps!
http://www.liliputing.com/2010/06/d...0-benchmarked-its-fast-for-a-netbook-cpu.html Well, the news is in. Intel's Pinetrail Dual-core N550 isn't much more powerful than the N330, and it ainisnt coming out till "Q3," and school will have already begun by then. Still, if an ION 2 device comes out before then, maybe i'll wait for it, because as a GPU, its apparently much quicker than ION 1 (read in some benchmark somewhere), and I might not need a dual-core CPU in the end. I'm eyeing the EEE PC 1201PN in the mean time.
