Power or Portability?




Hey, my always-connected buddy, you can sit on top of me!
Are you really doubtful to the lilliputians? Don't know what a netbook computer can do for you. Intel made videos comparing their 2 very popular microprocessor technologies for mobile PCs: the Intel Centrino and the Intel Atom.

Video 1: On processing power


Video 2: On multimedia


Video 3: On portability


Does Intel want to mislead you? In the bigger picture of mobile computing, netbooks were meant to be the smaller, more compact form of a laptop, powerful enough to browse the Internet with ease. With small screens, small keyboards, small form, it's portable enough to take anywhere where there's a spot to connect to the Internet. You will think, though, that you can just throw off this device when you aren't satisfied because of its mediocre processing power. Think again.

In most parts, many of my schoolmates here in UP Mindanao whose families come from the lower middle to low income brackets could not afford those big, powerful laptops sporting Intel Core or AMD Athlon II / Phenom processors. Therefore, the devices they can only afford are:



1) refurbished laptops of "olden times" such as those having the old-generation Intel Celeron and Pentium 4 processors or  with super low RAM (256 MB, more or less) and oh-so-slow, oh-so-small hard drive (40 GB, more or less); and,

2) netbooks (what else?)

So, what have they used netbooks for? My current research for ENG 10 will have a complement survey for netbook users in the University on what software they use in these miniature devices. I have initially observed that most of my schoolmates do tasks not so common for a netbook such as programming, calculations, audio and video editing, graphics design are being done. For instance, about half of Computer Science studes who have mobile PCs own netbooks like the HP Mini 210, the ASUS Eee PC 1215PEM, the Neo Basic B3360, and the Acer Aspire One D255. And they use these small devices for their programming tasks, even at the SP (thesis) stage such as with my fellow batchmates who are developing large-scale applications, coded either in PHP, MySQL, Ajax, Java SE, and others, even Flash! They don't mind about the sluggishness, they just want their application to work. Applied Mathematics students use hard-core mathematics applications such as Maxima, R Commander, Mathematica, Statistica, Matlab, gretl, and SPSS. They don't mind about the sluggishness, they just want accurate results. A few Communication Arts students used a mid-2000s era video rendering application on a netbook. They don't mind about the longer time, they just want to have the finished product.

They just want things to work right.

Let's just see in the results of my research.
Anyways, let me share a "PC vs. Mac"-like video, but it gives a comparison of a netbook and a laptop.



Who wins? It depends upon your usage.

KENNETH

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