Gateway Launches Athlon-powered Netbook

[JMcEntegart]

Gateway has officially announced its LT3103u netbook packing AMD's Athlon 64 L110 and we have to admit, this netbook has us excited.

Gateway Launches Athlon-powered Netbook : Read more

 

[gaevs]

Good, nice specs, way better than Atom, i want one..., the questin, it will have the option to upgrade to Windows 7?

 

[kawininjazx]

Yea, that 1.2Ghz Athlon is going to run like a dog on Vista Basic. The 2GB of memory will help, of course I don't know why all netbooks don't come with two, the cost difference is like $3!!! I would stick with an atom, but I wouldn't mind a netbook bigger than 10 inches.

 

[sakanagai]

Is the lone requirement for a netbook these days simply no optical drive and a slow processor? Designation aside, it should be interesting to see how an Athlon performs in the ultra-cheap sector. The last AMD netbook I remember was the OLPC XO-1 (running a 400 MHz Geode). Any ideas what kind of battery life to expect?

 

[tomtom_32]

Although the cpu is very weak, but i would love something compact and cheap which dosn't shout i'm a netbook, cause of course it's 11 inches!
this could be my ideal laptop.

 

[zodiacfml]

think, it could be twice as fast as the atom.
250GB HDD and 11.6inch screen for $400 is nice. anything about it is good except maybe for the battery life which we don't know yet.

 

[trinix]

It sounds like the best of all worlds. Strong enough to do most of your on the road things, what you'd want a netbook for, yet cheap enough to rival competing Atom netbooks as being better and able to handle things the atom can't.

If I needed a netbook/small laptop, this would be the thing I would get. I'd go for something a bit stronger and bigger though. I want to do more than just that, so it's either going to be a heavy laptop or just a pc, but probably another pc for me.

 

[paranoidmage]

I think Tom's needs to review this and compare it to Atom based netbook.

I have no idea how well this processor can perform, but the better graphics should help.

 

[ricardok]

Why compare it just with Atom? Didn't TH did an ION review? Grab one of those new Athlon Netbooks and throw it in the middle to do a review on all three.. We already know that the ION can kick atoms' butt, but I think that the Athlon does offer a better performance than the Atom at any giving time (tho I think the graphic card will suffer if compared to the 9400M)..

Also, netbooks are all about battery life.. So that has to be reviewed too.

 

[TheMan1214]

Based on the above i would totally go for it, and as for it having windows 7;depending on when it comes out i'd assume there would either be an upgrade deal or just coming with it. Beats a lot of the other netbooks i see out here

 

[thomaseron]

I would buy it.

 

[Niva]

I would buy it if it had linux and was $50 cheaper.

 

[frozenlead]

Looks like the Athlon 64 is getting a new lease on life.

 

[sakanagai]

DailyTech has an article on this,too: link

The machine will come with ATI Radeon X1270 graphics, 250GB HDD, and up to 2GB of RAM with power coming from a 6-cell battery good for up to five hours.

Five hours (3 or so under load) isn't bad for a netbook, but I'd like more from a 6-cell battery. Still, if it the performance is there this machine could be worth a look.

 

[sakanagai]

Sorry, used HTML for the link. fixed

 

[Guest]

It is a single core machine, which is not really as helpful as HT powered cpu's.
Even if the Atom is a smaller processor, it has HT, and therefor the ability to do some virusscanning in the background, while still being snappy in executing small commands like opening windows.

This singlecore device does not have that option, meaning the thread of opening a folder needs to be squeezed in the main thread of the (doubtlessly) faster CPU.
Despite the CPU being faster, it needs to wait for some cycles before it can actually execute the command of opening a folder.
While on a dualcore, or hyperthreading machine, the OS will automatically rout the command to the first available thread or core.

So in my mind, for smaller tasks and office productivity an Atom is much better. Depending on the processor, benchmarks need to describe exactly how fast this 1,2Ghz Athlon CPU compares to a 1,66Ghz Atom processor. Chances are the Athlon will perform better on single threaded applications (like encoding of music), but might or might not be better with dual/quad threaded applications.

Also the battery life will be a large definer of whether or not the device will become a success.
A 3-5 hours battery life with a 1,2Ghz processor isn't really spectacular anymore;in fact, perhaps it is better to go with a Core2Duo machine @2Ghz for $400. They might have an hour less battery life, but they perform at least twice to 4 times as fast.

People that love battery life (that eg: just listen to mp3, and browse web),will prefer a real Atom netbook.
People that prefer performance might go for a budget priced laptop.

I think this netbook is not out of the ordinary, sorry to say; and I see no specific reason as to why buy it!

It is impressive to cram a 1280x800 resolution in 11" though!

 

[aspireonelover]

sure it's more powerful, but when you compare the power/performance ratio, Then I'm not sure about that... I'm pretty sure that Intel's still going to beat AMD. Hands down. Overall, the battery life with the Atom platform will be a bit better for sure.

 

[Regulas]

Interesting, this might be a nice Ubuntu rig. Will keep it mind.

 

[aspireonelover]

[citation][nom]ProDigit80[/nom]It is impressive to cram a 1280x800 resolution in 11" though![/citation]

I totally agree with that statement!

 

[WheelsOfConfusion]

[citation][nom]Regulas[/nom]Interesting, this might be a nice Ubuntu rig. Will keep it mind.[/citation]
Just remember to use an older release, or keep in mind that you'll be limited to the open source driver for the graphics chip. ATI stopped supporting these cards with their official Linux binaries, and the older drivers don't play nice with current X.org.

 

[nachowarrior]

graphics chipset is what interests me the most in any given notebook/netbook on the low end of the price range. If i can get some gaming in at 1024x768 on the go for under 500 bucks that'd be nice. Having said that, intel can't do a decent graphics chip, which makes me wonder why any mfg ever uses them... oh yeah, cuz they're paid to do so.

 

[mcvf]

I think this can beat Atom where Atom lacks - Video playing and some damn heavy web pages. I think that HT mentioned above does not help Atom with this kind of stuff. I also think 5h is not so bad (if I could browse 5h with dimmed screen). Anyway, wanna know keyboard size too! I also think this guy is worthy to do comparison with Atom/Ion/12" Samsung too! Especially tasks where Atom does not shine and "benchmark" of battery life. Damn, the price is pretty good and size is I think just the size for me (10" being quite small, on the edge, 12" quite big for "small" laptop).

 

[mcvf]

Ok I just checked Gateway and it HAS full sized keyboard. So in fact this is cheap light netbook, less the netbook, which is actually so much better!

 

[buzznut]

I like it. Key will be battery life though, I can find netbooks with upwards of 8 hours operating time. Course that's prolly idle time, but portability should mean more than 3 hours away from an outlet.

I don't know how many times I've been disappointed by the minimal battery life of my laptop.

I think $400 is a good deal for the features.

 

[teeth_03]

is the CPU soldered on,or can you replace it? I realize this isnt cost effective, but it would be something to consider