Nvidia CEO: Netbooks are Crappy, Low-Cost PCs

[autoboy]

I have never once felt the need to run anything that needed graphics on my netbook. It is a third PC for me. I use it around the house for browsing the web and I can remote access my PC. I also take it on trips where I use SageTV's placeshifter software to access my entire library of audio and video. It has never had an issue with anything I throw at it. Is it kinda slow? Sure it is. But I knew that going in and use it accordingly. The problem that can arise is if ignorant people buy one thinking they are a normal laptop. However, I still don't know how graphics acceleration would solve that issue.

 

[koss64]

My boss has a Acer Aspire one(160gb version)first thing he did was format it and put Vista Ultimate on it.Runs it beautifully, dreamscene and all,he plays hd movies on it with nary a hitch. He has a extended battery that gives him 7+hours of use(yes we tested it).The bag he got for it looks like a cd case to the untrained eye,in it he puts his charger and his old 3 cell battery, with loads more room to spare.

 

[Teruo]

Why is he talking shlt anyways when the damn Ion is not even ready for netbook!

 

[ph3412b07]

- it can open and edit any office document (that includes CAD, POO, or ray-tracing scenes if such is your line of work) you throw at it

Doubtful. Show me an Atom platform with integrated graphics that can render a multipart assembly in a 3D parametric modeling app.(ex. UGS NX, Pro/E...etc) For 2D drawing, its probably ok.

Everyone knows that the Atom has pathetic processing power. You cannot argue against raw benchmark scores for every application out there. Huang anticipates the next generation of portable processors to be far more capable than current netbooks. As the fab process shrinks to say, 22nm there is going to be enough room to fit a GPU and CPU on the same chip. There is potential to introduce a new platform of laptops/netbooks with real processing power.

 

[Guest]

I think it's quite easy to tell who has a netbook and who doesn't, based on some of the asinine comments that have been made.

My Asus EEE 1000H easily runs OneNote, Word, Excel, Firefox, Digsby, and multiple instances of explorer.exe simultaneously on the Windows 7 platform. The 1.6ghz Atom with 2GB of RAM is more than enough to satisfy these needs. Is it going to be playing games or rendering projects via Photoshop anytime soon? No. It wasn't meant to.

These pompous fools can't see the forest for all the trees; the netbook market is here to stay. They're either going to get on board or get left in the dust.

 

[mitch074]

@ph3412b07: oh, it will take its sweet time opening it - theres's no doubt about that. These machines' raw power is no higher than that of mid-range laptops from 2003. It is, however, OpenGL-capable (I'm not talking about a reduced OpenGL set, I'm talking full Mesa GL support), so it CAN handle it. It's slow, so you can't use it with the full set of goodness and speed the same application would give you on a dual FireGL machine (forget Phong-shaded real-time edits, go back to wireframe), but opening a project file, and then doing a low-res (or medium res if you have some time to kill) rendering for a presentation is very possible - as it's still a PC. A slow one, for sure: like this old workstation you keep in a corner in case your main workhorse craps out right before you have to deliver a project.

This is an extreme case: whoever starts using his netbook as a regular 3D workstation is crazy. However, uses like on-the-go video viewer (think DivX), very small office space (think scrapbook, pen and plane support tablet here, then replace the scrapbook with the netbook, OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp and Xara), portable game console (you do know it's fast enough to run a Neo-Geo emulator and play, say, Metal Slug 3, right?), and you have an idea of what I use my netbook for. It's also very nice to scan USB key for virii, as said higher (and little chance of infecting it, use GNU/Linux 😀)

I have kept a Thinkpad a20m for years (it still works), tweaked every way I could think of, until I ran dry of affordable spare parts (it did have, at one time, 60 Gb of HD space instead of 5, 384 Mb of RAM instead of 64, a wi-fi card with homemade antenna instead of a 56k modem, an ethernet port and an additional USB 2.0 hub); the netbook is everything the Thinkpad was (ok, the higher-def screen is also much more color conforming), for a third of the size. The USB DVD burner I got for another machine also works very well with it.

 

[izzygodenov]

[citation][nom]Tedders[/nom]I don't have my netbook to run Adobe products and the such. That isn't what the thing is designed for so of course it won't run them well. I got the netbook because I didn't need and couldn't afford a larger laptop. $300 is perfectly fine for me with a machine that will run Windows 7 like a champ.[/citation]

I don't know about you, but I have a Compaq laptop with an AMD X2, 1GB RAM, 120GB HD, 802.11g, 15.4 inch screen all for $380 shipped after the minor hassle of a rebate.

 

[aapocketz]

So netbooks break the lock-step of software and hardware progression from generation to generation, growing in size and power and footprint. Higher resolutions, more horsepower, fancier software, etc. I get it, netbooks are counter cultural from that aspect. Software designers can not just assume that everyone has a quad core WQXGA gaming beast anymore. Thats where vista fell flat, it was not designed with flexibility for netbooks. I installed xubuntu on an eeepc and it takes me a while to get the ubuntu installation + apps below 1GB, even using xfce its got so much software and data installed by default.

This should be an opportunity and a challange for hardware makers like Nvidia and software makers alike. With a weak cpu, the customer needs hardware acceleration for video and graphics and power efficient chipsets from nvidia and others. Software manufacturers need to add more flexibility and extensibility to their applications, so it runs well on old hardware with a minimal configuration but still take advantage of cutting edge hardware and plentiful system resources.

 

[pug_s]

AMD has the means to make an Intel Atom competitor today. All of those one laptop per child pc's are powered by amd geode lx processors. They could've made them or the newer amd geode nx (based on the athlon xp processors) and used them. These processors can be made in the 65nm process and the power can be reduced significantly. They can make an ati chipset that is power efficient that utilize the latest ddr2 memory and could easily compete with intel.

 

[captaincharisma]

LOL i know how to change his mind. try to get him to use my old 800mhz laptop with 64MB of ram on it and then use a netbook

 

[Christopher1]

[citation][nom]ravenware[/nom]Sure seems that way. It's application performance is pretty pathetic compared to other low-cost chips. AMD has dual core chips for less than $50 that would annihilate the atom.[/citation]

I have to agree totally. The fact is that I would NEVER buy a netbook for anyone, not even my great-great grandmother were she still alive.
Everyone now is wanting to get into the free online games (which necessitate a pretty good processor), video watching (which needs a good deal of RAM, good hard drive with good reading speeds, and good DVD or Blu-Ray drive, as well as a good processor), and web page making.

Simply put.... for two out of three, a netbook will NOT do in the slightest.

 

[Guest]

I think they're crap, personally (I'm a big guy and I have huge hands so it feels like a kid's toy to me) - but I'd get one for my mother or someone older who really has no use for the thing other than word processing and e-mail and is technophobic (and has small hands).

I think they're good for certain people, namely women that are tech-averse. Some women I know that aren't seriously into computing like them better than notebooks for a bunch of reasons. One is that they come in colors that they like. I'm serious. If laptop makers would get on that, they'd sell more. It's marketing 101, guys. They also fit in a purse (and yes, tons of women I know has one of these things in her purse now). They do have really good battery life and they're small so they're good if you have a long commute via public transportation. Have to give the Atom credit where it's due.

That said, for the populace with larger hands and who run more demanding games or apps, it's a ripoff. I bought an Acer laptop for $450 that can actually run some games circa 2003-2004ish pretty well. I even got it to run NWN2 once I upgraded to 4g of RAM.