Mini notebooks have been on the market for more than three years, and during these years they’ve proven their worth. If you’re looking for a laptop that doesn’t break the budget, fast enough for general use and easy to carry around, you don’t need to look any further.
Netbooks are installed with an Intel Atom processor of some description, and while there are differences in manufacturing technology, instruction sets used and a few quirks, they’re mostly identical. There are VIA processor based solutions on the market as well, but they’re rather hard to spot nowadays, and their performance doesn’t hit the levels Atom CPUs comfortably bring.
The most often used variations of the processor are N270 and N450. Both are single core units and use a similar instruction core, their performance is about the same, too, but there are differences between them you should know about.
N270 is just a processor, manufactured using 45nm technology. It’s clocked at 1.6GHz with the multiplier dynamically changing between 6 and 12 thanks to Intel’s Enhanced SpeedStep. The TDP (typical power consumption) under load is 2.5W, the battery life therefore can stretch to more than 6 hours using a traditional 62 watt hour 6 cell unit.
On the other hand N450 is an integrated central unit consisting of the processor core, a graphics processing unit and a memory controller. While the main aspects of the processor are similar to that of an N270(speed, L2 cache, operating speed and Front Side Bus frequency) the TDP is more. The processor draws 5.5 watts during operation, which would seem like a step back from the older solution, in fact it isn’t.
Mini notebooks built on N270 used some older GPUs, GMA945 or GMA950 from intel, the new one comes with 3150 manufactured on 45nm. It leaves little space for the brands to move around with different designs and different parts used, leading to unified products. There is no space for different GPUs, different chipsets, which causes Nvidia to lose some of its market share, but makes netbooks with longer battery life.
If you take a look at N450 based computers, you’ll see that their wireless productivity figures are much higher than that of a N270 netbook thanks to the higher efficiency achieved through higher level of integration.
For those who are starting out with looking for a netbook there is one option really, the N450 is a more recent, more advanced design, but the price is a bit higher too. It’s still worth it to opt for a computer using the core over an N270. Those who are more price conscious may still consider getting the older one, not just because they’re cheaper, but because the difference is not going to break the true netbook experience. We’re talking about 5-7 hours of battery life versus 9-12 and the same overall performance.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mika_Staplesson
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