Gateway Launches Athlon-powered Netbook
Gateway has officially announced its LT3103u netbook packing AMD's Athlon 64 L110 and we have to admit, this netbook has us excited.
Weighing in at 3.04 lbs. and 1.03 inches thick, the LT3103u packs AMD’s Athlon 64 L110 single-core CPU (1.2 GHz, 800 MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 Cache), 2 GB of DDR2, ATI Radeon X1270 graphics coupled with an AMD RS690E chipset, a 250 GB hard drive, 802.11b/g, an 11.6-inch high-def WXGA Ultrabrite LED-backlit display, 3 x USB 2.0, VGA, multi-card reader, high-def audio support, a mic, audio out and a 0.3 mp webcam.
Alright so the size of the display (11.6-inches in case you got lost in all the numbers) along with the fact that it ships with Windows Vista Home Basic means it definitely falls into our “this is not a netbook” category. However, its netbook pricetag makes up for all of that. There’s no word on a specific launch date but when it does go on sale, the computer will be available at Best Buy and you can take one home for just $400, which definitely isn’t a bad deal.
What do you guys think? Is there anyone on the market for a netbook and would consider the Gateway LT3103u an option? Let us know!
this could be my ideal laptop.
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.
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.
I have no idea how well this processor can perform, but the better graphics should help.
Also, netbooks are all about battery life.. So that has to be reviewed too.
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.
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!
I totally agree with that statement!
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.