Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post

Martian · 11-30-2009, 12:03 PM

Any laptop with a price tag under $500 or so is likely to be based on a low-cost, low-power CPU (Intel Atom or Via C7, generally). But that's okay.

See, the reason netbooks caught on like wildfire is because you're like most people. The overwhelming majority of people who own and use PCs don't play games or do A/V editing or any of that really heavy duty stuff. Most folks listen to mp3's, update their facebook status 80 times a day and check email. Maybe in these harsh economic times they'll update their resume, but that's really about the extent of it. As an extension of that, most people don't need quad-core 3 GHz CPU's and gobs of RAM to do the things they want to do.

That Atom is a fine budget processor line. It's not going to play the latest or greatest games and you're not going to want to run Photoshop on those bad boys, but for browsing and the occasional .doc it'll work great.

Far more important than the individual processor used is going to be the overall build quality. I don't have enough experience with these things to make and concrete recommendations yet, but I will say that I've always like Lenovo and Acer for laptops. I think you'd probably do okay with one of those.

11-30-2009, 12:03 PM	#2 (permalink)
Martian Young Crumudgeon Location: Canada	Any laptop with a price tag under $500 or so is likely to be based on a low-cost, low-power CPU (Intel Atom or Via C7, generally). But that's okay. See, the reason netbooks caught on like wildfire is because you're like most people. The overwhelming majority of people who own and use PCs don't play games or do A/V editing or any of that really heavy duty stuff. Most folks listen to mp3's, update their facebook status 80 times a day and check email. Maybe in these harsh economic times they'll update their resume, but that's really about the extent of it. As an extension of that, most people don't need quad-core 3 GHz CPU's and gobs of RAM to do the things they want to do. That Atom is a fine budget processor line. It's not going to play the latest or greatest games and you're not going to want to run Photoshop on those bad boys, but for browsing and the occasional .doc it'll work great. Far more important than the individual processor used is going to be the overall build quality. I don't have enough experience with these things to make and concrete recommendations yet, but I will say that I've always like Lenovo and Acer for laptops. I think you'd probably do okay with one of those. __________________ I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said - Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame