Pink Netbook - Not only for Girls/Women!

For a women/girl the appearance and color of an object/netbook is a very important decision criteria. This is something men rarely understand... Pink is one important fashion color since a few years now.
A prepared a selection of pink netbooks for all price ranges, first the best (and most expensive...) followed by many netbooks of the $270-330 range.
Last but not least, don't forget to find a nice bag fitting the new netbook!

It's simply beautiful and perfect...
....for your Valentine Day 2010 gift: ASUS Eee PC Seashell Karim Rashid Collection 1008P-KR-PU17-PI 10.1-Inch Netbook - Hot Pink
Designed from Karin Rashid, Indian origin and actually living in Paris, Karin Rashid is one of the most important modern designers.
For $499.99 (USD) it isn't the cheapest netbook out there however: what a netbook! It features a breathtaking design that includes a 10.1" frameless LED backlit display and an ergonomic chiclet keyboard. This beauty is matched by an excellent build quality, keyboard and high end feature for a netbook. Actually it isn't just for women/girls or valentine day: I lile very much this netbook and I'm seriously thinking of getting it for myself...
ASUS Eee PC Seashell Karim Rashid Collection 1008P-KR-PU17-PI

• Intel Atom N450 Processor 1.66GHz (new Intel Pineview processor!)
  
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
  
• 320GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM) + 500GB Free Web Storage; Windows 7 Home Premium Operating System
• 10.1-Inch Frameless Color-Shine 1024x600 WSVGA LCD Display; 802.11 b/g/n; Bluetooth Enabled, 1.3Mpixel Webcam
  
• 6-cell battery for 6+ hours battery life.
  

As you can see above, compared to main stream netbooks, the Eee PC Seashell Karim Rashid Collection 1008P got double as much RAM (2GB) and hard drive (320GB). Furthermore you get Windows 7 Home Premium instead of Windows 7 Starter.

If you want to spend less
I found a very good offer for you: $299.99 to preorder the Asus EEE PC Seashell 1001P-MU17-PI, up to 11 hours of battery life and the new Atom N450 (Pineview processor).

In any case you still can find good fashion pink netbooks for about $300
all of them with the Atom N270 or N280 processor, 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, 10.1-inch display. Most of them got also a high capacity battery and Windows XP, some of them got Windows 7 Starter edition.

A selection of other good pink netbooks I found

• Toshiba Mini NB205-313/P for $327 (Windows XP, up to 9 hours battery)
• Asus EEE PC 1005HA-VU1X-PI for $319.77 (Windows XP, up to 8.5 hours battery)
  

Pink netbooks below $300

• Lenovo S10-2 for $294.93 (Windows 7 Starter, up to 6 hours battery)
  
• MSI Wind U100-427 for $279.99 (only 2.5 hour battery life)

Netbook with HD Video (HDMI and HDTV) - Dell Mini 10 (Inspiron 1010)

As far as I know the Dell Mini 10 (Inspiron 1010) the only 10-inch "HD/HDTV capable" netbook: the Mini 10 got an HDMI interface (instead of VGA) and an integrated HDTV digital TV receiver.
The best is that now the price of the Mini 10 dropped to $329.99 (down from $399.99)

Complete feature set of the
Dell Inspiron Mini 10 10.1-Inch Obsidian Black Netbook with Integrated TV Tuner - Up to 6 Hours 20 Minutes of Battery Life (Windows 7 Starter)

• Processor: Atom 1.6GHz Intel Z530 (512K Cache, yes it isn't a typo! It isn't the N270.
• 1GB DDR2 SDRAM Memory
• 160GB Hard Drive
• HDTV internal Digital TV Receiver (ATS), Mini TV Antenna
• HDMI digital display out insteady of VGA (analog)!
  
• 10.1-inch display, 1024x600
• Integrated Intel 500 Media Accelerator
• 1.3M Pixel Webcam
• 6 Cell Battery
  
• Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card (802.11g)
• No Bluetooth, you can easy find a cheap Bluetooth dongle
  
• Windows 7 Starter

The main reason for the significant price drop is the introduction of the new Atom N450 (1.66GHz Pineview) netbooks, for this reason OEMs and shops are trying to sell all remaining Atom N270/N280 netbooks.

All major netbook brands are already shipping or at least announced new models with the just released Intel Atom N450 (1,66GHz Pineview).
As far as I know only a couple of netbooks are really shipping with the new Atom N450

• Asus EEE PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17-BK for about $370
• MSI Wind U135-206US for $324.99

Stereo Music with your Netbook - Bluetooth Headset Review

What are the use cases for Bluetooth in laptops/netbooks?
The most common is probably to link and synchronize the cellular phone, on the other hand the Bluetooth link is very slow if compared to (wired!) USB2.0.
The most sensful application I found so far for Bluetooth on netbook is to connect a Bluetooth headset for VoIP calls (e.g. Skype) and listen to music and internet radio/video. I personally think that Bluetooth isn't a must in the standard netbook feature set, if you want you can buy a decent adapter for $10-20 (USD).
I wouldn't restrict the netbook choice to Bluetooth only devices. In any case my Dell Mini 10v got an integrated Bluetooth interface.
See also Netbook and Bluetooth: integrated vs dongle

Last week I finally got a stereo Bluetooth headset to be used with my Dell Mini 10v (Inspiron 1011). Actually I bought a rather cheap one (Aiptek BW-M02, about $30) since I wanted to limit the damage, actually I wasn't really clear on the real advantage of a stereo Bluetooth headset.
The Aiptek BW-M02 is relatively light, the loudness, fit and link quality are ok, A2DP is of course supported. Very good: a 3,5mm to Bluetooth adapter is also provided, it means that you can connect the Bluetooth headset to any PC/laptop/netbook with a sound out interface and most of the sound systems in the market, you just need a standard 3,5mm sound out jack. Furthermore a mic is integrated, it means that you can use the headset for VoIP calls (with your netbook/laptop) and normal cellular phone calls. The pairing process was easy, however I lost a few mimutes to understand how to enable it on my Mini 10v (just enable the sound sink). There are dedicated volume buttons as well as a pairing and a mechanical on/off button.
Now to the negative side: sound quality is not that good, far below any $15 corded headset you can buy, furthermore you hear some background noise especially with low volume/silence. On the other hand I was clear on the fact that such a cheap stereo Bluetooth headset can't provide a very good sound quality: most of the stereo Bluetooth headsets cost more at least $50-70 (USD).

UPDATE: I got major problems with the Aiptek headset and I will return it!

All in all I'm very happy with the Aiptek BW-MA02, no wires any more, I can use it for both my netbook and my cellular phone to listen to music and place calls when I'm out. For home/office I prefer corded headsets or Bluetooth headsets with better audio quality such as the Sony DRBT50 Bluetooth Stereo Headset

Intel Atom N470 Netbook Expected Benchmarks/Performance

First benchmarks show that the new Atom N450 doesn't really bring more performance to the netbook world: processor core, caches 512KB) and clock (1.66GHz) don't differ very much from Atom N280. The only architectural change with impact on performance is the integrated memory controller: this allows memory access with a significant lower latency. On the other hand hyperthreading works less efficiently with lower memory latency, in fact hyperthreading uses the CPU memory access stalls to alternate execution between the two threads.

Intel Atom N470 is clocked at 1.86GHz and got the same N450 technical spec, actually they share exactly the same design/gates.
What is the performance improvement that we will get in the Atom N470? The 12% higher clock will be visible in benchmarks, improving performance linearly up to 12%. Nothing revolutionary, Intel Atoms are CPUs designed for low power and low cost. It's in Intel interest to maintain a certain performance gap between the cheap Atom and the CULV processors. In any case Atom N450 and N470 are not able to decode HD video without some external accelerators (such as BCM70015).
Intel won't significantly improve Atom performance as long as some serious competitors appears in the netbook market: this year something can move with the upcoming netbooks (smartbooks) ARM Cortex A9.

See also

• HD Video for Netbooks: with Atom Nvidia Ion or ARM CPU?
  
• ARM11 vs Cortex A8 vs Cortex A9 - Netbooks processors
  
• Nvidia Tegra 2 for Dual Core Netbooks/Smartbooks in 2010
  

New netbook bestseller EEE PC 1005PE with Intel Atom N450 (Pineview)

The Asus EEE PC 1005PE is one of the first netbooks equipped with the new Atom N450 (Pineview), availble since a week or so and already a big success: the ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17-BK is currently number 1 of the netbook Amazon besteseller list. Not really unexpected since the Asus EEE PC Seashell 1005PE is kind of successor of the bestseller EEE PC Seashell 1005HA, to be noted that the 1005PE improves the already excellent battery life of the 1005HA: 14 hourse for the 1005PE vs 10.5hours for the 1005HA. Of course an additional sale boost is the fact that the 1005PE is the first netbook shipping with Atom N450.

Some technical data for the Asus EEE PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17

• 1.66GHz processor (Intel Atom N450)
• 1GB RAM, 2GB Max
• 250GB hard drive
• 10.1 inch display (glossy)
• Windows 7 Starter
• 6 cells battery: up to 14 hours battery life!!
• 0.3 megapixel webcam
• high speed wifi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth

As also mentioned in the posts below, the new Atom N450 is much more power optimized and doesn't offer a performance upgrade compared to the older Atom N270 and N280.

• Atom Power Consumption - Pineview TDP vs first Generation Atom
  
• Benchmarks Intel Atom N450 Pineview Performance
• Intel Atom N450 (Pineview) vs Atom N280 vs N270 Benchmarks

Benchmarks Intel Atom N450 Pineview Performance

In a previous post I published benchmarks comparing the new Intel Atom N450 to the Atom N270 and N280, the conclusion was that all three netbook processors got a very similar performance level. The Atom Pineview/Pine Trail architecture is a significant integration step allowing lower power consumption and lower price, a minimum performance boost is expected for the Atom N470, clocked at 1,86GHz (200MHz higher than Atom N280).

Anandtech published a very nice article benchmarking the Asus EEE PC 1005PE (Atom N450) vs the topseller EEE PC 1005HA (Aton N280)

I cite Anantech: "1005PE is slightly faster than the 1005HA. The difference in most of the tests is hardly worth discussing (1-2%)".
The 1005PE got much better results in the DivX encoding test, however it seems that this is due to the fact that the performance boost is due solely to the operating system (Windows 7 for 1005PE and Windows XP for 1005HA). This seems to be confirmed by the fact that the netbook with Dual core Atom 330 (EEE PC 1201N and Windows 7) got a 120% improvement vs the EEE PC 1005HA (Atom N280): "but in the DivX encoding test we see a whopping 63% increase. This might be another Windows 7 vs. XP difference, as the 1201N performance relative to the 1005HA is a 120% increase, which obviously shouldn't happen if you just double the core count.".

UPDATE:

• Intel Atom N450 (Pineview) vs Atom N280 vs N270 Benchmarks
  
• Intel Atom N470 Netbook Expected Benchmarks/Performance
  
• HD Video for Netbooks: with Atom Nvidia Ion or ARM CPU?
  
• ARM11 vs Cortex A8 vs Cortex A9 - Netbooks processors
  
• Nvidia Tegra 2 for Dual Core Netbooks/Smartbooks in 2010

Intel Atom N450 (Pineview) vs Atom N280 vs N270 Benchmarks

The first netbooks with Atom N450 (Pineview, 1.66GHz) are already shipping and much more are going to be released in the next few weeks:

• Shipping: ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1005PE-PU17-BU 10.1-Inch Blue Netbook - Up to 14 Hours of Battery Life $379.99 (USD)
  
• Shipping: ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-PU17-BK 10.1-Inch Black Netbook - Up to 11 Hours of Battery Life $339.99 (USD)

In the meantime some few Pineview netbooks arrived to the press and the first benchmarks are out: bottom line the Atom N450 doesn't bring more horse power to netbooks using the new Atom generation. The situation will definetly change with the Atom N470: the higher clock (1.83GHz) will help a bit to improve netbook performance.

I put together some benchmark results

• notebookcheck.com: Asus EEE PC 1005PE (Atom N450) and EEE PC 1008HA (Atom N280)
• endgadget.com: Asus EEE PC 1005PE (Atom N450) and EEE PC 1008HA (Atom N280)
• ndevil.com: Acer Aspire One D150 (Atom N280) and Aspire One A150 (Atom N270)

The wPrime (32M) and Cinebench R10 (2 threads) clearly show that the Atom N450 is positioned at the Atom N280 level. Only 3DMark06 test shows some slightly better values for the pinewiew (Atom N450).

More details on Atom N450 and N470 performance

(click pictures to enlarge)

Atom Power Consumption - Pineview TDP vs first Generation Atom

I wanted to compare power consumption of the new Pine Trail platform (Intel N450/N470 Pineview + NM10 chipset companion) compared to the "old" Diamondville Atom N270/N280 and chipset.
It looks like the only official/reliable information available is the Thermal Design Power (TDP), this figure gives only a very limited view of the overall power consumption: the TDP (as defined by Intel) is a metric of the chip CPU/chipset power consumption under relatively high load (not worst case tough!). This number is especially relevant to the OEMs in order to properly design the system cooling.

It is interesting to see that the new Atom N450 got a TDP of 5,5Watt, while Atom N270 and N280 got a TDP of 2,5Watt.
The higher TDP is justified by the new Pine Trail architecture: beside CPU core and caches, the main chip (Pineview) integrates memory controller and especially the graphics engine.
In the first Atom platform memory controller and graphics subsystem where integrated in a dedicated chip (945GSE) connected to the main chip (Atom N270/N280) via the FSB.
In both platforms the I/O is provided by a separate chip: NM10 for the Pine Trail and ICH7M for the first Atom generation.

TDP for Atom N270/N280 vs Atom N450
If you consider the platform TDP you see that the overall TDP is lower in the new Pine Trail platform

• TDP for Pine Trail: 5,5Watt (Atom N450) + 2,1Watt (NM10) = 7,6Watt
• TDP for first generation Atom: 2,5Watt (Atom N270/N280) + 6Watt (945GSE) + 3,3Watt (ICH7M) = 11,8Watt

As you can see there is about 4Watt TDP difference between the two platforms, this is of course a very welcome news since it is a sign that the Pine Trail platform will relax the cooling requirements and also improve battery life (under heavy load) or allow using smaller batteries.
This relatively high TDP difference is due especially to the fact that the 945GSE was a pretty old design, cheap enough to be used in netbooks. If I well remember Intel's original plan was do deploy Atom with the GN40 chipset: as of today I don't find anymore any information on the Intel website about this chipset.

In a future post I'm going to add a comparison to the Nvidia Ion chipset.

First Atom Pineview/Pine Trail Netbooks for Preorder/Sale

The first Intel Atom Pineview/Pine Trail netbooks are available for preorder at Amazon!

Amazon.com (USA): ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P-PU17-WT for $339.99 USD
Amazon.de (Germany): Asus Eee PC 1005P for 279 EUR

The big news is the Intel Pine Trail platform with the Intel Atom N450 (Pineview) clocked at 1.66GHz and NM10 chipset. The rest is pretty standard in both netbooks: 10.1 matte display (good!), 1GB RAM Windows 7 Starter, decent keyboard, 6-cell battery (rated up to 11 hours), 0.3Mpixel webcam, "slow Wifi" (802.11.b/g) and 3xUSB 2.0 interfaces.
There is a difference in the hard drive: 250GB for the ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1001P and 160GB for the Asus Eee PC 1005P.

Availability of new Netbooks with ARM and Atom Pineview 2010

These days you see Toshiba, Samsung, Acer, Lenovo and other OEMs announcing the new netbook generation based on the new Intel Atom N450 (Pineview, 1.66MHz clock) and ARM cores.
So far these are only announcements, the first Intel Pineview netbooks are going to be available end of January 2010.
Spring 2010 will see the first interesting news IMHO: Skylight, the first ARM based netbook from Lenovo (Qualcomm Snapdragon) is going to be shipped and the first Intel Atom N470 netbooks should be available as well.
The Atom N470 got a higher CPU clock: 1.86MHz and is going to provide the first real life performance improvements since the introduction of the Atom N270 (1.6GHz, vs 1.66 of the Atom N280 and N450). I'm really curious to see the first benchmarks...