Gigabyte M912 for sale: touchscreen netbook

The Gigabyte M912 finally reached the market, for 515 Euros you get in Germany the Windows XP configuration with 1GB RAM, 8.9-inch display, Webcam, 160GB hard disk, 3xUSB, cardreader, WLAN, Bluetooth and a 4-cells battery. The CPU is (of course) an Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz.
To be noted that the Gigabyte netbook is also available with Windows Vista!
The most interesting feature is the display, letting the Gigabyte M912 turn into a tablet pc or better, a tablet netbook!

See also a picture of the Gigabyte M912

More news on EEE PC Competition

Feature Set Summary Table: Compare EEE PC vs MSI Wind vs Acer Aspire One vs Gigaset M912 vs other competitors

The subnotebooks market is growing rapidly, that's why now is time to make some order...

I've prepared a table to compare feature set of EEE PC, MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One, Gigaset M912 and other subnotebooks

I'll try to update the table with the latest information I have: price, weight, LCD size, HDD/SDD size, processor, interfaces and so on!

See this table

See also EEE Journal

EEE PC Competition - Gigabyte M912 in June

After the Asus announcement of an EEE PC with Intel Atom CPU, also Gigabyte announced a cheap subnotebook, the model M912 with availability in June this year with the same CPU. According to the source the subnotebook is equipped with a 8.9 inch panel and possibly Bluetooth. Price and OS are not disclosed yet.

More on EEE Journal Home Page

Bluetooth for Aspire One A150, Samsung NC10, Medion Akoya Mini E1210 netbooks

UPDATE: Netbook and Bluetooth - Integrated vs USB Dongle

Please go directly to the newest post, since the Bluetooth dongle suggested in this post may have major software problems!

You want to buy the netbook that best fits you (e.g. using the netbook features database),
you are close to buy a top class netbook/mini laptop, such as the Samsung NC10, the Acer Aspire A150 or the Medion Akoya Mini E1210 when you see that it is missing a Bluetooth interface. What to do? You really need Bluetooth in the netbook to synchronize the mobile phone calendar or just to listen to music!
My suggestion: Bluetooth support in the netbook shouldn't be a go/not go criteria, you can simply add Bluetooth support using a Bluetooth USB dongle, there are many starting just below $10 (USD) and some of them are so tiny that you even won't see it.
This micro USB Bluetooth adapter simply disappears in the USB port of your netbook, so you can plug it once and forget it. You won't notice it! No damage to break it!
The Samsung NC10 or the Acer Aspire A150 got 3 USB ports so you'll have "just" two USB ports left, however it is far enough for 99% of us!

(At the time of writing) Beside the mentioned one, many other netbooks aren't equipped with a Bluetooth port: the HP MiniNote 2133, Acer Aspire A110, Fukato Jupiter, Lenovo Ideapad S9/S10, Fujitsu Amilo Mini Ui3520, Gigabyte M912, EEE PC 700/701/900/901. So if you really like the netbook however you miss Bluetooth, just buy an USB dongle/adapter!

Important! Installing a Bluetooth USB dongle/adapter is matter of minutes with Windows XP, for a Linux netbook the installation is a bit more complex and you need a minimal linux experience, look here for instructions on EEE PC (mostly similar for other netbooks).

UPDATE: Netbook and Bluetooth - Integrated vs USB Dongle

Please go directly to the newest post, since the Bluetooth dongle suggested in this post may have major software problems!


Remember that using the EEE Journal Netbook database helps find your dream netbook, with or without Bluetooth and refining the search with many other paramenters (operating system, size, battery, etc...)
http://www.eeejournal.com/2008/12/netbook-feature-database.html

Dual Core Atom 330 not yet for netbooks/ laptos

Related posts about dual core Atom processor and Intel Atom processor

I want to stress the fact that the dual core Atom 330 CPU announced a couple of weeks ago targets only desktop pcs.
The facts: the dual core Atom 330 will be available starting September 21st for the nettops markets (low budget desktops). The news appearing in several blogs stating that the first dual core Atom netbooks will appear in September is IMHO false (see also here). There are some rumors that the newest EEE PC and/or the Gigabyte M912 will host the Atom 330, however these are just rumors. I wouln't be a cent on it.
It is no question that first or late EEE PC, MSI Wind and competition will get a dual core CPU, however I think that now it is too early especially with current prices of 400 Euro and above for a decent 10-inch netbook.

Related posts about dual core Atom processor and Intel Atom processor
See other posts about Netbook technology news

EEE PC, MSI Wind, Acer Aspire One, HP Compaq Mininote, Gigabyte M912 for sale: is it the right moment to buy an ultra portable laptop / subnotebook ?

The answer is definitely not! Don't buy an EEE PC, MSI Wind or similar in the next couple of months!
If you want to buy an ultra portable laptop / subnotebook / netbook you'd better wait at until August-September this year.
Last announcement is of Acer, the Aspire One and many new models are coming, also something from Sony. It means healthy competition, the EEE PC is not alone and now we are getting more and more choice at lower prices due to the availability of many ultra portable laptops and also from the announced price reduction for Windows XP licences for netbooks .

For all posts about EEE PC competitions see
http://www.eeejournal.com/search/label/EEE%20PC%20Competition

or see also EEE Journal Home Page.

EEE PC Competition - One A120 and A110 - Cheap EEE PC 4G alternative?

In the past couple of months several laptop brands announced subnotebook alternatives to EEE PC . One announced the models A120 and A110. The One A120 is very similar to the EEE PC 4G, marketed in Germany at 279 Euro and equipped with a VIA C7 1GHz processor, 512MB DDR2, 4GB SDD, WLAN, 7-inch display, webcam and especially Windows XP home.
The A110 uses Linux and is priced at 229 Euro, misses a webcam and has only a 2GB SDD.

I've already posted a few articles about subnotebooks / ultra portable pcs in direct competition to EEE PC, see also

• HP Compaq Mininote 2
• HP Compaq Mininote 1
• MSI Wind 3
• MSI Wind 2
• MSI Wind 1 - Atom CPU vs Celeron
• Gigabyte M912
• MSI Wind, EasyNote, Elox One, OLPC and Dell Vostro

EEE Journal Home Page

EEE PC vs MSI Wind - Atom vs Celeron CPU Performance Benchmark

See also

• new tests/benchmarks, (hot post)
• All posts about Benchmarks
• All posts about Performance
• All posts about dual core Atom

A German site (Computerbase) run the SuperPI benchmark on a Asus R70A UMPC equipped with the Atom 1,6 GHz (Silverthorne), the new Intel CPU targeting MID, UMPC and ultra portable devices.
The same processor is going to be equipped in the MSI Wind and in new EEE PCs and Gigabyte M912.

At a first glance the result seems a bit disappointing for a new CPU: the 1,6 GHz Atom CPU seems slower than the 900 MHz Celeron CPU found in EEE PC 900 and much slower than the 1,73 GHz Pentium M 740.
Number talks you may say: just considering the lower end

• 1,13 GHz Pentium III-M (Tualatin) 01:55 minutes (worse)
  
• 1,6 GHz Atom (Silverthorne) 01:48 minutes
• 900 MHz Celeron (Dothan-512) 01:28 minutes
• 1,73 GHz Pentium M 740 (Dothan) 00:46 minutes

However the Intel Atom has a bigger potential, not shown from this benchmark!
Some facts

1. The german guys compared a pre-production product (with Atom processor) against mature products! We all know that pre-production products are often not very optimized and this is probably the case. Furthermore, the benchmark run on a UMPC: these kind of products are optimized for battery, not for performance.
2. SuperPI does a lot of number crunching, this is not Atom's target application! Atom is optimized for ultra portable applications, it means for low power. I simply ignore these kind of benchmarks: they say very little to the real-life performance.
3. Intel Atom supports hyperthreading: as far as I know SuperPI doesn't take avantage of it. This technology can improve real life applications from 10%-30%. The tested Celeron and Pentium M don't. have this potential.
4. Intel Atom's relatively small L2 cache (only 512KB) may be accounted for the bad results especially if compared to the Pentium M (2048KB)

I think that in the next few months we'll see much more tests and better results product based on Intel's Atom

Related articles

• Atom vs Celeron M 353 vs VIA C7 via Core Duo in depth benchmark (hot)
  
• Dual Core Atom CPU for EEE PC on MSI Wind Netbook?
  

New: see posts about dual core Atom
See also how to replace CPU on EEE PC
See also new post with new tests/benchmarks, articles about Benchmarks and Performance