News - AMD's Pat Moorhead rains on the netbook parade

[HEXUS]

AMD's vice president of advanced marketing thinks netbooks are overpriced, and only useful around the house. Is he right?

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[Steve]

I think, in general, people are scared of cheap laptops - or at least laptops that are too cheap.

We know that for general productivity purposes, a gig or two or RAM and just about any processor will get the job done, so long as you aren't using Vista.

But the market has done a very good job of getting the message that "faster is always better", because we've generally always needed faster. Now that we don't, how does the mainstream, non-gaming market adapt to that? Indeed, will it want to - is there more profit to be had in continuing the faster and better paradigm?

So Pat's right about at least one thing... a lot of netbooks are too expensive, but there might be a reason for that.

[Flibb]

Battery life is machine specific, the 6 cell wind is available in the USA why didnt he get that? As to choppy internet video playback, I think he must have been doing some retro dialup testing. And hes missed the most obvious problem with most of these, no optical drive. I dont have a problem with this, but people that just want to plug and play would. Price creeps actually been less of a problem here than in the USA, pcworld are actually doing a good price on th MSI / Advent, especially with quidco.

And 720p playsback just fine on my wind, even with shock horrror several non light websites running in opera.

[directhex]

perhaps he's negative because AMD have absolutely nothing in the netbook market, whereas even via have a presence?

[MadduckUK]

when via have the nano, in a netbook, on sale, they have more than just a presence.

they probably have a sale actually

i dont see why AMD would want to get involved as the 3rd man in a 2 way battle. the "alternative product" wont work there.. it would be brilliant if via could get a foothold in a segment other than mini-itx's

[R3MF]

i think the netbook is a big disappointment, and this from a mini-computing fanboy!

a netbook needs to have the following features to be a success:
> no more than £320 (otherwise badly encroaching into laptop territory)
> dual-core, 64bit, in-order CPU (otherwise won't be able to run modern multithreaded apps)
> unified shader GPU with DX10/OpenGL 3.0 driver support (min of 1600 3DMark2006 points)
> 7" to 11" screen (12" screen laptops are available at budget prices with decent performance)
> expresscard, wifi, usb

without those features a netbook is either a fat MID or a crap laptop.

I have high hopes that the age of the netbook will come with AMD's Fusion platform next year:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion

[mike_dowler]

He's missing the point if he's comparing it to his blackberry. I'd like to see him editing camcorder footage on that!

The short battery life is a well-known shortfall of both the Wind and the EEE 900, but there are netbooks out there with very good battery life. Buying a laptop has always been about compromise. You can have cheap, or you can have well-featured, or you can have small, or you can have good battery life, or even a combination, but you don't (whatever the model) get all of these together. The great thing about the netbooks has been the (previously unseen) combination of very small with cheap. Personally, I would love something like a Sony TZ, at a netbook price, but that is unrealistic at the moment. In the meantime, small and good battery life sells it to me, and I can put up with underpowered and small keyboard for that.

[staffsMike]

I thought the Asus 901 is supposed to have very good, borderline awesome battery life. Just a naff keyboard and not a great price.

[Biscuit]

720p playback on Atoms to my understanding, doesnt work unless the charger is plugged in (cpu uses speed step to drop down to 1.2Ghz whn on battery). Feel free to correct me if im wrong though!
Iv not been overly impressed with any of the netbooks so far, the price-performance line just isnt set right. As mentioned in the article and above you can buy a full fledged laptop that can do so much more for a similar price. There is the point of portability but i always think, the market is people with bags that arnt quite big enough for 15" laptops i know this isnt the exact purpose of them but im starting to see past the slight 'fad-ness' of them and im losing sight as to their point in the market.
I dont think AMD would be a 3rd wheel in the competition at all, i think they would be quite an interesting contender with their current 'balanced' computer mindset as we might see a GPU and chipset which matches the features of the CPU fitted within it instead of intel who have regurgatated old stuff (945 chipset for the atom). I would liek to see via's nano chipset appearing in placed soon too, they have presented it doing some impressive stuff but where is it?

[MadduckUK]

> dual-core, 64bit, in-order CPU (otherwise won't be able to run modern multithreaded apps)
> unified shader GPU with DX10/OpenGL 3.0 driver support (min of 1600 3DMark2006 points)

so many things wrong with these

[R3MF]

Originally Posted by R3MF View Post

> dual-core, 64bit, in-order CPU (otherwise won't be able to run modern multithreaded apps)
> unified shader GPU with DX10/OpenGL 3.0 driver support (min of 1600 3DMark2006 points)

so many things wrong with these

Why?

An Atom is useless for most actual computing tasks, and this will only get worse as software follows hardware and gets more explicitly multithreaded. It is not as if what i ask for is pie in the sky, the raon mininote comes with a 1.2GHz turion X2 in a seven inch chassis.

The 945G graphics in most netbooks is a disaster, even more so than when it first arrived years ago as a desktop part. Worse is has to use the aneamic CPU to render in software many graphics features not supported in hardware. Again, asus are about to release a netbook with a Geforce 9300.

If a netbook hasn't got the grunt to be a laptop computer (even if a low powered one), then it is NOTHING but a fat Mobile Internet Device, and personally i would rather have a proper MID like the Gigabyte 528.

But all is not lost, AMD is going to release Fusion which includes a K10 derived dualcore and a DX10 unified-shader GPU, both fabbed in an energy efficient .045u process on a compact multi-chip module. This along with a dualcore NANO + nVidia chipset combo (as speculated on t'internet) is the real future of the netbook.

[MadduckUK]

and why do you need any of that for surfing and office documents?

ps. you sound like your rolling off marketing spiel, and that makes people nervous

[dangel]

For playing back video, music and surfing the web my eee easily has the hardware specs for the job (on XP too). People need to be more realistic as to why these small, chuck-in-a-bag netbooks sell so well. I don't give a stuff about 3d or massive cpu power for such a device. Cheap, light and good enough will do me just fine. Sure beats taking the office 'back breaker' on a trip.
I don't disagree they'll get better, but i don't see then as inherently flawed *now* (as a user of such a device).

[R3MF]

and why do you need any of that for surfing and office documents?

ps. you sound like your rolling off marketing spiel, and that makes people nervous

because i would like to be able to play non-demanding games like Spore and Sins of a Solar Empire, as well as older classics like Morrowind, GTA, Flashpoint, etc.
because i would like to transcode a video taken on my digicam into youtube format.
because i want to be able to use full disk encryption on my portable life[tm]
because i want to be able to listen to music and have five or ten flash heavy tabs open.

because i want to treat it as a small laptop, not a mobile internet device.

if i come across as partisan against the Intel diamondville platform my apologies, but it is crap. note i said diamondville, not silverthorne. i think the MID is a perfectly worthwhile device, and the atom+poulsbo combo a great fit. in fact i want a gigabyte 528 to use as a MID.

but an in-order singlecore CPU combined with the 945G is utterly toss.

a netbook is fundamentally a notebook computer
a MID is fundamentally a palmtop device
there is a fundamental difference in expectations on performance and portability between the two.

the diamondville platform is essentially a fat Mobile Internet Device.

the AMD fusion platform will make for an excellent netbook
a dualcore NANO with a nVidia integrated chipset will make an excellent netbook
a dualcore Atom paired with a 9300GS would make a pretty good netbook.
the dual-core Raon mininote with 690e graphics is a pretty good netbook.

[Biscuit]

because i would like to be able to play non-demanding games like Spore and Sins of a Solar Empire, as well as older classics like Morrowind, GTA, Flashpoint, etc.
because i would like to transcode a video taken on my digicam into youtube format.
because i want to be able to use full disk encryption on my portable life[tm]
because i want to be able to listen to music and have five or ten flash heavy tabs open.

because i want to treat it as a small laptop, not a mobile internet device.

Exactly, thats what YOU want. The things that a lot of people want these NETBOOKS for is to use them for simple internet navigation etc.

I would have to tend to agree with you until the prices of the better netbooks are significantly lowered. They will not make sense to me until the more decent netbooks are notably cheaper than current low end laptops.

[R3MF]

these are about the closest that exists to a real netbook so far:

Asus N10 - http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4605

Raon Note - http://www.umpcportal.com/2008/09/ev...e-full-review/

the standard diamondville platform simply doesn't count.