News - Medion announces useful-looking AMD-based <strike>netbook</strike> notebook

[HEXUS]

You know it's a low-cost netbook when it's launching exclusively at ALDI.

Read more.

[kingpotnoodle]

Not a bad spec, but I doubt that Sempron is really much faster than an Atom, if the 1.6GHz Athlon Neo in the HP machine recently reviewed is anything to go by (i.e. that was only a bit faster than Atom, and the Sempron is a weaker CPU).

[Platinum]

Hmm, not bad but nothing amazing, my HP laptop I bought 2 and a half years back had the X1250 chipset, I would like to see something with a 780G equivalent and a dual core chip in a machine that size tbh.
You can get dual core Atoms and Ion chipsets these days.

[Nelviticus]

We don't see Atom-based competitors running for cover

If it performs as well as Atom-based netbooks then the fact that it has wireless-n and an HDMI output makes it seem pretty damn appealing in comparison.

[TheAnimus]

Indeed, battery life and performance, if good enough could make this a nice little machine. 1.5kg with the 6 cell in is quite reasonable weight too.

[nichomach]

The internal screen's a better spec than most netbooks as well; 1366x768's very usable.

[scaryjim]

Not a bad spec, but I doubt that Sempron is really much faster than an Atom, if the 1.6GHz Athlon Neo in the HP machine recently reviewed is anything to go by.

You need to read the recent ASUS U20A review. In single threaded tests the Neo is miles ahead of Atom - just look at the Hexus pi-fast results. It's only the HT capabilities of Atom that bring it ahead in 7-Zip - yes, a dual-thread Atom only just beats a single-thread Neo in a multi-threaded test! Add the bonus of X1250 graphics, which while not the most powerful is streets ahead of GMA 950, and you've got a very versatile package.

I've done some hunting around older hexus reviews, and the X12x0 series graphics, in comparitively equipped notebooks, has performance close to Intel's X4500 IGP - two generations ahead of the 950. Add hardware support for h264 decoding (up to 720p), native HDMI, and a whole host of other features, and I'd say this was a very real contender in the higher end of the netbook market...

[scaryjim]

I would like to see something with a 780G equivalent and a dual core chip in a machine that size tbh.

Congo's got to be on its way before too long... I wonder if they were relying on 40nm tech to cut the power consumption of HD3200; they've been having yield problems...

[R3MF]

nearly, nearly...............

one day the holy grail of mini-notebooks will arrive, but is not today.

re: congo,

i imagine it will still be 55nm, but i would be delighted to hear otherwise.

[chis]

Are Medion reading this by any chance?

They're not a great brand, in my experience, but right now - with these products - they have one of the few PC notebooks on the market that LOOK REASONABLY DECENT.

Seriously the white ones almost look somewhat stylish. Argue that they're copying Apple if you like, but whether that's true or not, I've not seen a PC notebook that looks this good in a long time. The black one looks decent enough if gaudy, but the white is fairly pretty, marred only by the black border around the LCD panel.

[scaryjim]

I told my missus about these yesterday because I thought she'd be amused by a netbook launching exclusively in ALDI. She asked me how much they cost then said "talk to me at the end of the month"! I'll let you know if I end up with one

[aidanjt]

I told my missus about these yesterday because I thought she'd be amused by a netbook launching exclusively in ALDI. She asked me how much they cost then said "talk to me at the end of the month"! I'll let you know if I end up with one

They wont be there at the end of the month. Each store can only order so many and they're usually gone by the end of the day.

[scaryjim]

I'm afraid that's a risk I'll have to take, since we won't know if we can afford it until the end of the month! No biggy if I miss out - don't really *need* it as such...

[aidanjt]

Well, I got mine. And it's a damn snappy little piece of kit. Considerably better than my Cripple State Disk powered Aspire One. I'm in the process of installing Gentoo on it now.

There's no wlan drivers for it with the major distros just yet, but they are in the Linux 2.6.29 staging area (<3 Gentoo). I'll report back on it after my first boot.

[unreal]

nearly, nearly...............

one day the holy grail of mini-notebooks will arrive, but is not today.

re: congo,

i imagine it will still be 55nm, but i would be delighted to hear otherwise.

That's what I'm thinking - I'm just carefully watching them grow and the direction they take. I don't particularly need one but when one is good enough at the right pricepoint once they evolve a bit for my requirements, then I'll probably get one after I can't resist any longer!

[aidanjt]

Welp, two problems:

1) The Realtek 8192SE wlan chip has no Linux drivers, the bit of code for it that was in the rtl8192su staging drivers are being stripped out, so there's nothing for it even in the staging areas and mass of git repos @ kernel.org, and I've neither the patience nor equipment to reverse engineer one myself.
2) The powernow-k8 cpufreq driver refuses to load, it doesn't like there not being any _PSD ACPI object, which more or less makes it a BIOS bug. But one I'm more likely to be able to fix than problem #1.

But other than that, everything is working great.