Will Dell 10v be good enough?

[zinneken]

I think I will settle on a Dell 10v, however, have a couple of concerns. Hope you experienced hackingtoshers can help me out with your experiences.

 

I'm used to snappy and responsive simultaneous use of iWork, Office, Mail, Eudora, Safari, Skype, streaming internet radio and DayLite on Snow Leopard MacBook (too bulky for my travel, reason I want a netbook). I do have occasional need for Photoshop, but don't mind that being slow as long as the job gets done.

 

Processor: obviously the Atom processor will be slower then the core 2 duo. However, will it be fast enough to handle my use? I also read that the upcoming 10.6.2 update of Snow Leopard breaks support for the Atom processor?

 

RAM: I'm used to 4 GB RAM - no idea how much I really use. Will the upgraded 2 GB in the Dell 10v be enough for my use?

 

HDD: The Dell 10v comes standard with a HDD, what is the speed gain and temperature influence of an SSD? I read that for OSX, SSD is not a good choice due to heavy read/write virtual memory requirements?

 

Desktop: When I'm not traveling I will be using the 10v as a "desktop" - Can the Dell 10v handle a 20" screen, USB keyboard & mouse under snow leo?

 

Hope you can help me out with your experiences. Thanks!

[shoarthing]

. . go & play with an Atom netbook - an acquaintance will have one or mebbe a shop will have a demonstrator.

 

Single-core Atoms are slow; however you look at it, & olde-worlde Intel onboard graphics are slow, however you look at it. Single-platter 2.5" SATA160GB HDDs are adequate by laptop standards of the recent past; but slow by desktop HDD standards esp for random access.

 

You'll need to have a play to see whether you could put up with the deliberate inbuilt limitations of yer basic netbook.

[zinneken]

. . go & play with an Atom netbook - an acquaintance will have one or mebbe a shop will have a demonstrator.

 

Single-core Atoms are slow; however you look at it, & olde-worlde Intel onboard graphics are slow, however you look at it. Single-platter 2.5" SATA160GB HDDs are adequate by laptop standards of the recent past; but slow by desktop HDD standards esp for random access.

 

You'll need to have a play to see whether you could put up with the deliberate inbuilt limitations of yer basic netbook.

Thanks for your insight! Hmmm. No access to a netbook though. Here in Europe shops are not that consumer friendly to allow a customer to play around with it, nor do I know anyone whose I can play with (setting up OSX etc).

 

But, I read your point, could be dissappointed about not enough performance for the simple use I intend it to have.

 

Any other (faster) netbook suggestions? Are there maybe any with core2duo's?

[shoarthing]

In this forum there's a thread or two devoted to the HP mini 311 - this is a slightly inflated [720p res] netbook, using the single-core Atom but with the ION chipset [integrated Nv 9400m graphics - same as current low-end Macs].

 

. . these are clearly the near-future way to go if you don't need CPU ooomph; tho' HP/Compaq laptops are not over-friendly for OSX hacking, mainly due to their encrypted BIOS'

 

The current best bet is probably this Dell 1340 C2D jobbie using the MCP7x chipset [= ION] - the thing is pretty well sorted & there appears to be a genuinely competent hacker 'bcc9' keeping a grip on things.

[zinneken]

hmm ... searched for 10" computers having core2duo, only Fujitsu and Panasonic seems to be making them, hilariously expensive!

 

So if we want to netbook size, screwed with Atom processor?

 

Has anyone comparative benchmarks for real world office applications on a netbook and a macbook? Would be most helpful evaluating whether a netbook hackingtosh makes sense for my use ...