- Tuesday, 24 November 2009
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People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like - Abraham Lincoln
Top tip for buying a netbook
THE PREFERRED PRICING policy for Chipzilla's Atom CPU is having a strange effect on netbooks.
According to Liliputing, Intel charges $45 if a netbook maker purchases just the Atom CPU, yet the Atom paired with Intel's 945GSE chipset and GMA 950 GPU costs just $25.
So the CPU and GPU together are far less to buy than the CPU alone. If you ignore Intel all together you can get a similar effect from Nvidia's Ion platform, which does more or less the same thing for $30-$35. But it is still cheaper to go for the Intel plan.
However the dark satanic rumour mill claims that Intel is rethinking its preferential pricing scheme. It is apparently unhappy at Lenovo and Samsung who have been thinking of using the Atom chips in machines that have panels bigger than 10.2 inches.
In May, Lenovo rolled out its S12 netbook with a 12.1-inch form factor and Samsung is planning on rolling out an 11.6-inch Nvidia Ion-based netbook that is also in violation of Intel's alleged size restriction.
Intel and Microsoft are both against allowing netbooks to get bigger. Vole plans to make Windows 7 more expensive for OEMs who make the machines too big.
The fear is that if netbooks get too big, then lucrative business buyers will not want the more expensive laptops with high spec and bigger OS demands. µ
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bizarre how buying the processor and chipset is (significantly) less than just the processor.
As for ION, is it actually in any laptops yet? i've got a sneaky suspicion that you won't see it in many due to the relatively high power draw.
If MS and intel do not want anyone to make a netbook larger than 10" that must mean it will be a success, hence someone will make that size netbook and make money intel and MS do not want to make.
Why does this seem like old news? Oh, right, because Sylvie reported it seven weeks ago:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137394/nvidia-attacks-intel-pricing-advantage
Doesn't the INQ read the INQ? ;-)
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137394/nvidia-attacks-intel-pricing-advantage
pwned by Sylvie lol!
They (intel & MS) want to dictate the size of netbooks, I say piss off!
Quote: "Samsung is planning on rolling out an 11.6-inch Nvidia Ion-based netbook"
This is the one I want to check out. It will run circles around intel video. If this Samsung ion platform offers a 6cell battery I may just get it.
intel did this cheap chipset pricing to stave off the ion platform that is superior, especially the video that can run HD content. Almost all the larger netbooks will have 720P resolution or higher.
Gateway has one out now (11.6" netbook) at 720P that looks sweat, not sure on the new low power Athlon 64 chip, hopefully a good review for comparision.
Anyone else this this behavior is fishy? Ok, I can slightly see the processor/chipset being cheaper then the processor itself for self protection (that sounds illegal to me also), but the whole you can't make a computer that does this is so illegal. Sounds like the old Microsoft, where if you sell 1 computer with Windows, they all must be Windows. That's like saying we will charge you $10 more because you installed Firefox. Why does Intel care what processor is in your laptop. Maybe because people don't need these superpowerful processors in their laptops, and the customer wants cheap, low power processors instead, instead of paying more for the processors they get now?
Pick up one of the first generation eee, 8GB versions are being dumped on the market for less that $150.
where are you? we all miss you! (NOT!)
Sometimes it's press releases.
Sometimes it's Sylvie's copy.
Will this man's talent never be satisfied?
It seems desktop chip sets are also cheaper with embedded graphics.At least from Intel P31 vs G31 or P43 vs G43.Also most boards with a "g" chip seem to seem to have a feature cut bios.