OK, so this is one that has me – a heavy gamer and netbook lover – absolutely frothing with excitement, but most NORMAL people probably saying “huh? they want me to pay nearly $1000 for a netbook with a 2 hour battery life”? Well, sort of, but there is much more than meets the eye to this intriguing little beast introduced today at CES!
Here are the basics:
Netbook sizing
11″ screen
HDMI output
NVIDIA GT335M *AND* integrated graphics
‘Switchable’ graphics with 2 second time and no reboot
More than 6 hours in ‘battery mode’ (i.e. using integrated graphics)
~2 hours of ‘intense gaming’ time.The GPU hardware is quite solid, with some putting it on par with a top-line Macbook Pro in terms of capability. The demo showed infamous resource hog Crysis running at > 50 FPS and recently released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at 30 FPS. The CPU wasn’t discussed, but it is a fair assumption it will need to be more than a standard Atom to handle the CPU side of those games.
Since the announcement, some have started getting hands on time, and the machine looks rather large for a netbook, and is reportedly rather heavy. And given that $1,000 is well above the average price of the majority of desktops and laptops sold today, this starts to become even more of a tough sell.
Still – full gaming capability on such a small system with the capability to hook up to my HD TV? I might not yet be sold … but I’m pretty close!
I have loved technology for as long as I can remember - and have been a computer gamer since the PDP-10! Mobile Technology has played a major role in my life - I have used an electronic companion since the HP95LX more than 20 years ago, and have been a 'Laptop First' person since my Compaq LTE Lite 3/20 and Powerbook 170 back in 1991! As an avid gamer and gadget-junkie I was constantly asked for my opinions on new technology, which led to writing small blurbs ... and eventually becoming a reviewer many years ago. My family is my biggest priority in life, and they alternate between loving and tolerating my gaming and gadget hobbies ... but ultimately benefits from the addition of technology to our lives!
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