Blog of a Long Distance Worker Tech

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Tag Archives: Memory

Notebook Performance

I had cause recently to have an online conversation with a reader who believed that the only worthwhile computer equipment was the very fastest thing you can get. This person was looking at the needs equation from their own perspective which was as a gamer. This is so small a percentage of computer users, particularly mobile computer users, that all I can say is that they were completely and utterly wrong for the vast majority.

The vast majority use a computer to process documents (either read or create or both), browse the internet, read email, access social networking sites (business and/or personal), play music and play video. This is self evident in so many ways, and points to the fact that today a computer, particularly a mobile one, only has to be fast enough. In the old days the development of software outpaced the hardware periodically, requiring the hardware to be replaced just to get an acceptable basic performance. Today even a five year old laptop can run the latest word processor, web browser, email program, and music/video player. The issue is now so much more about battery life, weight, and ease of use.

So what is good enough today? Well as many have shown, most users are perfectly happy with netbook/notebook/notbooks that run with single/dual core 1.5/1.6GHz processors with 1-2GB of RAM. You can see these sorts of PCs still being heavily sold and also cropping up in most homes and schools. I will say though that the experience is not really swish with the lowest specification but they are good enough for almost everyone.

What do I use? Well I do have a number of netbooks with a minimum of 2GB RAM and 1.6GHz Atom processors and they run well enough although can be a little sluggish at times with some software combinations. For my main machine, I have a 1.2GHz Dual Core processor with 4GB of RAM and this is perfectly fine and gives excellent performance (along with the fact that I get excellent battery life at the same time). This is even good enough for some light encoding work (albeit slower than having a 2.2GHz Dual Core). This is what you should go for and nothing less. It is going to take more than a couple of years for people to come up with software that needs more than this. The most important things to have are RAM and Dual Core for that snappy response, as the enemy of all machines is having lots of disk access due to swapping and having a processor locked up doing something else.

Netbooks and Performance

ASUS1005HA Almost all netbooks (apart from some of the early Acer and Asus devices running Linux) are supplied with 1GB of RAM. Microsoft has further cemented this by defining lower license fees for Windows XP for computers with small screens and only 1GB of RAM, which means that this is the most popular memory configuration for netbooks.

advent-4211-msi-wind-mini-laptop-small At the same time, many people rule out netbooks as low power, sluggish computers that cannot replace a main machine. After my experience of the last month and a half, I would agree. This is when I purchased a new netbook after a problem occurred with my first one … the venerable Advent 4211C, an MSI Wind U100 rebrand. Amazing how I can call a computer that is less than 15 months old as venerable!

The netbook I purchased was the Asus EeePC 1008HA, a very nice and thin machine which I did not originally desire, but my options were limited. The machine I wanted was the Asus EeePC 1005HA but that was not in stock in the timeframe I needed. The problem with the 1008HA is the shorter battery life and the higher price, but I was desperate that evening for a machine. The other problem is that it came with 1GB of RAM compared to my upgraded Advent machine that had 2GB.

The other problem I quickly discovered was that it is closed up harder than a coconut. The machine is basically not upgradeable by anyone but the brave. Needless to say I proved braver than most, particularly after I managed to pierce the keyboard ribbon connector and cut two wires whilst trying to get at the memory. This is because you have to crack the case open after removing the keyboard, disconnecting multiple connectors and making sure that you use the dip switch to disable the battery feed to the machine (thus avoiding blowing the whole thing).  Who needs the left CTRL, Alt, Windows, Fn, function, delete and backspace keys anyway!  After all the fun with doing that I found I had the wrong 2GB memory stick. Putting my slightly crippled machine back together, I had to focus on my day job and with it using the still 1GB Asus.

What I noticed quite quickly is that the machine perpetually struggled with the lack of RAM at a scale that virtual memory could not help. The machine has had a minimum physical memory used of between 700MB and 930MB, and I now know what happens when the physical memory starts to run out… a machine that goes into coma for 30 seconds plus as it struggles to unload a program, to load another one. This has not been a good experience. If this was all the experience I had ever had with a netbook, I could understand saying that netbooks are useless.

Let us be honest, the sweet spot for Windows XP is 2GB ( just like the sweet spot for Vista I have found is 3GB ). This means that all netbooks are not as performant as they could be, and it will stay this way as long as manufacturers keep with supplying them with 1GB. I have started to see however netbooks and their like coming through with 2GB and this seems to be tied to supplying the machine with Windows 7… At least, Windows 7 Home Premium. I hope this continues.

So my best advice out there for the netbook owner? Get yourself upgraded to 2GB… you will then have a very functional, low cost, very portable machine that will perform every duty you throw at it except really heavy duty graphics/video or gaming. The other advice? Make sure that your netbook is user upgradeable. Me? I now have the machine I need but no warranty.

Netbooks Returns

There has been some noise floating out there about the return rate on Linux based netbooks. Now I would like to see some more detail about this, as I could expect a certain lack of familiarity causing some people to return machines, but not at the scale being reported.

What is interesting about the date from the latest news, is that there is focus on one specific type of netbook that is being sold via the Carphone Warehouse stores. This netbook is the Elonex Webbook, a machine that is notable for using the Via C7 processor. Although clocked at a healthy 1.6GHz, machines based on these processors are really not fit for purpose and I feel that this is more likely to be behind the high return rate, as well as the miserly 512MB of RAM.

Using Linux is no excuse for being miserly with processor or RAM, and this can be shown that the newest releases of netbooks are pretty much Intel Atom Processor only, and have at least 1GB of RAM.

My own experience has shown that the machines with lower processors (in my case Celeron 630MHz) and RAM (512MB), do not work regardless of the OS – the applications that ordinary people want to run (basic wordprocessing and Internet) quickly uses that up. I can see the same thing happening with Netbooks with Vista running on them, these things are proven not to be functional for lightweight machines.

Upgrade Packs

For those people who have purchased machines with Linux on them, and truly feel the need for running a Microsoft product, there should be upgrade packs sold which include Windows XP Home on an SD Card or Memory stick which would allow in-place upgrade of these units. This should not cost more that £50 as long as Microsoft got over its hang-up about XP. Of course this is only for those machines that have the realistic minimum of RAM – 1GB. This is all possible, after all my current main machine, the Advent 4211, has a recovery mechanism based on a 2GB SD Card.