How Much Should You Pay For an N270 Netbook?
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Netbooks are still popular against all involved discussion between experts who claim demand was only an an act of the now leaving recession and those who say there is a tangible need for small, light and more importantly cheap notebooks. Whatever the reason for buying a computer you should be aware of prices on the market right now to be able to choose one that fits the budget.
The most popular processor of choice is still the Intel Atom N270 in low-end category. Main reason for this is the low price per thousand units, Intel has already released more advanced, better chips than this and they obviously look for swiping stores. Not that this is a bad thing, for the average user this technology does everything a netbook processor is supposed to do.
For a thousand units batch the manufacturer took $44 each, and it allows for reasonably low price tag on the end product. Low-end notebooks that come with small screen and older set of connectivity options, such as D-SUB for video and 802.11bg for wireless network. Asus, the maker of first of the netbook fleet, still sells N270 based computers, their 1005HA and 1001HA comes for around $300 to $330 depending on the store, whether you’re looking to buy one online or at the local store.
The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn’t pay more than $350 for a mini that comes with either N270 or N280, the slightly faster variation of the same processor. If you want to get something more recent, you have several options, such as N450, or the Atom 330. The former is basically the same instruction core with integrated graphic chip and memory controller.
The performance is not going to be any better, the manufacturing process is the same 45nm, but consumption of the total device could be lowered to a level where 10+ hours battery life becomes possible. The latter option, the dual core 330 is not going to help you the least bit if the piece of software you’re using is not multi-threaded. Luckily enough netbook users run many applications at the same time, including a media player, a browser with multiple tabs, an instant messaging client and a virus buster too.
A dual core processor helps in this situation, bad news is that you need to venture beyond $400 to access the technology. If you don’t want to surpass $350 N270 and N280 are sound choices. N280 is slightly more powerful – in the single digit per cent region – but just as much more power hungry.