So far, we have seen 3 difference
netbooks based on the Intel Atom. Although the three perform similar in terms of
data crunching, the major difference among the various net pc would be it's
design and usability.
In our test of the Gigabyte M912,
we find that the unit to be a bit thicker than and heavier than the two other
brands, namely ASUS Eee PC 901 and MSI Wind U100. This is probably because of
the swivel based touch screen panel.
The M912 also supports a higher
resolution of 1280x768. Most of the brand and models from other manufacturers
only support up to 1024x600. With a high resolution, you can see more at a 16:9
ratio, it is definitely excellent for viewing your DVD or DIVX in that ratio.
For multimedia playback, the
Gigabyte M912 has no issues playing some of the demanding clips we threw at it,
even 1080p clips using classic mediaplayer. Just be prepared to see your CPU
utilisation goes rocket high that is all. Divx, youtube plays smoothly too.
As the unit is installed with VISTA
Home Basic edition, it takes a while to get into Windows. It might be a good
idea to do a hibernate to speed up boot time on the next boot up. If you intend
to use it as a Tablet PC, you can simply swivel the screen 180 deg and put it
flat on top of the keyboard. One thing to note is that, this device is preloaded
with Vista Home Basic, this edition does not support handwriting input. You
would have to rely on the virtual keyboard provided. There are also no button
allowing you to switch from landscape to portrait and vice versa. You would have
to do that all within the control panel.
They keyboard is a bit similar to
the ASUS Eee PC. It is too tiny for my fingers for comfortable typing. The good
thing is that it is it not that stiff as compared to the Eee PC 900.
Although SSD consumes less power,
SSDs are way too expensive and not economical. In the Gigabyte M912 design, they
opted to use a 160GB HDD as opposed to a small one of the MSI Wind U100 (80GB).
Gigabyte M912 also chose to use 4500mAH battery pack which can only run for 2.5
~ 3 hrs. Powering down the WIFI and Touch screen does help to conserve some
power but a higher power pack is necessary to bring it as close to 5 hrs of
operation time.
In conclusion, the M912 tries to be
difference from it's competitors. It has a higher capacity drive of 160GB but
it's mini keyboard, battery life really has room for improvement. All can be
solved by providing a higher capacity battery and throttling the CPU down when
not in use. Perhaps the XP version M912X will do better.
