ASUS N10JC: the Netbook Goes Corporate
by Jarred Walton on December 24, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
Performance Evaluation
We're not going to run through an extensive suite of software testing on the N10JC, as you should already know that it aims to be fast enough to be useful rather than to set any performance records. Any CPU intensive tasks are going to struggle, but normal office work and internet surfing posed no serious problem. As this is a Windows XP laptop, we do have to omit testing with PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage, but we did run the older versions along with a couple other tests. Here are the results, with comparisons to other recently tested notebooks. (Sorry -- other than battery life testing on the original ASUS Eee PC, we don't have any comparison points with other networks.)
Starting with PCMark, we immediately see that overall performance is going to be quite a bit lower than modern laptops. That's the case with pretty much all of the current netbooks, but you should know going in that you are looking at performance roughly equal to a decent laptop from three years ago.
One interesting point is that the Hyper-Threading present in the Intel Atom chip appears to help a lot more than in other implementations, increasing overall performance by 53% over single threaded rendering. That still can't compete with the 80%+ improvements seen on Core 2 Duo systems, but the in-order Adam core definitely benefits more from SMT than traditional out-of-order architectures.
Overall, performance in CPU intensive tasks is very poor compared to any modern system; obviously, you shouldn't plan to run these tasks on a netbook unless you are very patient. In less strenuous applications, the CPU may not be as much of a bottleneck -- for example, office applications and web surfing were fast enough that we didn't have any serious complaints. Still, it's important to have appropriate expectations.
So if raw performance isn't one of the critical factors, what is? We would certainly rate battery life near the top of the list, so let's look at that next.
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Penti - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
That's mostly directed towards iFX and I do agree that they don't get much rebates on hardware (probably a lot more on software anyway which is a bigger cost then the hardware itself many times even for desktops).My point however is that you aren't reviewing the business version, not that it differs any more in hardware then I mentioned earlier in another post and you mentioned now but rather the important fact that it contains a VB OEM license as you can't include a XP H license in your volume license agreement. That's an important difference and you don't really test it for that scenario any way.
OEM's aren't much more then retailers themselves, i.e. they can't charge the costumer less then what the ODM or Taiwanese-based contract manufacturers charge them. There really isn't much for system builders to do with laptops more then order them. It's usually as you have experienced some other company that actually put the companies images of the OS/software on them. I guess there's some potential to save there if those who act as the system builders of the OEM-computers can get cheaper OEM licenses for that costumer and orders without licenses from Asus. A OEM license is always needed though. But a XP H OEM licenses is useless for them.
iFX - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
Yes, they do. I have worked in IT procurement for large, Fortune 500 companies, I speak from experience.icrf - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
Interesting addition to the netbook lot, but I'd still rather have a Samsung NC10. The discrete GPU is nice for video decoding, but if the display can't show 720p, I'm not sure what the benefit of being able to decode it is. Give me a 10" 1280x800 screen and we'll talk. Otherwise, the NC10 still has better battery life.skaaman - Sunday, December 28, 2008 - link
Totally agree. I picked one up for my better half for Christmas for $499.00. Notebook Review has an excellent write up on it. The display is beautiful (same as the ASUS I believe) and easily get 7-8 hours battery life. I accidentally stumbled on the touch pad gesturing support and it works very well.I loaded the two simple games she plays and they run fine (simple games.) While a lot of time on this board is dedicated to considering how far we can stretch a system, it would seen that this and most Netbooks would more than satisfy about 90% of the consumer market. I mean really, how many systems out there are used for nothing but Internet access, email and word processing.
Also, I think we have become spoiled with cheap memory prices. 1GB for running basic apps on XP Home should be plenty for anyone. Yes if you beed to run 10 apps or want to overclock then you want as much memory as you can get. But again, 1GB will prove more than adequate for the average user.
l00tz - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
Ahhh but you have hdmi out for 1080p goodness. The n10 works with and external bluray drive and powerdvd8 as welldrfelip - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
A user at Notebook Review forums claims to get quite good gaming performance by overclocking the Atom to 2.1 GHz, so the CPU seems to be the bottleneck.gipper - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
I have the 1000H, and I love it. However, we really need 1280x800 screens in 12" sizes. Several corporate apps like the Citrix client all but requires 1024x768 minimum resolution to run without problems.I want the 1000H in a 12" size, NOTHING changed (except maybe and even larger battery than the already ridiculously good battery it has) except for the screen. That is the perfect notebook.
strikeback03 - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
The table says 2x2048MB, but the test says 1GB.I was not aware that LED backlights contained Mercury, is there a version of the computer that uses a conventional backlight for that sticker to be on there?
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
ASUS told me that the sticker was only on early hardware and that it's just a mistake. Good eye - I forgot to mention this, but ASUS specifically told me about the sticker when I asked if it was really an LED-lit LCD. :)JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
Oh, and the 2x2048MB was a missed copy/paste (or reuse of a table). It's fixed now.