ASUS N10JC: the Netbook Goes Corporate
by Jarred Walton on December 24, 2008 4:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
LCD Quality
We've already praised the LCD quite a bit during our subjective evaluation, but we also ran our standard hardware tests as well. As usual, we test with ColorEyes Display Pro with two colorimeters, the DTP-94 and the i1 Display2. Results below are for the best performance out of these two colorimeters -- in most cases the DTP-94 leads by a small margin.
Color accuracy is very good for a laptop; the N10JC places at the top of the color accuracy charts for tested laptops. Color gamut unfortunately is only middle of the road -- and we're still waiting for a laptop that can manage anything above 80% color gamut. What's really impressive to us as the brightness level, reaching nearly 300 nits! Now you're probably thinking, "Fine, but what does that do to battery life?" That's what was really surprising: power draw only increases by ~2W, and battery life dropped by less than 20 minutes. We know plenty of people that don't like reflective screens, but other than working in very bright light (i.e. outdoors in the sunshine) the high maximum brightness can generally overcome any reflections. And if you're working indoors, you can still easily turn down the display brightness to a more comfortable level.
We would still love to see a high color gamut LCD in a laptop -- and something other than a TN panel would be awesome -- but outside of that the display on the N10JC is about as good as it gets. We also noted that vertical viewing angles were much better than any of the other TN panel laptops we have around. Hopefully we can start to see other laptops with similar quality displays, only with higher resolution, larger LCD panels.
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Penti - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
As I said before you wrote your post is that Vista Business includes downgrade rights (without volume license so small businesses can use it too even if they don't want to purchase SA via some license agreement).So there is a Asus N10 laptop for corporate use that has Vista business on it, the N10J-A2 I mentioned. A business version of the same netbook. So it has nothing to do with restriction but rather that this is a consumer variant / version of the somewhat business-oriented N10-series. It can have XP Pro preinstalled it's just that you need a VB license COA. And that it costs about 100 dollars more then XP Home for low end netbooks. It's cheaper then to get a retail (FPP) copy of XP Pro or Vista though. That would cost more then most netbooks. XP H can't be included in volume licenses.
JarredWalton - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
ASUS is the one stating it's a "corporate" netbook, and outside of XP Home instead of Pro I think it succeeds well enough. It's not a corporate *laptop* by any means, but it can do what many traveling people would do. I went on a trip a week ago and used this laptop on the road; it was great to work in the airport for two hours (delayed flight) and then catch a two hour plane ride and still end up with nearly 50% battery remaining.MonkeyPaw - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
I use my Eee 701 for "business" all the time, and I use Ubuntu + Open Office. Basically, I need it for viewing excel spreadsheets and hitting the internet in a pinch. It works well enough, and any critical documents stay on a thumb drive for easy moving about. I find there's no substitute for a full PC-interface when it comes to some things, and this Eee has served me well. In fact, I just read this entire article and posted this comment on my 701. Thanks, Anandtech, for a low-res-friendly website!skaaman - Sunday, December 28, 2008 - link
I think the point to be made here is that XP Home can't connect to a domain and therefore isn't an option in a corporate environment or small business environments. As was noted Vista business includes downgrade rights to XP Pro and therefore would fit the bill.Penti - Wednesday, December 24, 2008 - link
Well it's still a consumer netbook and not a "corporate netbook" if it hasn't VB (the only way to run XP Pro at home today apart from in the business). It's still the same hardware as their corporate version though, just that it has 1GB and 160GB instead of 2GB of ram and 320GB drive. You can't connect to a corporate network without at least XP Pro. Of course it lacks security features such as TPM/Bitlocker too. But truecrypt is always an alternative. Of course lacking built in 3G modem is also a downside on business stuff. I wouldn't buy one without, using it as a terminal would be what it's used for and useful for. You don't need more performance to run RDP / Citrix.