Stuck between the Asus 1201N, Acer 1410, and Dell 11z

[JoeyC]

Trying to decide which route to go in replacing my Asus 1000HE (w/ 2GB). Overall, I have been quite happy with the 1000HE. I am a photographer and this is where the 10" screen comes up short. I realize that is to be expected with any 'netbook' - 95% of any post processing happens at home on the desktop. It is the other 5% where the 600 pixel height is limited. Some extra power wouldn't hurt either.

Main concerns...
$500 or less
11-13" screen
6+ cell battery (4-5 hours at a minimum)
HDMI output
4GB RAM
Win 7 (64 preferred)

They all have some pluses and minuses.

The Dell has had some mixed reviews on the trackpad and the 6 cell battery protrudes a great deal from the bottom, but the current Amazon deal comes with 4GB RAM and Win7 64 - for $500.

The Acer has an attractive price, Win 7 64, and 6 hours of battery life. I would need to spend about $80 to upgrade the RAM to 4 GB.

The Asus seems to have the best overall reviews and with ION is apparently the most capable 'gaming' laptop of the bunch (though that is not a concern for me). The current price is a little high if I want to consider upgrading to 4 GB and Win 7 is only 32 - why? Considering it a dual core Atom, that makes no sense to me.

Any thoughts? The cheap side of me wonders if I should just wait for the next batch of 11-12" laptops.

 

[shabby]

Out of those 3 i'd go with the dell, its a culv core 2 duo with a 6 cell battery. The acer has a single core 2 solo and the asus is simply too slow imo.
There's also the acer 1810tz which has a longer lasting battery, its a bit over $500 though.

 

[taltamir]

none of the above...
Neither a single core nor an atom is ok in 2010. While the dell's CPU is good, having only one SODIMM slot means that you are stuck with 4GB max ram... this will be a problem in 2 years or so when you need 8GB of ram.

 

[ku]

In case you didn't know, there are several models of the Acer AS1410. IIRC, there's 3 basic templates that they use:

1) Dual-core SU3500 processor with (I think) 1x2gb installed. This can be found for roughly $450, more than the other ones. It's also more difficult to find these models (they can still be had via Amazon).

2) Single-core SU2300 (or something) processor.

3) Celeron "743" or something processor.

I don't remember the exact ram setup on the last two, but I do remember that there were models that shipped with 2x1gb sticks.

The dual-core processor apparently makes a huge difference in performance (at least, by my memory of the little research I did), so it might be worth the extra money to grab a dual-core one.

I think there was a list of all the models and specs on Acer's website.

 

[JoeyC]

Is the dual core atom 'that slow' ? I haven't been able to find many reviews.

While I agree that the specs on the Dell look the most attractive, there are a few shortcomings that I would have to get past.

Thanks for the response.

Out of those 3 i'd go with the dell, its a culv core 2 duo with a 6 cell battery. The acer has a single core 2 solo and the asus is simply too slow imo.
There's also the acer 1810tz which has a longer lasting battery, its a bit over $500 though.

 

[JoeyC]

I appreciate the info - I'd rather stick it out with my 1000HE if there may be better choices coming out over the next few months.

none of the above...
Neither a single core nor an atom is ok in 2010. While the dell's CPU is good, having only one SODIMM slot means that you are stuck with 4GB max ram... this will be a problem in 2 years or so when you need 8GB of ram.

 

[JoeyC]

Yes - I have become familiar with the different models in the 1410 line-up. Perhaps it was my lack of technical knowledge, but through my different readings, they didn't seem to vary greatly - as mentioned, the processor was the main variable. The latest, the Celeron 743, seemed to get favorable reviews for its performance and battery consumption.

However, you may be right - might be worth springing for the dual core if I were to choose the Acer.

In case you didn't know, there are several models of the Acer AS1410. IIRC, there's 3 basic templates that they use:

1) Dual-core SU3500 processor with (I think) 1x2gb installed. This can be found for roughly $450, more than the other ones. It's also more difficult to find these models (they can still be had via Amazon).

2) Single-core SU2300 (or something) processor.

3) Celeron "743" or something processor.

I don't remember the exact ram setup on the last two, but I do remember that there were models that shipped with 2x1gb sticks.

The dual-core processor apparently makes a huge difference in performance (at least, by my memory of the little research I did), so it might be worth the extra money to grab a dual-core one.

I think there was a list of all the models and specs on Acer's website.

 

[Massive Overkill]

I have the DUAL CORE SU2300 in my Aspire 1410. It's a dual core Celeron, which is just a Core2Duo with less cache. I upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM and bought a cheap Class6 SDHC 4 gig card for readyboost. I also bought a 7200RPM 320 gig WD notebook drive for it.

This thing rocks and blows away any Atom-based netbook in existance as far as CPU power is concerned. I'm running VMware on mine, which runs pretty snappy.

Wireless N
Gigabit LAN
HDMI out
Keyboard larger than my Desktop rig
4 Gigs of RAM
1376x768
6 Cell battery
Runs very cool, much cooler than my previous Aspire One D250

What more than you ask for for $350 (bought mine at Fry's on special) plus $150 in upgrades

 

[jaydee]

Personally, I'd wait until Core i3 and i5's drop into the ultrathins and AMD's Nile platform/Geneva CPU's come out (this summer?).

For stuff out right now, I'd look at the HP DM3-1030 model. It's listed at $600+ right now at Amazon, but every couple weeks you see it on sale somewhere for ~$450-500:

1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo X2 Dual-Core Processor for Ultrathin Notebooks (512 MB L2 Cache)
4 GB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm)
320GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
13.3" Diagonal High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, *Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics with 128MB Display Cache Memory AMD M780G with 64MB GDDR2

 

[shabby]

this will be a problem in 2 years or so when you need 8GB of ram.

8gb in a little notebook? Come on...

 

[taltamir]

8gb in a little notebook? Come on...

no one will ever need more than 640k of RAM

It will be a few years, but the time will come.

 

[hkklife]

I was in a similar situation about 3 months ago. I went from an Asus 1000HE to the Acer 1810T. I still miss the battery life, touchpad and keyboard of the HE. In every other aspect (wireless, screen size/res, audio output volume, build quality, & overall performance) I vastly prefer the Acer.

I have the Acer Aspire 1810T which has 4GB RAM & a Core 2 Duo SU7300 and its MSRP is $600 but appears to be discontinued or at least very hard to get for MSRP right now. I would not pay a PENNY over $600 for this unit, btw. I love its specs but it really should just sell for somewhere in the $550 neighborhood.

There is also the 1810TZ which has the slightly slower SU4100 C2D and 3GB RAM for $50 less MSRP. Since I wanted to go with 4GB anyway, I figured might as well go with the top model.

There are actually at least 4 versions of the 1410T (none of which have BT standard but you can add it internally):
-Original version w/ 250GB HDD, SU3500 Core 2 Solo and Vista. These were $399ish
-SU2300 dual-core Celeron w/ 160gb HDD and Win 7 for $399. This was arguably the best bang for the buck portable PC ever and only lasted for a month or two. They are sold out EVERYWHERE now or going for more than MSRP.
-Celeron 743 single-core version w/ 250GB HDD and Win 7. This is the current version that's fairly widely available at $399 and also comes in a restyle Gateway version.
-New SU2300 version. This bumps up to a 250GB HDD, still has Win 7 and comes in at $450, so Acer is trying to improve their margins on these machines. Still a solid machine for the money. IIRC, they also changed this one to have 2x1GB Sodimms instead of the 1x2GB the older models used.


In my opinioin, I'd go with any of the dual-core 11.6" Acers without a doubt. Comparably spec'd to the Acer, the 11z Dell seems a bit overpriced. The EEE 1201N and the various AMD + Radeon HD3200 units are nice machines only if you are a gamer. The CULV machines have definitely have much better battery life and CPU performance. Also, for the time CULV machiones handle non-hardware assisted streaming better than the Atom-based machines.

 

[F1shF4t]

I was looking for a replacement for my Gateway LT31 with same specs as you in mind. Mostly better battery life and being able to play hd movies. I decided to get the 1810tz cause it just was a much better all round machine in my opinion and got a good price on it.
+ The 6cell battery fits inline with the lid. (doen't stick out)
+ 6 - 9 hour battery life
- Small touchpad (Still better than dells)
- The intel video card isn't really powerfull, but still a lot faster that the ati 1270 in the gateway and plays 1080p fine.

I had a play with the dell at a local shop and the touchpad does indeed suck. The 6 cell battery also sticks out downwards which gives it double thickness towards the back.

The asus is an odd one. Pretty much what Ion gives Atom taketh away and vice versa. I haven't had a chance to play with one though. It would be a nice machine for graphics but the atom isn't a match for the ULV cpus.

 

[fatpat268]

It will be a few years, but the time will come.

Maybe so, but by the time 8gb is needed, these processors will be severely outdated.

We're barely approaching the point where someone "needs" 4gb. 4gb in a mobile setting is near perfect for the time being.

 

[taltamir]

Maybe so, but by the time 8gb is needed, these processors will be severely outdated.

We're barely approaching the point where someone "needs" 4gb. 4gb in a mobile setting is near perfect for the time being.

"needs"? maybe not. "can benefit"? definitely. Since last year I'd say over 90% of people would benefit from 4GB instead of 2GB. as for being "obsolete"... I present to you the intel Atom.

 

[hellfire88]

I recently got a Dell Inspiron 11z and am liking it a lot so far. I got a pretty maxed out config with Pentium Dual-core SU4100 @ 1.3GHz, 4GB (1Dimm as this model only has 1 memory slot), Intel 5100 802.11n, Bluetooth, 500GB, 5400RPM HDD.

Like many of you I wanted a portable machine to just bring around and use randomly, remaining light and small. I tried various netbooks (Dell Mini 9, HP Mini 311 w/nVidia ION graphics) but the Atom is just too slow for what I need this laptop for (web browsing but with 50+tabs, videos/music, email, basic office tasks. I think its the Flash websites that choked the Atom N270/N280 CPUs. With the latest CULV's, even though it has just the Intel 4500HMD video I loaded the latest drivers and with Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta 2 its been running pretty smoothly.

I got the 6cell battery and yes it does jut down a lot, but meh I'll deal. Regarding the trackpad, I took some time to tweak the settings and actually now like it quite a lot. The two mouse "buttons" in the lower corners are pretty bad I've gotten used to using "tap to click" which works fine. The multi-touch gestures work pretty great too just like a Macbook Pro with the multi-touch trackpad. 2finger scrolling and 3finger swipe left/right to go page back/forwards for web browsing in Firefox 3.6 is awesome. The build quality is kind of cheap though and I believe the Acers have slightly better build-quality. I'm happy with it though and the fact that I have a ton of Dell chargers at home and work is a bonus since I never have to lug around an AC Adapter. Got one wherever I go (work, home: kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc.).

 

[JoeyC]

Thanks for the response. I am still considering this, especially since Amazon has dropped the price down to $485. Seems like a decent deal if you ask me.

I appreciate your feedback. You mention the MacBook. Do you own one?

How bad/annoying is the 6 cell battery? How about the battery life - 5-6 hours possible with just wifi on?

I recently got a Dell Inspiron 11z and am liking it a lot so far. I got a pretty maxed out config with Pentium Dual-core SU4100 @ 1.3GHz, 4GB (1Dimm as this model only has 1 memory slot), Intel 5100 802.11n, Bluetooth, 500GB, 5400RPM HDD.

Like many of you I wanted a portable machine to just bring around and use randomly, remaining light and small. I tried various netbooks (Dell Mini 9, HP Mini 311 w/nVidia ION graphics) but the Atom is just too slow for what I need this laptop for (web browsing but with 50+tabs, videos/music, email, basic office tasks. I think its the Flash websites that choked the Atom N270/N280 CPUs. With the latest CULV's, even though it has just the Intel 4500HMD video I loaded the latest drivers and with Adobe Flash 10.1 Beta 2 its been running pretty smoothly.

I got the 6cell battery and yes it does jut down a lot, but meh I'll deal. Regarding the trackpad, I took some time to tweak the settings and actually now like it quite a lot. The two mouse "buttons" in the lower corners are pretty bad I've gotten used to using "tap to click" which works fine. The multi-touch gestures work pretty great too just like a Macbook Pro with the multi-touch trackpad. 2finger scrolling and 3finger swipe left/right to go page back/forwards for web browsing in Firefox 3.6 is awesome. The build quality is kind of cheap though and I believe the Acers have slightly better build-quality. I'm happy with it though and the fact that I have a ton of Dell chargers at home and work is a bonus since I never have to lug around an AC Adapter. Got one wherever I go (work, home: kitchen, bedroom, living room, etc.).

 

[JoeyC]

Everyone - thanks for the responses.

I have the DUAL CORE SU2300 in my Aspire 1410. It's a dual core Celeron, which is just a Core2Duo with less cache. I upgraded to 4 gigs of RAM and bought a cheap Class6 SDHC 4 gig card for readyboost. I also bought a 7200RPM 320 gig WD notebook drive for it.

This thing rocks and blows away any Atom-based netbook in existance as far as CPU power is concerned. I'm running VMware on mine, which runs pretty snappy.

Wireless N
Gigabit LAN
HDMI out
Keyboard larger than my Desktop rig
4 Gigs of RAM
1376x768
6 Cell battery
Runs very cool, much cooler than my previous Aspire One D250

What more than you ask for for $350 (bought mine at Fry's on special) plus $150 in upgrades

This is great info. If I bought the Dell (or anything for that matter), a 7200RPM HDD is quite possible or even maybe one of the new Kingston SSDs.

Personally, I'd wait until Core i3 and i5's drop into the ultrathins and AMD's Nile platform/Geneva CPU's come out (this summer?).

For stuff out right now, I'd look at the HP DM3-1030 model. It's listed at $600+ right now at Amazon, but every couple weeks you see it on sale somewhere for ~$450-500:

1.6GHz AMD Athlon Neo X2 Dual-Core Processor for Ultrathin Notebooks (512 MB L2 Cache)
4 GB DDR2 RAM (2 Dimm)
320GB (7200RPM) SATA Hard Drive
13.3" Diagonal High-Definition HP LED BrightView Widescreen Display
Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, *Up to 6 Hours of Battery Life
ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics with 128MB Display Cache Memory AMD M780G with 64MB GDDR2

After your post, I did quite a bit of digging around the net for info/reviews on the DM3. It seemed that the reviews were a mixed bag. Indeed, the specs look good for the price, but not sure I want to take a chance on it.

I was in a similar situation about 3 months ago. I went from an Asus 1000HE to the Acer 1810T. I still miss the battery life, touchpad and keyboard of the HE. In every other aspect (wireless, screen size/res, audio output volume, build quality, & overall performance) I vastly prefer the Acer.

I have the Acer Aspire 1810T which has 4GB RAM & a Core 2 Duo SU7300 and its MSRP is $600 but appears to be discontinued or at least very hard to get for MSRP right now. I would not pay a PENNY over $600 for this unit, btw. I love its specs but it really should just sell for somewhere in the $550 neighborhood.

There is also the 1810TZ which has the slightly slower SU4100 C2D and 3GB RAM for $50 less MSRP. Since I wanted to go with 4GB anyway, I figured might as well go with the top model.

There are actually at least 4 versions of the 1410T (none of which have BT standard but you can add it internally):
-Original version w/ 250GB HDD, SU3500 Core 2 Solo and Vista. These were $399ish
-SU2300 dual-core Celeron w/ 160gb HDD and Win 7 for $399. This was arguably the best bang for the buck portable PC ever and only lasted for a month or two. They are sold out EVERYWHERE now or going for more than MSRP.
-Celeron 743 single-core version w/ 250GB HDD and Win 7. This is the current version that's fairly widely available at $399 and also comes in a restyle Gateway version.
-New SU2300 version. This bumps up to a 250GB HDD, still has Win 7 and comes in at $450, so Acer is trying to improve their margins on these machines. Still a solid machine for the money. IIRC, they also changed this one to have 2x1GB Sodimms instead of the 1x2GB the older models used.


In my opinioin, I'd go with any of the dual-core 11.6" Acers without a doubt. Comparably spec'd to the Acer, the 11z Dell seems a bit overpriced. The EEE 1201N and the various AMD + Radeon HD3200 units are nice machines only if you are a gamer. The CULV machines have definitely have much better battery life and CPU performance. Also, for the time CULV machiones handle non-hardware assisted streaming better than the Atom-based machines.

Wow! Thanks for the very detailed and informative post. Lots of great info here. Especially informative since you owned a 1000HE prior. What to do...

 

[hellfire88]

Yea, I have a Macbook unibody aluminum 2.4GHz (my wife uses it).

The 6cell battery does stick down A LOT comparatively to other laptops I've owned with big batteries. Its pretty much like 2 3cells stacked on to of one another. However, I don't mind it too much since it elevates the laptop for me to type easier on and thankfully, the sleeve case I got for it (some random brand called "Yakpak" I got at my local store) accommodates the larger bulge on the bottom.

I get about 4.5 - 5hrs with WiFi and Bluetooth on and LED brightness maybe at 75% or so. This is using Windows 7 Home Premium x64's default "Balanced" profile so maybe I could squeeze in 30min or so more with the "power save" profile.

Thanks for the response. I am still considering this, especially since Amazon has dropped the price down to $485. Seems like a decent deal if you ask me.

I appreciate your feedback. You mention the MacBook. Do you own one?

How bad/annoying is the 6 cell battery? How about the battery life - 5-6 hours possible with just wifi on?