Is it really that difficult for them to slap 2 or 4Gb ram in it and upgrade the O/S to W7 Home Premium??

Is there even a market for these? Now there are those AMD A and C series chips that preform better than this and I believe they come with W7 home premium instead of this starter non sense.

coldtortillaIs there even a market for these? Now there are those AMD A and C series chips that preform better than this and I believe they come with W7 home premium instead of this starter non sense.

Battery life = ATOM netbooks always last that little bit long when not being plugged into the mains.

Earlier ATOMs also werent powerful to watch proper HD content but that changes with the intergrated GPU which also supposedly has its own dedicated memory. watching 720-1080p should be possible.

gaming wise - its still no competition for even an Entry Level AMD E-350 with the integrated 6310 GPU which is a little disapointing.

the E-350 is still a better buy in my opinion

The problem with such machine with most of us (including me), we can't tolerate something as slow when we're used to stupidly fast machines. We can't think of ourselves running around with a netbook that nowadays can be less powerful than a phone.

That's the only reason I stuck to laptops for mobility. Personally I'd rather carry something larger that saves me half the time. I'm sure this will change in the near future anyway.

N-GenThe problem with such machine with most of us (including me), we can't tolerate something as slow when we're used to stupidly fast machines. We can't think of ourselves running around with a netbook that nowadays can be less powerful than a phone.

That's the only reason I stuck to laptops for mobility. Personally I'd rather carry something larger that saves me half the time. I'm sure this will change in the near future anyway.

you are wrong...Its the fact that I HAVE such a stupidly fast machine at home that i tolerate something more portable or ultra portable for use while on the road.

but horsepower vs battery life - while youre away from the mains, battery life is king and performance takes a second priority. Its not as if youre going to be folding or crunching while away from the mains.

My HP DM1 might take a little longer to boot up but once its up its up and it doesnt feel slow at all. Obviously replacing the 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black with an SSD will boost boot times and general system response times even further. but it is far far far from slow once its up and running.

My definition of slow is the old IBM thinkpads that used to run Win2000 with old CPUs like the Intel 200-233Mhz MMX CPUs... now that is TRUELY slow.

I cycle to commute around london a lot and size and weight makes all the difference as I usually have to carry more stuff then just the laptop or netbook in my backpack or messenger bag.