I would love to the the Nano in the HP. Then maybe I’ll buy one since it won’t be underpowered. *cough*atom*cough*

The deciding point for me in favor of the Nano versus the Atom is the poor chipset Intel uses with the Atom. Via has also recently upgraded the drivers for the 2133, I would presume further refining from Via will make the Nano a suitable upgrade.

…on the other hand, the Nano is supposed to be pin compatible with the C7. Setting aside whether that would lead to a faster adoption time by companies currently using the C7 – would the more adventurous be able to swap out the chip ourselves? Is the CPU soldered on the board for the 2133?

Dave, I read the same review, but let’s dig a little deeper. You mentioned the 56W used when both systems were idle. My Samsung Q1UP UMPC uses about 10W… when in use! If my portable device used 56W when idle then the power would drain from the 6-cell battery with about an hour of idle time. ;)

My point being: out of the 56W in use when idle, the Atom is using .5W or 1% of the power draw. (Atom’s TDP is .5w when idele and maxes out at 2.6W) Probably not a good reference system to use an Atom in a review, although it does highlight the processing power of the new Nano.

Atom Z540 does *not* support 64bit !

Where did u get your info ?

I got mine from Intel:
http://ark.intel.com/cpu.aspx?groupID=35460

Only Atom CPU with 64bit Support is the el-cheapo Atom 230.

It’s great how you respond to comments on this site. I was reading a notebook review (I think laptopmag) and noticed this too, how the VIA chip uses much more power. But in the end, the battery life is still the same for most atom/nano netbooks that don’t have extended batteries. I dislike that the most.

-I would still take the msi wind over the hp mini-note. the hp has a fantastic keyboard, but I’ve had no problems with the wind and the HP is just so much more expensive!

I think the question also lies on what sort of atom your comparing the nano too.

I think its been put back to september but thats when the dual core atoms get released, these I presume will be far better at multi-tasking how these compare to the nano, which I don’t believe goes dual core to some point in 2009

Hi Gordon, did you reinstall the whole Vista to your mininote or using the built-in Vista? I use the built-in Vista but it seems running not very well. It takes me more than 3 minutes to start it up!

All the talk of how poor the processor was nearly put me off getting a Mini-Note. But I’m glad I did. I’m actually pleasantly surprised with the performance, especially after an upgrade to 2GB ram and even with an upgrade to Vista Home Premium. I have no problems running ripped DVD’s full screen and although HD digital TV stutters standard def digital TV fine which surprised me. It definately runs better than y Sony UX with XP on it. Much, much better.

It’s even inspired me to install Photoshop for light work in the field.

The only real issue is multitasking, but I expected issues there and it’s not as bad as I thought it might be.

So all in all I don’t care what could have been because the Mini-Note does everythin I expected and much more.

Gordon

The Atom has variants that run 64 bit code, the Z540 for example.

Steve, I think your that’s about the only likely upgrade path. You gain performance over the existing C7-M and don’t go up in power usage. So the question becomes: how does the 1.3 GHz Nano compare to the 1.6 GHz Atom. Can’t wait to find out!

Performance would be much better than the 1.6Ghz C7 (lets say between 50-200% CPU performance increaase) for the same 8W TDP.

In addition, you’d be able to lock down the CPU to 1Ghz at times of mobile need to save energy, increase battery life and still have the same processing power as the 1.6Ghz.

Steve.

I’ve been one of the folks enthusiastically waiting for the HP to get the Nano. But, I’ll admit my reasons are somewhat peculiar: the Nano, unlike the Atom, is a 64-bit processor, meaning I can run 64-bit Linux on it.

If you don’t care about that, then I don’t know that the Nano will provide many advantages over the current processor.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that one of the problems with the Atom is it will only execute inline code and not random access. If that is in fact true then benchmarks would likely be the only way to compare them with the Nano.