So I’m learning to use cmd+C & cmd+V instead of their Windows/Linux counterparts now, getting used to the absence of the Delete button, and searching Google for the tips and tricks new to me. The only disappointment I have encountered yet was that my Abobe Photoshop Elements license doesn’t work with the Mac version. However, it turned out that the bundled iPhoto suite is good enough to give me some time to decide whether should I spend $79.99 on a Mac version of Adobe PSE9 or should I look for a cheaper option.

However, this is Adobe’s fault. On the Apple’s part everything is awesome. Awesome like having SSH client and Python translator right out of the box, awesome like the lightning fast GUI, awesome like uncluttered desk, and a lot of other awesomenesses yet to be explored.

Windows 7 Starter Edition restrictions has a lot to speak on its behalf. Some of them are plain ridiculous and hardly affect actual computer performance like inability to change a desktop wallpaper, and some are pretty frustrating like addressing no more than two gigabytes of RAM.

Of course, someone can always excuse such measures as Microsoft’s efforts to save the much more expensive Home Edition, Professional and Ultimate bundles from canibalisation. Except that sometimes it cripples otherwise pretty neat machines.

Exempli gratia, Windows 7′ Gaming perfoirmance score on Atom N270 backed nVidia ION with the latest drivers is 4.7 on Windows 7 Starter Edition and 5.3 on Windows 7 Professional Edition. Pretty much of a difference!

Although it’s still not enough for the modern video games, even such forgiving ones like World of Warcraft, but it more than ok for the Win7 Aero interface features. All of them are working perfectly smooth.

Atom N270, one of the first Atoms on the market, is a single core processor, so it hardly benefits anything from the dropping of Windows 7 Starter’s single-core-only restriction. Even though the Windows 7 Professional shows this hyperthreading CPU as two, it helps real life performance virtually nothing.

Summarizing, in terms of performance, it’s mostly the RAM—a quick jump from the “caged” by the Starter Edition 2 gigs of RAM to approximately 2.8 gigs (2Gb + 1Gb − about 256Mb eaten by nVidia ION) boosting little netbook tremendeously. Well, as much as it could be possible in case of the old cripled Atom CPU.

It isn’t documented anywhere, but it seams that Windows 7 Starter Edition cripples GPU performance somehow. At least, this is the only explanation for the Windows 7 Score difference for video gaming performance.

Fortunately, I have Lenovo S12 Ion based netbook to test WoW as thoroughly as I want. BTW, I’ve found out that the lowering resolution down from the native 1280*800 doesn’t really helps so all tests were taken on a native 1280*800 screen resolution. It’s enough for anything and looks really great. But the special effects settings better to turn down to the minimum.

My Lenovo S12 is built on the Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz CPU and had just 1Gb of RAM when I brought it home. So the first series of test I’ve made on a 1Gb RAM configuration:

• Vanilla WoW – Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms and pre-lvl-60 dungeons – all these places are smooth and easy with the FPS jumping between 30 and 50 with up to maximum 60 in the deserted areas and down to 20 occasionally in the crowded areas of Azerothian capital cities.
• Outland and Northrend zones are pretty much ok with FPS from 25 to 40.
• 5-men lvl80 heroics put some load on nVidia Ion – FPS are floating between 15-25.
• And the last but not least – Dalaran – it won’t be your destination of choice on nVidia Ion machine with just 1Gb RAM – FPS are between 7 and 14. Way too laggy.

Adding 2Gb more RAM (for a total 3Gb) increases performance dramatically. You can expect 5-10 FPS increase depending on how much action is in scene. A little 5 FPS performance gain will make lvl 80 heroics playable even if you are warrior tank or paladin healer. Even in Dalaran, while FPS count is going not higher than 10-20 FPS, you will notice a huge improvement in overall smoothness when running around between daily quest givers and vendors.

With a 3Gb setup World of Warcraft performance on nVidia Ion based Lenovo S12 netbook could be described like “absolutely playable and enjoyable most of the time”:

• Almost anywhere in the Vanilla WoW content – 30-60 FPS (around 40 average).
• Outland and Northrend – 30-40 FPS.
• Lvl80 heroic dungeons – 20-30 FPS.
• Dalaran – 10-20 FPS.

If you are curious about how much nVidia Ion notebook could cost, check these links:

• Lenovo S12
• HP mini 311
• ASUS Eee PC Seashell 1201N

There are two products in this niche available on a local market by the end of Jan, 2010: Lenovo S12 nVidia Ion and HP mini 311. Fortunately, the choice was very simple because HP mini 311 came with Window XP preinstalled but mostly due to its $70 more expensive price tag. That’s why this review is titled:

Lenovo S12 nVidia Ion

When the Lenovo S12 is sitting alone on the desk you will hardly tell it from a normal adult notebook. If there is nothing to compare it with Lenovo S12 looks just like your average 12″ – 13″ Macbook. It has a descent (for a netbook) 12.1″ LED LCD and a full sized keyboard. All two things that differ Lenovo S12 Ion from a notebook and gives it a right to be called a netbook are hidden beneath its wonderful keyboard.

The first thing is the Atom N270 CPU. Not the newest one, not the fastest (well, it is slow one actually), single core. It works and nothing more. Thanks to nVidia Ion your apps have a GPU share some load. And the second thing is S12 price tag – it’s just four times cheaper than the average Macbook.

The bright and crystal clear LED back-lit 12.1″ LCD screen has 1280*800 pixels resolution which makes things not so tiny as on the more common nowadays 1360*768 pixels 11.6″ LCDs but still brings plenty of space for almost any task. You can browse web and edit webpages (just don’t forget to press ctrl++ to save your eyesight). You can work with spreadsheets and presentations without any clutter. You can manage your photos and develop some RAW files on the go.

Typing is as easy as on a full size 15″ laptops. Did I mentioned that Lenovo S12 keyboard is very good? Yeah, it is. Also S12 netbook is quite thin – less than 2cm open – which makes typing even more comfortable. Lenovo S12 Ion is the coolest laptop I’ve ever seen. I mean if you put your palms on its keyboard you won’t say it’s really warmer than a table it rests on. The only part that’s getting a little hot after a couple hours of work is one the netbook’s back where the wireless card and a memory expansion slot are located. Definitely, WiFi adapter is the hottest part.

As you can see on a picture above, the port selection of the Lenovo S12 nVidia Ion is on par with the other netbooks and lightweight notebooks on the market and includes HDMI port – nice feature because nVidia Ion is great for HD video. On the other side of S12 you’ll find two more USB ports, SD card reader and an awesome WiFi on|off lever.

nVidia Ion

What makes Lenovo S12 and other netbooks with nVidia Ion graphics special is their ability to remain cheap, lightweight and energy efficient while being able to run pretty heavy applications like modern 3D games. Lenovo S12 nVidia Ion is running World of Warcraft pretty smooth on S12 native 1280*800 screen resolution with 25-35 frames per second. More on the World of Warcraft performance on nVidia Ion in the next post.

Lenovo S12 Battery Life

When it comes to battery life, Lenovo S12 promises at least two hours without any powersaving mode one – with the screen is shining bright, nVidia Ion is grinding numbers and Wi-Fi module is pinging them back and forth.

If you’ll try to save some power… e.g. dim the screen a little bit and try not to use GPU so hard, you will find that it will last for a little more than three hours. Not much for web surfing but quite ok for a connected typewriter mode, when you are typing something in Google Docs or working with spreadsheets.

There is another one mode. It’s called “turn of almost anything”. In this mode your Lenovo S12 won’t use nVidia Ion, no sounds, no Wi-Fi, LCD brightness will be set to minimum. Actually, reading is the only activity I can imagine with such settings, but it will last for almost five hours – enough for a pretty long ride.

Installation is fast and simple. All the MSI Wind’s hardware working fine right out of the box without any additional drivers installation, even the built-in camera which I have failed to set up in Ubuntu. Windows 7 Ultimate – the only option during the beta test – ate seven Gigs of my HDD space. There are a lot of bundled software most of the people hardly ever need, so I think it could be cleaned up for a half a Gig easily.

Overall, Windows 7 is pretty fast, comfortable and netbook ready operating system. RC Build 7100 is quite stable so you sure can give it a try on your secondary PC.

Either Samsung or retailers have set the screen brightness to 100% to make the T190 pop on the store shelf and I was very surprised when I had to lower it all the way down to 55% to make the image comfortable (and still very bright and vivid).

The thing I like most is its power indicator. It’s so subtle and unobtrusive that you can easily think it’s just an element of the LCD’s decoration. The best LED placement idea I’ve ever seen.

Computer is built on the modern and powerful Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200 2.5GHz processor and nVidia GeForce 9500GS 256Mb GPU which is just as powerful as GeForce 8600GT 256Mb that was in my previous laptop. 9500GS eats around 512Mb of the system’s 2Gb RAM so I think I need to add two more gigabytes of RAM to make it run smoother.

160Gb HDD from Western Digital is very fast but noisy. You needn’t see its LED indicator to say if there some read/write operations ongoing. The built-in card reader, on the other hand, is surprisingly slow. With its 800 kilobytes per second read speed any five bucks 100 in 1 USB card reader will work at least five times better.

There is a handy gadget shelf on top of the Acer M1641 case with two USB 2.0 ports and headphones/mic sockets – very nice idea.

Logitech MX400 (left one, wired) and MX620 (right one, wireless) are undoubtedly the best computer mice in the modern history. The best design for the average sized hands. Unfortunately, MX400 lacks MX620′s excellent scroll wheel and a quite usefull auxiliary button, but the ergonomics and pointing accuracy are still here.

Toshiba Satellite A series notebooks are the all-purpose (considering internet/office applications) and inexpensive 15.4″ less than 3 kilograms machines with integrated graphics and a great screen. A300 lacks of modern fancy design and a plastic looks a bit cheap, but despite of that, overall built quality is very good.

It comes with the Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled and a load of freeware and shareware. I think you would like to clean the start-up menu just after the first boot to make the beast run more faster.

Pro

• Excellent 15.4″ 1280*800 screen. One of the best for its price.
• Built quality.
• Nice and pretty powerful configuration, except for the integrated graphics.
• Hardware WiFi turn on/off lever.
• Good keyboard layout.

Contra

• A load of unneeded software that clutter your system tray and slow boot-up time.
• The cover with the lock. Most of Toshiba Satellites’ competitors got rid of them in the late 2007.
• No SD card reader on some models.
• Headfones/mic ports on the front side.

Nice mouse but doesn’t fit my average hand. Should be bigger to be comfortable enough.

Pro

• Great idea.

Contra

• Comfortability is highly depends on one’s palm size. A little less than average size fits well.
• Wired and bulky transmitter. Not the USB-stick type.
• Ridiculously short working range.
• Auxiliary buttons not so easily accessible.
• A bit cheap mats for a $100 mouse.
• Price (see above).