Netbook Processors
The heart of any computer system is a chip known as the CPU – the central processing unit – which is the engine that drives the entire computer. Most laptop computers on sale at the moment are equipped with Intel’s Core 2 Duo processors. These are the same processors used in lager desktop PCs as well, which means that a good (i.e. not too cheap) laptop can handle the same demanding tasks as any desktop machine. However, the processors that drive netbooks are a lot less powerful.
Most netbooks currently use a completely different type of processor, also designed by Intel and somewhat appropriately known as the Atom’. Measuring just 2.2cm square, the Atom is one of the smallest processors that Intel has ever produced and was designed specifically for use in compact portable devices such as netbooks. As well as being extremely small, the Atom is designed to require less power than a conventional processor, and also to give off less heat too. This means that netbooks can provide good battery life using relatively compact and lightweight batteries, rather than the heavy and bulky batteries used by most laptop computers.
However, the Atom is a lot less powerful than its bigger brothers in the Core 2 Duo range There are several different versions of the Atom, but the most commonly used model at the moment is called the Atom N270. This processor runs at a speed of 1.6GHz, which sounds fairly impressive, but a netbook equipped with a 1,6GHz Atom is nowhere near as fast or as powerful as a proper laptop computer equipped with a Core 2 Duo processor running at the same speed. Even so, most netbooks are still perfectly adequate for browsing the web, and even doing a bit of office work using Microsoft Word or Excel, as long as you don’t mind peering at your documents on such a small screen.
And, of course, Intel and its rivals are constantly developing newer and more powerful processors all the time. We’re already looking forward to seeing the latest version of the Atom, which will be called the Atom 330. This is a ‘dual-core’ chip that effectively bolts two processors together to improve performance. Even so, while early reports indicate that the Atom 330 is much faster than previous Atom chips, it is still a lot less powerful than the Core 2 Duo processors used in conventional laptops. This emphasizes the point that a netbook is primarily a mobile communications device rather than a general-purpose computer.
