Samsung X125 11.6in notebook
AMD's Athlon II Neo gets a mini-laptop outing
Review Computer manufacturers are well known for hyping up their products - "magical", indeed - but few actually fib. Samsung isn't telling porkies, but the sticker on its new X125 overstates with the best of them.
Two claims in particular struck me: "Fast booting" and "ultra-thin design".
Samsung's X125: netbook plus
Good job Samsung didn't put 'fast processor' there too, or I'd really have to take it to task.
Now, Samsung's designers are well able to come up with slick-looking laptops, and the X125 is no exception. This is a very nice machine, visually. The matte white lid and base sharply contrast with the black shiny interior with its recessed, calculator-style keyboard and richly-coloured 11.6in, 1366 x 768 glossy display.
The X125's chassis curves in all the right places, with only the ports, on the right and left side, standing proud.
But "ultra-thin"? I don't think so. The X125 measures up between 25 and 31mm thick, in part thanks to the chunky 8850mAh, 66Wh battery. Yes, this machine is nice-looking, but it's no MacBook Air, Dell Adamo or Sony Vaio X. It looks and feels like what it is: an oversized netbook.
Stylish design
The X125 has been designed as a carry-anywhere machine - there's no optical drive, to keep the weight down - but which is capable of more vroom than a netbook: there's that 720p-capable display - and an HDMI port, incidentally - a full version of Windows 7, 3GB of DDR 3 memory and a laptop-class processor.
Next page: Spec-tastic?
COMMENTS
"pouring over reviews online"
What precisely were you "pouring" over them, or don't I want to know?
Or for about the same price...
... you could get the Thinkpad X100e (model NTS5EUK), which has a dual-core AMD processor and comes with an internal 3G modem card, and has a quality keyboard and choice of pointing devices. It looks remarkably similar in layout to the Samsung. But you lose the HDMI port, and the battery life is worse (maybe 2-3 hours tops).
Massive Bezel, Tiny keyboard.
Either the massive bezel has made it bigger than it needs to be, or the keyboard is undersized. But whichever - this is an unoptimal setup and something like the Acer 1551, if it ever becomes available in the UK is a far better bet.
athlon ii neo
I wish you'd gotten a neo review out sooner! After much agonizing (and pouring over reviews online) I just bought an Acer Aspire One with the same processor as this samsung.
On windows it was a DOG, and booting was a chore. I only dealt with that for about five minutes before I slapped ubuntu on there. Normal ubuntu froze on boot, but xubuntu installed fine for me, and it's quite zippy. Booting probably takes around twenty seconds and applications start quickly enough, though you're right in that it's not very good at multitasking. I didn't really buy it for that, though, the most multitasking I'll be doing is listening to music while writing, so it's OK. The video card rocks, though, and can handle anything I throw at it (some fancy compiz effect, mainly, and the occasional game) without problems.
My main question, then, is how does this compare to a single core intel atom processor? That really seems more like the appropriate competitor than a dual core notebook processor.
CPU
I find your experience interesting. It is sad to find there are response issues at the level of the user interface.
I wonder could it be the bloat that Samsung loaded the machine with. Ie antivirus software (some as you know are real cpu hogs) and god knows what else.
I can't imagine that much of a slowdown due to a CPU issue solely. My 600 Mhz PIII (1 threaded!) with 512 megs of ram runs xp fine.
If I had that machine, I'd decruft it just to see if it made any difference.
