Steamd

Last week, I did a few posts regarding Ron Barrett, a blogger on NetworkWorld, did on Windows 7 (both here and here). Now, I stumbed on Ron’s posts purely by accident. I didn’t intend to write thoroughly about his take on Windows 7 but after reading his argument, well, I got inspired. Nothing personal against Ron Barrett. He’s got his opinion and I’ve got mine. And that’s the beauty of the internet. Everyone is free to voice their opinion in an unfiltered manner.

In his most recent blog post, Ron talks about Nvidia Ion, Nvidia’s new technology which was unveiled at CES 2009:

Interestingly, the NVIDIA ION runs on … Windows … Windows Vista Premium to be exact. Armed with the Intel Atom 330 CPU, the NVIDIA 9400M GPU (capable of full 1080p HD) and 7.1 audio. This is a system to keep your (pardon the pun) I-ON.

This is only the beginning. The ION has USB ports, HDMI, dual DVI, 1Gbps Ethernet, 3Gbps SATA (and eSATA connectors) as well as 2GBs of DDR-3 RAM.

The technology does sound interesting. This will definitely help elevate the concept of netbooks and steer them into a different direction. But Windows Vista Premium? The Intel Atom 330 isn’t a speed demon but it does offer quite a bit of power for really small form factors, which is perfect for things like netbooks. But with only 2 gigs of RAM, I don’t see a netbook with Windows Vista Premium being anything but a dog when it comes to performance. Virtually every notebook I’ve seen coming out with Vista on it has at least 3 gigs of RAM, which seems to be a good baseline for performance. An Nvidia Ion board with a max of only 2 gigs of RAM would have me worried. Still haven’t found any details on that so I guess we’ll see.

I am hoping to get a hold of one to test a little further and be able to report back to you in more detail. Perhaps I’ll throw the Windows 7 beta on it and check out how it handles. Maybe for fun I’ll even install Ubuntu on it to try it out, although I am not sure why, it’s not like I can play any of the hottest games with Ubuntu installed.

Yeah, let us know what you find out when you do test it. Personally, I just don’t see how Vista, let along Windows 7, will work all that well with this technology. Honestly, I don’t think you’re gonna be able to play many games on it.  Well, definitely not anything like Far Cry 2 or Crysis. I just don’t think Nvidia designed this technology to used to play high-end games on. 

A typical netbook with Nvidia Ion technology will likely cost around $400. Once you add-on a Windows Vista Home Premium license, that cost will go up to around $500. That isn’t that bad…but if the performance suffers due to the operating system then that’s $500 too much. Better to stick with a $400 netbook with Ubuntu on it at that point.

I’ve worked with too many small form factor notebooks to know that performance generally suffers the smaller the computer gets. I’ve had users with high-end needs insisting that they use a small tablet notebook for advanced 3D CAD drafting only to complain that it’s too slow. These are notebooks that are intended to be used lightly. They’re not meant for extreme power users.

Consider what the use of netbooks are. Most people who use netbooks use them primarily for web browsing, email, and general purpose applications. They’re typically underpowered in an effort to be highly efficient, light, low cost solutions. Desktop operating systems like Windows Vista, Windows 7, and even Mac OS X aren’t really the best candidates for these devices. Linux operating system like Ubuntu can be good candidates simply because you can configure them to run really light with minimal features.

What would work much better is if an operating system were designed around the concept of a netbook. Something really lean and clean with an interface that is better suited for a much small form factor. Doing that would allow applications much more room to make use of the available resources and provide a much better multimedia experience. 

Running a full-fledged OS on a netbook just isn’t a reality right now. The technology just isn’t quite there yet. Unless Microsoft has plans for a netbook version of their OS, the vision of running Vista and/or Windows 7 on a netbook is just that…a vision!