Ultrabook for my sister

I was recently asked by a family-member to look for a decent study-laptop for my sister. I'll admit I was kind of thrilled. I was playing around with the idea of finding a low-budget laptop, with decent specifications. Having done a machine-architecture report for school (x86/x64) last year, I had become thoroughly aware of what AMD has been doing lately.

I have always been a fan of AMD. Mainly because of their support for hardware-hacking (NOTE: this voids any warranty) and / or chip overclocking (in many cases also voids any warranty), and their clever innovation of techniques (amd64/APUs). And last but not least, their open and full support of FOSS.

In my report, I wrote about AMDs budget-line processors; the "Fusion" C-series and E-series, direct competitors to Intels "Atom" budget-line processors. In fact, the C-chips match similar Atom-chips in both TDP (Thermal Design Power) and clock-frequency (GHz). Whereas the E-series is higher clocked, resulting in a higher TDP, but also making it more similar to an Atom-chip system paired with a dedicated GPU (e.g. ION2).

My sisters computing-needs do not require massive number-crunching abilities, but it shouldn't be sluggish in operation either, so I went for the high-end mobile-solution: AMD E-450 (codename: Zacate) APU (Accelerated Processing Unit) used in a 13,3" LED-screen Asus model U32U laptop with 4GB DDR3 RAM.

The AMD E-450 is a 64-bit dual-core ("Bobcat" low-power x86-cores @ 1,65GHz) processor with an integrated Radeon HD 6320 GPU on the same die (which AMD markets as a so-called APU-chip), with a total TDP of 18 watts.

(The basic idea behind this type of system, is that: the stripped, low-power x86-cores (x2) does most of the general-purpose processing, but, hands over floating-point unit calulations to the GPU-cores on the same die, thereby eliminating both process load-balancing and CPU-GPU inter-communication delays.)

Asus product-link:
https://www.asus.com/Notebooks_Ultrabooks/U32U/

When unboxing the machine, I was pleasantly surprised :-) with the battery firmly locked-in the thing didn't weigh more than 1,55 kg! Didn't take up much space when closed either so it was a perfect carry-on companion and study-tool.

First boot took a few minutes, Windows always does at "first-boot".

Running Windows Update took around 4,5 hours to complete from a fresh install, after downloading everything that is (on a 2Mbps cable-DSL connection no less :-P *shrug*).

Installing Microsoft Office 2010 (with the help of an external USB 2.0 CD-ROM drive) actually didn't take all that long, and it ran like a dream.

Overall the CPU-response was acceptable when installing and pretty good in operation. It won't blow away anything with 4GB of RAM, but in combination with AMDs Fusion (referred to as a: Heterogeneous System Architecture by AMD) chipset and APU-chip, it didn't do half bad for an ultrabook-like laptop.

This was my first ultrabook-like experience, and I must say, I am impressed :-) I want one! Strictly speaking, the U32U does not fit the ultrabook-specification (being an Intel-trademark, and the U32U being AMD-based).

Personally (speaking as a poweruser), I would probably cram at least 8GB of RAM into the machine afterwards. And replace the 320GB HDD with an SSD for both system-speed and machine-weight. But for my sister, it was perfect! :-)

I might also add that I actually own two machines with Atom-processors, and the E-450 blew them both away on graphics and processing-power.

Edit:
I had to add a total of 8GB DDR3 RAM modules to the machine. She complained that it was getting sluggsish after a period of time. I had apparently not anticipated her usage-patterns good enough. 4GB of RAM was a little weak, especially if you want to run office-suites and similar resource-hogging software.

WinSCPbeen in heavy use over the years...

I hadn't given it much thought, but I have been using ONE Windows-application quite extensively over the past years. WinSCP.

For a simple-faced filemanager, it has many uses. But it's main feature is to connect to SSH / SFTP / FTP servers, handle files locally / remotely, transfer files, etc. A networked client-server file-manager application.

Before the early years of 2000, there were no decent graphical file-managers for cross-platform transfers and handling. Especially not with proper support for the Secure SHell v2 protocol.

WinSCP had this from the beginning (mainly with the scp program at first, then the SFTPv2 protocol. more recently WinSCP opts for switching to SFTPv3 protocol if available, for added security).

I can't recommend this program enough for it's easy transfer, handling and other file-related operations. I have never had any serious problems with it. It just works, and it works pretty damn good too.

It's interface is a beautiful interpretation of earlier, rather similar :P command-line designer guidelines.

Windows 7

Reading today's news headlines, you'll be sure to hit an article or two saying the Linux ommunity loves Windows 7. And yes, this is a fact. Even Linus Torvalds himself has been caught promoting Win7 (picture above).

From tuxradar.com: "It's official: we love Windows 7"

And according to them, their pagehits and search requests seem to indicate that people are actually validating operating systems before shelling off their precious $$$'s without as much as a question. Since the release of Win7, tuxradar has been receiving page requests for two specific articles on their site: Linux vs Windows 7 and Benchmarked: Ubuntu vs Vista vs Windows 7.

I find this really pleasing, foremost because if these visitors are non tech-savvy people, it shows that the efforts of the open source communities are finally showing some kind of influence on how people determine their computing needs.

This also shows the effect social networking has had on people's Internet habits, most of the hits on these pages are probably linking from blogs, social networks, IRC, twitter and the like. The electron-generations are finally getting recognition from 'the pinkies' (squares, conservatives, whatever you like to call them).

I've been testing Win7 RC myself in a virtual machine @ work, and I must admit, Microsoft has really pulled it off this time.

It's fast, secure, intuitive, goodlooking and it just works!

And as a result of all that linking, people are getting more aware about Linux and it's surrounding communities!

WIN - WIN