CultofMac reported a wonderful post showing a netbook with OSX86 & 80 running applications simultaneously. It proves the capability of both OSX and Netbook.According to CultofMac “I’ve been trying to determine Atom’s performances with Mac OS X for some time now, and I think this shows Atom’s netbooks are not so crippled!” Netbooks are a small fraction & growing very rapidly and grabbing a good amount of laptop market share. This experiment is answer for those who doubts the possibility of netbooks & Intel Atom Processor. 

Hardware is:

* Atom N270 @1.6ghz
* 2Gb Ram
* 80Gb Western Digital Scorpio HDD
* OS X Leopard 10.5.4

List of Apps in order of launch :

1. Finder + Dashboard + Spaces
2. Stickies
3. Mail
4. Safari
5. Quicktime
6. iTunes
7. iPhoto
8. iMovie
9. Keynote
10. Numbers
11. Pages
12. System Prefs
13. GarageBand
14. iWeb
15. Realtek Wlan Utility
16. Address Book
17. Adium
18. Automator
19. Calculator
20. CeltX
21. Chess
22. Dictionnary
23. Font Book
24. iCal
25. iChat
26. Preview
27. VLC
28. TextEdit
29. Console
30. Activity Monitor
31. Digital Color Meter
32. Directory
33. Disk Utility
34. Grab
35. Monolingual
36. Grapher
37. Onyx
38. System Profiler
39. Terminal
40. VoiceOver Utility
41. Color Sync Utility
42. Audio Midi Setup
43. µTorrent
44. Cyberduck
45. X11
46. Gimp
47. iSync
48. Photobooth
49. Trix
50. DazStudio
51. Audacity
52. Bean
53. Bricksmith
54. DVD Hunter
55. Fun Card Maker
56. Game Hunter
57. Handbrake
58. Hyper Engine AV
59. Kigo Video Converter
60. Levelator
61. MPEG Streamclip
62. SubFix
63. Subs Factory
64. Vino
65. Blender
66. Buddi
67. Cashbox
68. Freemind
69. Juice
70. Q
71. Seashore
72. Skim
73. Smultron
74. Xee
75. Inkspace
76. Open Office 3
77. Miro
78. The Unarchiver
79. Stuffit 12
80. Stellarium

I have used Vista on two netbooks, and it’s never been good. In fact, Vista has been unusable in both circumstances. Then I loaded Windows 7 onto the Mini 12.

Dell Inspiron Mini 12, a 12-inch Atom netbook with 1GB of RAM, I liked the hardware just fine but complained that Vista was too slow to even be considered as the OS. The system often lagged when just opening the Start menu, let alone launching real programs. It, like Vista on most netbooks, was little more than a novelty—something to be chuckled at for a few moments before formatting and installing XP. So I loaded the mini 12 with Windows 7. What did I have to lose?

The experience is night and day.

With Aero deactivated (and actually, totally inaccessible after an auto-configuration installation despite screwing with the registry), the Start menu now pops right up (like it should), Firefox takes about 3.5 seconds to open (which is reasonable) and light multitasking is smooth enough. The computer is by no means fast, but it’s reasonably functional. And I can use the system without pounding my head against the screen or loading an old OS. Keep in mind, this testing is just with 1GB of memory, not even 2GB.

The system still struggles a bit with both full screen Flash video and XviD clips. Heavily dropped frames remain a fact of life, and don’t expect to fast forward through high quality content at will. But that’s a hardware limitation that I can accept, or at least not blame on Microsoft. Intel, I’m looking in your direction now.

I’ve had plenty of time to spend with Sony’s bite-sized Vaio P, and now it’s time to deliver a verdict on whether or not the 1.4-pound device really performs as advertised.

Sony’s Vaio P managed to generate some buzz at CES, largely based around its minuscule footprint, 1.4-pound weight and ultra-wide LCD screen. Sony aggressively marketed this device as not being a netbook, but rather as a full-functioning laptop. They even went as far as to install Windows Vista Home Basic on the Vaio P despite an Atom processor, and gave it the 1600×768 resolution. This left two big questions to be answered: Is it suitable for real everyday use? And does it transcend the netbook category and enter the realm of media notebook?

If “everyday use” means some light multitasking focused around the internet, then you may be using the Vaio P with regularity. But assuming media notebook status entails watching HD Youtube vids while working in Photoshop, the answer to the second question is a definitive “no.” On the other hand, any way you slice and dice it, the Vaio P is a netbook. I came into to this review with modest expectations, and tested it as such. I didn’t beat the hell out of it by trying to install Adobe Premiere or play Crysis on the thing. But seeing as Sony was talking a big game, I tried to do more than browse pages, listen to music and check email.

The review unit I tested had a 1.33 GHz Z520 Atom Processor, 2 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD and Intel integrated graphics designed for MIDs. So I decided I would try to run three to five apps at any one time, essentials like SlingPlayer, Pidgin, Skype, VLC, iTunes and Gimp. Meanwhile, I’d have Firefox open, running Google Docs, Flickr and Youtube.

For the most part, this machine ran speedily, handling Pidgin and many-tabbed Firefox along with other apps. I wouldn’t consider the Vaio P as fast as a standard laptop in a similar scenario, but it definitely feels faster than most netbooks.

I suppose it’s no huge shock, but trying to play most video on the Vaio P was pretty rough. It could handle anything in the resolution ballpark of 320×240 without failure, but 640×480 fullscreen video would lag and 1280×720 video (from vids created on my Kodak Zi6 and from YouTube) would freeze within a few frames. Locally stored, non-HD DivX movies either ran in slow-mo or lost every third frame. The moral of the story: If Sony is going to be adamant about their product not being a netbook, adequate video playback is a must.

As far as battery life goes, if you’re web browsing over wi-fi while listening to music and messaging you should get 2-3 hours out of the battery. I kept the brightness at 3/4 and had the power management set to “Vaio Optimized,” and found the results to be acceptable, if average for these kinds of machines.

Sony also includes a Linux-based instant-on interface that uses the PS3-like Xross Media Bar UI but its implementation is a mixed bag. The raw functionality and design of the software is decent, allowing you to access music, photos, movies, messaging software and a custom version of Firefox. But some of the visual design and nuanced functionality are lacking to the point where you’d rather just launch Vista.

The fonts and backgrounds, specifically, make the instant-on XMB environment look cheap and dated. It’s also an issue in the web browser, which uses a totally different set of fonts that border on repulsive.Also strange is that the Pidgin messaging app in this Linux UI lets you sign into Gchat or MSN Messenger, but not AIM. Maybe this is a remnant of Sony’s long-standing bad relationship with AOL and AIM.

My final complaint with regard to the instant-on OS is that switching between keyboard and cursor-based navigation is done in a half-baked way that makes it all feel unfinished. Going from the XMB to the music player, for example, requires you to use the nub to control the play/pause/skip functionality, and that isn’t easy. If we can’t get keyboard control in these menus, then how about some dedicated media-playback buttons? It’s not like this machine is a testament to minimalism or anything.

As for the hardware itself, it’s got the build quality you expect from a premium-priced Sony product. It never feels like it’s going to break or loosen up, and it’s clear some time and effort was put into the design. And for its size, it feels neither too heavy nor too light, and really lives up to its claims of portability.

One gripe I do have, however, is with the keyboard and mouse layout. The key size and general spacing isn’t really the issue, as I’ve used much smaller and much worse before, but the lack of space between the space bar and the mouse buttons is really problematic. I typed this entire review on the Vaio P, and one problem I kept running into is that every time I went to hit the space bar, I accidentally tapped the mouse button. It’s so sensitive it would register a click without being fully pressed. So every 90 seconds or so, the cursor moved from where I’m typing to wherever my mouse pointer was and totally derailed whatever I was typing. Annoying.

To those who are wary of the lack of trackpad, and the return of the old Thinkpad-style nub, truth is a trackpad is more effective, but the shrinkage achieved by its omission is worth it. Considering the sleek and slim measurements of the Vaio P, I have no problem plugging in a mouse if I need more precise control.

As for my final verdict, the Vaio P is an undeniably attractive, fun, exciting gadget on design alone, but I’m not quite sure it lives up to its marketing hype or its $900 starting price—ours as tested was actually $1200. The Sony Vaio P works well as a machine for the living room or kitchen, and for style reasons fits well in those environments and is easily stashed. But it won’t replace your workhorse laptop, not even on a part time basis, due to graphical limitations, an inability to run resource-heavy apps and that damned issue with the keyboard and mouse