Intel Atom

[graviti]

OK, I've seen these advertised quite a bit, but according to some of the spec sheets, it's going to be super slow. Has anyone had any experience with these processors. What are they like. Could they handle Word, Excel, Powerpoint, IE etc. And a few of them open and running at a time? We need to build a new research lab at school, and were thinking of throwing in some prebuilt all-in one units, (you know, the ones with the monitor and everything in one). But they come with the Atom processor, and we want to know if is really worth it.

 

[Messugga]

My proxy server uses an Atom. Chose it because I don't need the processing power of something larger and the fact that it's fanless and sucks close to zero power, really appealed to me.
As for handling Office: It'll do it, but so would a 486, given enough time, so it is a very relative situation. For the record, mine runs a stripped out XP in a virtual machine on top of Gentoo and I stuck 2gb of RAM in there and it's fairly nippy considering. Best would be to try one out before taking the plunge, but I'd say it may be up to the task.

 

[TheRift]

The netbooks with the Atom run nicely. Sometimes you don't need 4GHz of CPU power to view a web page, write a document or play music.

I think it's the Atom 330 which is the one to get.

 

[SilverNodashi]

They're well worth their price, and fast too. Try and get the Dual Core one though as it makes a difference. In fact, I find them running better than the Celeron's, and much cooler as well.