VMD-L Mailing List

From: Thomas C. Bishop (bishop_at_tulane.edu)
Date: Tue Sep 28 2010 - 14:20:46 CDT

I have an Asus EEEPC 1002HA that replaced my IBM thinkpad T42 (?) after a trip to Germany I had enough lugging around a regular notebook.

I've been _VERY_ pleased w/ it.
This is not the one you're looking at so not sure how to compare the
Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 on mine to what you have in mind.

I did upgrade to 2Gb ram and a 250GB HD
I do molec. dyn of large systems and have not had any real problems using this for talks & daily productivity..
I can't use it for analysis but I can do live VMD sessions during talks.
of course I test them ahead of time.
It is not my main PC, i.e. I don't do analysis on it, but it's plenty good for home/road use, productivity and presentations.

I ran opensuse 11.2 for a long time and recently switched to 11.3
11.3 does not restore the external monitor as well as 11.2 did. 11.2 never seems to have given me sleep/restore problems.

I also run VirtualBox and use it to watch netflix via IE

Biggest complaint: keyboard too small.
Note I don't use the built in camera and sound's not a big deal for me.
I usually use an external monitor, keyboard, mouse w/ it at home.
I sometimes travel w/ a keyboard if I know I'm gonna be doing a lot of typing.
I always bring an ext'n mouse.
I just got bifocals.. don't know if I'm getting old or if the video is to blame :-)

Having said all this I'd l like to hear about other's experiences/prefs.
For $400 I'm tempted to upgrade even for minor improvements or just get one as part of a phone plan.

Tom

On Tuesday 28 September 2010 10:45:08 am John Stone wrote:
> Hi,
> Based on what I've read and heard from others, I would expect the
> NVIDIA ion chipsets to do better than the integrated Intel graphics
> that are often found on low-cost laptops these days. If you're running
> Windows, the performance difference may only be a factor of 2x or so.
> Under Linux, there are frequently serious problems with the drivers for
> the Intel chipsets, so the performance difference approaches infinity. :)
> The low-power AMD laptop chips are likely similar in performance to the
> NVIDIA ion, but again, their Linux drivers aren't quite as smooth
> the NVIDIA drivers, though far better than Intel's last I've heard.
>
> I've been tempted to get one of the ion based netbooks as well, as I'd
> heard good things from a graphics developer that uses one of the
> HP mini 311 netbooks. I've been trying to eek along a bit longer with
> my archaic IBM thinkpad before spending any money however. I've also
> been hearing that there are various 3-D capable laptops coming out soon
> (larger form factor, and 2x the price) so I may wait and see what happens
> there.
>
> Cheers,
> John Stone
> vmd_at_ks.uiuc.edu
>
> On Sun, Sep 26, 2010 at 12:01:40PM -0700, Gianluca Interlandi wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > It might be a bit off topic. I wanted to ask whether anybody has had any
> > experience with the Asus EEE netbook:
> >
> > http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834220805&cm_re=asus_eee-_-34-220-805-_-Product
> >
> > ASUS Eee PC 1215N-PU17-BK Black Intel Atom D525(1.80GHz) Dual Core 12.1"
> > WXGA 2GB Memory 250GB HDD NetBook
> >
> > In particular concerning the graphics card: Next-generation NVIDIA ION
> > graphics
> >
> > Has anybody tested it with glxgear, how many frames per second? Is it
> > enough to run VMD on it and display and smoothly rotate a molecule (a few
> > 100 AA) with SURF or VDW on? I plan to use it mainly for conference
> > presentations. Does it have openGL 3D acceleration?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Gianluca
> >
> > -----------------------------------------------------
> > Gianluca Interlandi, PhD gianluca_at_u.washington.edu
> > +1 (206) 685 4435
> > http://artemide.bioeng.washington.edu/
> >
> > Postdoc at the Department of Bioengineering
> > at the University of Washington, Seattle WA U.S.A.
> > -----------------------------------------------------
>
>

*******************************
   Thomas C. Bishop
    Tel: 504-862-3370
    Fax: 504-862-8392
http://dna.ccs.tulane.edu
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