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Gigabyte M912V Netbook - Hands On Preview

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FiXT

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Gigabyte M912V Touch Screen Netbook - Hands On Preview



Price:
$849.99 (Change Possible)
Availability: Pre-Order (ETA Mid October 08)
Manufacturer: Gigabyte


<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/fixt/Articles/M912/Web%20Photos/specs_small.jpg" style="float: right" hspace="30"><div align="justify"> Without a doubt, one of the year’s hottest products, netbooks have upgraded from a geeky fad to a global craze. While sub notebooks, Ultra-Mobile PCs, and tablets have been available for some time, never before have such devices been as affordable as they are today. These units were often into the four digit price points, and featured hardware comparable to what could be in one's basement, collecting dust. But times have changed. We are beginning to see new devices, branded "netbooks", at the forefront of leading edge technology and include hardware such as solid state drives, wireless N and 45nm CPU’s smaller than a penny!

Asus is the arguably the innovator behind affordable netbooks; launching the Asus EEE in 2007. Since the release of the “Triple E”, manufacturers worldwide have joined the foray, including some rather uncommon contenders in the notebook market. Gigabyte is commonly associated as a motherboard manufacturer, or occasionally graphics cards and chassis. However, with the worldwide netbook phenomenon starting to take off, they have decided to try their hand at an affordable UMPC with a twist. The allure to mini notebooks is that the units are lightweight, powerful, functional and affordable, but upon first glance the Gigabyte M912V doesn’t appear to bring any unique developments to the market.

The M912v's physical specs are similar to most others in its category, based on the Intel Atom 1.6GHz processor, sporting 1GB of DDR2 memory, 160GB SATA HDD and an 8.9in widescreen touch screen. Wait… touch screen? Gigabyte has entered the market with a zinger – developing one of the most affordable tablet PCs and pairing it with the netbook outline; the next closest competitor from Fujitsu has not yet been released, but is nearly identical in spec and rumored to be nearly double in price. Our article gives a report of our hands on look at the Gigabyte M912V, the latest evolution of the netbook. </div>

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FiXT

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System at a Glance

Exterior

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The initial impression of the notebook gives one mixed reviews. The lid shines with a thin, gloss black top, textured with faint silver squares, and a rounded design: it gives the feel of modern elegance. Unfortunately the unique styling was not kept as a theme throughout the rest of the notebook and a dull silver and matte black make up the rest of the shell. The unit also has a noticeably larger footprint. Measuring 1.7in with lid closed and weighing roughly 3lbs, the added bulk is evident when comparing it to other netbooks. That said, it is still a very lightweight and compact system. The slight size increase does not prove to be a hindrance for travel or carrying - after all, it is still an ultra-mobile PC.


Ports and Accessories

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The M912v comes with all the typical ports found on most netbooks. The left side houses a Kensington notebook lock, LAN port, 1 USB Port, 4 in 1 card reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro) and ExpressCard slot. The ExpressCard expansion slot is a great addition to the unit and Gigabyte is one of few who had the foresight to include such a thing. This gives users the ability to add in extras such as wireless cards or additional I/O ports such as eSATA or Firewire.

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To the right, Power switch, 2 USB Ports, Mic In, Audio Out, VGA and DC Power in.


Interior

Next we opened the screen up to reveal an 80 key keyboard and touchpad. Interestingly enough, even with the increased real-estate, Gigabyte opted to have thicker trim rather than increase the size of the keyboard. The keys provided reponsive tactile feedback, but with so little space between and such a low profile design (much like the original EEE PC), typing on this particular keyboard did require frequent backspacing - that is when we finally managed to hit backspace.

The touchpad had no problems. It was decently sized, responded well and had the mouse buttons positioned at the bottom of the pad, which were easy to differentiate for left and right clicking.

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At the top of the screen sits a 1.3 megapixel camera, and while nothing extraordinary, it worked as intended. Paired with the microphone near the keyboard, it makes video conferencing simple, as long as callers don’t require high resolution images of faces or surroundings. The speakers under the keyboard also produced decent quality sound for such a small unit. Voices and treble frequencies were crisp and there was faint detection of some form of bass.
 
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Display and Touchscreen

Display and Touchscreen

With most other netbooks accepting the non conventional 1024X600 resolution as standard, Gigabyte has taken it one step further. The 8.9" screen, the same physical size as many others, is capable of displaying resolutions of 1280X768. This is excellent news for netbook users. While obviously increasing viewing resolution, it also allows programs and applications not designed for anything less to be properly displayed.

Unfortunately, when you actually get to using the unit, the screen itself is rather dull and grey. The colours appear to be slightly washed out and contrast is relatively poor. A positive for the dull display, we found glare to be reduced over units featuring more glossy screens such as the Acer Aspire One. Unlike the Aspire One, whose vivid colours and high contrast still allow for clear reading; the M912, with its muted colours, becomes even more washed out. Viewing angles were acceptable; the side to side angle was viewable until approximately 60 degrees, while tilting of the screen made it fade at roughly 30 degrees if not looking straight on. With the tablet capabilities of the display however, you are able to rotate the screen 180 degrees so adjusting for direct viewing is simple.

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The tablet and touchscreen features were a blast. This is what netbooks were born to do since lugging around larger 12inch+ tablet notebooks is not suited for the audience that tablets appeal to. School students and business types want to reduce their travel load to something that is lightweight and portable yet still efficient, thus making the small form factor of netbooks ideal.

For unknown reasons, Gigabyte chose to not to install Windows XP Tablet Edition as the OS, instead opting for Windows XP Home which includes no native tablet functions. Users will find themselves having to install third party software in order to take advantage of all the tablet features. Once installed however, the touchscreen turned out to be very responsive using either the included stylus or a finger. Very little pressure was required to direct the mouse pointer and the screen was not rough or resistant towards finger use, resulting in virtually no miscommunication.

While the use of XP Home instead of the Tablet edition is puzzling, initial reports stated that the system would be installed with Windows Vista Basic, far too meaty an OS for the netbook to handle. Gigabyte must have realized this and made a last minute change to the release specs, as there was still a Vista COA sticker and case badge on our test unit.

However, there were a couple of annoyances in with all the fun. By default the desktop is positioned as landscape mode for regular laptop use. Upon repositioning the screen to “tablet” mode, to switch the display into a portrait position, one must spend time rooting through the Gigabyte preinstalled software. Other tablets we have used are set to automatically prompt the user when they detect the screen has been converted or have a button to quickly readjust. We also found that with the screen “tabletized”, it blocked all form of air venting through the keyboard and the unit began to heat up rather quickly. While no negative side effects were experienced, holding such a warm object in your hands can be rather uncomfortable and it does raise some concerns about potential damage to the hardware.

Otherwise, using the Gigabyte M912v's touchscreen was a refreshing break from the notoriously small and cramped keyboards on netbooks. While there are many naysayers to the usefulness of touchscreens, navigation with simply a finger or stylus is undoubtedly much quicker than on the minute touchpad. That being said, this feature on such a low cost product is quite appealing to those who would use it.
 
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System Performance

System Performance

Given that the M912v hardware specifications are nearly identical to most other netbooks, general system performance is on par. For those who are unfamiliar with what to expect here is a quick summary: netbooks are not notebooks. They are not intended to be a notebook or desktop replacement or even a primary PC, depending on what your computing habits involve. A netbook is intended for simple tasks: web surfing, emailing, word processing and basic multimedia functions such as watching videos or music. The appeal lies in the fact that they can do these things while remaining low cost and lightweight. If you are looking to render video, edit graphics or play games better than pong, this is not your thing.

In our short testing of all the basic functions, the Gigabyte flies through tasks with ease and this section will touch on a few areas of interest.

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Boot Up

Boot up time, even with Windows XP Home, was a touch slower than we have seen with other UMPCs. The M912v is powered by the 1.6GHZ Intel Atom processor, 1GB Ram, and a 160GB 5400RPM hard drive. While many other netbooks have chosen to go with SSD storage devices, Gigabyte currently only has a 2.5in SATA HDD option. The time to reach the desktop was roughly 44 seconds, and the OS and programs were fully loaded within 1:03 minutes. Comparatively, the Acer Aspire One with identical specs but an 8GB SSD took 29s and 44s and the Aspire One with 120GB HDD took 37s and 54s. Overall, a few extra seconds are not going to be a major hassle. We found that once up and running, programs and applications experienced very little sluggishness and the HDD actually performed faster and more efficiently with Windows XP than the solid state drives which suffer from slower write speeds.


Performance and Battery Life

<img src="http://images.hardwarecanucks.com/image/fixt/Articles/M912/Web%20Photos/battery.jpg" style="float: right" hspace="30"><div align="justify"> Our limited time with the system did not allow us to run a complete assault of benchmarks, however we did cover the basic programs that netbooks were intended for. Web browsers like Internet Explorer and Firefox experienced no hiccups. Even with extra Firefox add-ons to improve the touchscreen ability, pages loaded quickly and the wireless card was never flaky, maintaining a strong signal the whole time. Streaming video over the wireless was exceptional as well. Almost no buffering was noticed and even running multiple instances of streaming YouTube videos were not enough to cause slow downs. Launching Windows Media player 10, we were able to play back 720P video flawlessly. As expected however, running a 1080P sample proved to to much for the system and it was unable to avoid stuttering. Basic word processing and spreadsheets using Office 2007, switching between simultaneous windows and copying data was yet another cake walk.

Unfortunately, you will only be able to do all this for a little over two hours. Using the program Battery Eater Pro and the standard portable power settings, the Gigabyte’s 4-cell lithium ion battery barely made it 2 hours and 18 minutes before dying off. While in normal circumstances the unit may not be under full load 100% of the time, and smart users will turn off the Wi-Fi and adjust power saving modes; the fact that the 4-cell unit would barely be able to last a through a full length feature film is slightly disappointing. Given the extremely low power requirements of netbook hardware we would have liked to see the system keep up with its other competitors above the 3 hour mark. Though rumour has it, a 6-cell battery model may be in the works which will see a definite improvement to the battery life, but also added weight.</div>
 
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Conclusion

Conclusion

All in all, we have to admire Gigabyte’s leap into the rather chaotic netbook waters. While there are already many other fish, the M912v sets itself apart with its original tablet abilities at such a low cost. The spin-off of in maintaining such a low price point is evident in other areas however. Some of the shortcuts taken are not deal breakers, but they do make it feel like a “cheaper” product. Minor aesthetic details could have been addressed; the screen's top provided a great design opportunity but unfortunately it was ignored and the laptop does appear rather devoid of style and outdated compared to many other sleek netbook designs.

Gigabyte did an excellent job in providing a quality touchscreen experience, but also neglected to fulfill some of the key concepts that make up the netbook portion of the computer. As previously mentioned, the design does fall on the larger side for a UMPC, but even with more space, they did not take advantage of it for a larger keyboard. The larger chassis also provided a perfect opportunity for better ventilation, yet the unit struggled to keep itself cool. While those simply looking for a netbook will be able to find products that suit their needs for cheaper, the Gigabyte M912V was developed as a low cost solution for those with a few more features in mind. Touch screens may be gimmicky, but they have their place and an audience. With such a unique offering for the company's first product in their new directive we look forward to future releases from Gigabyte, hopefully bringing with them more innovative and fresh ideas.

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