Asus outs new Vivobook X102BA netbook

In the past, netbooks were always regarded as a clunky heap of plastic and metal (mostly plastic) that are almost incapable of providing decent performance. ASUS is looking to challenge that notion though with their latest portable PC dubbed as the X102BA which boasts the latest A-Series APU from AMD tucked underneath a classy chassis.

The X102BA may not be as enticing on paper especially if you saw that it only runs on a 1GHz dual-core AMD A4-1200 processor. However, if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find out that the APU is actually equipped with a Radeon 8180 GPU and is capable of resuming from sleep in less than 2 seconds. Moreover, it only has a maximum TDP of 3.9W, allowing the netbook to have a standby time of up to 14 days and 5-6 hours of HD video playback.

asus x102ba

Not one to disappoint the picky crowd, ASUS has also outfitted the X102BA with all the bare necessities one would look for in such device. This includes a 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, a 720p webcam, an SD card slot and a pair of video-out ports (HDMI and VGA). The Taiwanese company also added a decent touchscreen panel to go along with the netbook’s HD (1366×768) display.

The official pricing, as well as the release date, wasn’t discussed during the announcement. However, it’ll be interesting to see if the ASUS X102BA will be as affordable (or at least somewhere close to it) as the X101 which only retailed for under Php10k when it hit the local stores. Do note though that ASUS’ revamped netbook will come preinstalled with Windows 8 and Microsoft Office 2013 Home and Student Edition so expect it to be a little pricier than its Meego-powered predecessor.

source

Ronnie Bulaong

This article was written by Ronnie Bulaong, a special features contributor and correspondent for YugaTech. Follow him on Twitter @turonbulaong.

https://www.yugatech.com

11 Comments

john says:

11 years ago

hmmm kelan pa kaya tayo magkakaroon ng affordable laptop na may IPS LCD? halos lahat kasi ng laptop ngayon TN TFT lang ang gamit. pangit ang display, di swak sa panonood ng movies.
mabuti pa yung Acer, may entry level laptop sila na may IPS display.isang version ng Acer V5.nakalimutan ko buong model niya. pero i dont trust Acer kasi.
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HK-47 says:

11 years ago

The Jaguar cores have better IPC than the Atoms, but at only 1.0GHz with no turbo boost, the actual CPU performance might even fall below that of some dual-core Atoms.

The GPU will also be limited by the slow CPU, as well as the slow, single-channel memory. It will still blow away whatever iGPU they use in the current Atoms, but not as much as it could have.

Still, it should still provide a better overall experience than an Atom-powered netbook. It will be no match for small ULV Celeron-powered notebooks though, so they need to price this appropriately (maybe around 10k?), to have any chance of competing.
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kotetsu says:

11 years ago

Anyway, I’ve been eyeing on this laptop as my portable app-development machine. Carrying a larger laptop isn’t good for me because I’m constantly travelling for my programming work.
It’ll run Visual Studio 2012 at a nice pace.
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kotetsu says:

11 years ago

People should stop calling this a netbook due to the following concrete reasons:
1. The term “Netbook” is only applicable to those small, low-cost laptops that comes with an Intel Atom processor. Additionally, Intel trademarked the term and later sued the company named Psion for using the said term. The term “netbook” is only applicable to those laptops that are only capable of web browsing as its most intensive task. Such term is not applicable to AMD laptops since the netbook term is coined by Intel, just like the Ultrabook term.

2. Netbooks are dead. With the introduction of low power Celeron and Pentium chips from Intel and low power AMD A-series from AMD, manufacturers started to favor the use of these chips because of their good price:performance ratio compared to what Intel Atom offers. Not to mention, the rise of GPU-assisted computing and the introduction of Windows 8 helped in burying the netbook for good. Most major manufacturers have ceased in making netbooks with the Asus Eee series saying goodbye with its 1025C Flare netbook released last year.

3. Thanks to the GPU of this notebook, GPU-assisted computing or so-called “Heterogeneous computing/Stream computing” is possible which means this is more than just a web-surfing machine. A netbook isn’t even capable of that. It can also handle different GPU-assisted apps there such as Adobe Photoshop CS6, Sony Vegas Pro 12, CyberLink PowerDirector, Microsoft Office 2013, Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 and some games too. Those mentioned tasks will simply put a netbook onto its knees. This is a machine that does more than web browsing.

4. ASUS stopped using the term “netbook” on their latest 10-inch notebooks. They’ve ceased the production of Eee PC line of netbooks too.
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kotetsu says:

11 years ago

@justin
My main point here is that people should not judge a laptop by its appearance. It’s like judging a book by its cover without even reading the whole content. Do you get it? And not all small laptops are created equal: some can run intensive apps while some are not. I just want to educate people about the correct usage of the term “netbook” and they shouldn’t judge a laptop from its appearance right off the bat.

Additionally, the term “Ultraportable notebook” could be used instead of the term “ten inch laptop” you suggested as a replacement for the word “netbook” in the title.

I know I’m not one to talk here since I’m just a reader here but I want to let people know that they might be using the term wrong.

Here are some articles that’s gonna prove that people are using the term “Netbook” the incorrect way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/netbook
justin says:

11 years ago

i think boss the author just used the term netbook so that people will get an idea in regards with the size of the device. Panget naman yata title ng post na they just released a ten inch laptop. Di appealing sa mga prospect readers or people who are currently looking for a “netbook sized” device. kaya while in reality its not a “netbook” there are also some concrete reasons while people use the term to associate such smaller devices.
doughnout says:

11 years ago

You’ve got of all your points correct. People should really stop using the term netbook on laptops that has 10-12 inch screen because there are small laptops out there that comes with a more powerful processor than an Intel Atom.

Example: The Alienware M11X laptop.
Sure, it’s size is so identical to netbooks out there but it’s not a netbook because of its Core i7 ULV CPU and the Nvidia Geforce 540M GPU.

I really hate it when those stupid people call my Alienware M11X a “netbook” when in fact it does more than just web browsing: games, video editing, programming, 3d modelling – no netbook can do such intensive tasks I mentioned.

The Bottom line: People always mistake 10-12 inch laptops as “netbooks” even if the laptop in question comes with a powerful CPU and GPU.

People should stop judging a laptop by its size.
chinitaida says:

11 years ago

good insight.

and if I may add, the reason why the netbooks are dead is because Microsoft (for win8 launch) wanted 64 bit capable laptops as a standard, where apparently netbooks are only in for 32bit. SO Intel stopped producing Intel atom processors
chinitaida says:

11 years ago

good insight.

and if I may add, the reason why the netbooks are dead is because Microsoft (for win8) wanted 64 bit capable laptops, where apparently netbooks are only in for 32bit
marian rivera says:

11 years ago

Anong sagot mo dyan, Sir Ronnie Bulaong???