Travel Technology - Need a minimum Pentium III speed machine. Help please?

OK gang here is a question for you:

I am a current subscriber for the GamePass HD broadcast of all NFL games available to overseas subscribers only. I am truly enjoying the product. I am connecting via my desktop currently and this is a fairly fast Dell XPS 410. I have to run a very long cable from one room to another for this. The picture is fine etc. but the cable is ugly.

What I am considering is purchasing a smaller notebook to keep in the same room as the TV and se it to connect to the TV for watching the games.

GamePass requires the following as a minimum system requirement:

Pentium III 1GHz or higher or equivalent AMD processor with a minimum of 512MB of memory.

I am considering two choices of Notebook from Dell because I like Dell, these are cheap and will ship when I need them to as a traveler to the US with a three day window. What I cannot work out is are the guts of either of the two machines below at or better than the stated minimum requirements:

The first (Dell Mini 10v) has a processor called: Intel Atom N270 (1.6GHz/533Mhz FSB/512K L2Cache)

The second (Inspiron 15) has a processor called: Intel Pentium Dual Core T4200 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)

The first one is $299 and the second is $499. I really hope the first one is enough machine for the NFL GamePass but I wanted to check and make sure. Can any of you confirm if one of these two (or both hopefully) will meet the stated requirements.

Many thanks in advance,

Mike

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Either is well fast enough for those standards really. Pentium 3 is a low bar.

Excellent. Thank you.

They have on another part of their site the following:

# Processor: Intel Pentium 4 or greater
# Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP (Home, Media Center and Professional with Service Pack's and all Microsoft Updates), Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate or Enterprise editions)
# RAM: 256 MB minimum (512 MB recommended)
# Video Card: 32 MB minimum (128 MB recommended)


The 10V has the following:

VIDEO CARD Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950

and the Inspiron 15 has:

Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD

Will I be clear for the Pentium 4 level as well with either?

Also the video card issue is safe?

Thanks,

Mike

Wirelessly posted (Blackberry8700c: BlackBerry9630/4.7.1.40 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/105)

Either is well fast enough for those standards really. Pentium 3 is a low bar.

Excellent. Thank you.

They have on another part of their site the following:

# Processor: Intel Pentium 4 or greater
# Operating System: Windows 2000, Windows XP (Home, Media Center and Professional with Service Pack's and all Microsoft Updates), Windows Vista (Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, Ultimate or Enterprise editions)
# RAM: 256 MB minimum (512 MB recommended)
# Video Card: 32 MB minimum (128 MB recommended)


The 10V has the following:

VIDEO CARD Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 950

and the Inspiron 15 has:

Intel® Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD

Will I be clear for the Pentium 4 level as well with either?

Also the video card issue is safe?

Thanks,

Mike

Just about ANYTHING new today will pass these specs.

yeah, the intel Atom is low-end but frankly a Pentium 4 with a half-decent video card will be perfectly sufficient for this purpose.

Hmm....So the Atom is faster than a Pentium 4? And the video abilities above are ample?

Sorry to be obtuse, but not having a standard naming process showing hierarchy of performance is throwing me.



yeah, the intel Atom is low-end but frankly a Pentium 4 with a half-decent video card will be perfectly sufficient for this purpose.

The Atom processors should be up to the task. They are surprisingly peppy.

This CPU benchmarking site will give you a rough idea of what to expect:

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu_list.php

You will see that the Atom chips tend to be slightly faster per gigahertz.

Atom N270 1.6GHz = 306
Intel Pentium 4 2.26GHz = 288

Wow! I can't believe my Shuttle X27D with dual-core Atom is faster than a P4 3.8Ghz! It does seem surprisingly peppy though.

Incidentally, the X27D makes a great addition for next to a HDTV. Use the DVI out (w/ HDMI adapter plug). It uses 37 watts when running full bore working hard, is quiet, VERY compact, and relatively attractive. Also had digital multichannel audio output. Outfitted with a hard drive and 2Gb ram, you can get one put together for less than $300 (+OS if you want Windows)

Isn't PIII circa 1999 or so?

Seriously? All this effort to watch the Raiders lose every week? ;) :D

Ouch. But hey we played three QBs not three Interceptions by one QB last week. The off season is long.......


Seriously? All this effort to watch the Raiders lose every week? ;) :D

I'd avoid any netbooks with the Atom Z520 (1.33ghz) processor; any of the 1.6ghz (Z530/N270) or 1.66ghz (N280) processor models should be fine.

If this is only going to be hooked to the TV, one of the Atom-based "Net-top" or other SFF (Small Form Factor) desktop PCs might be a better choice. They range in price from "about the same as a netbook" to about $600, and don't have the whole unnecessary extra screen to break :) plus some of them have HDMI which may make hooking into the TV easier if your TV doesn't have a VGA port.

One such model is the "ASUS Eee Box", runs about $350
Dell has the The Inspiron 537s, a little larger from $269++ depending on the configuration.

I'd avoid any netbooks with the Atom Z520 (1.33ghz) processor; any of the 1.6ghz (Z530/N270) or 1.66ghz (N280) processor models should be fine.

If this is only going to be hooked to the TV, one of the Atom-based "Net-top" or other SFF (Small Form Factor) desktop PCs might be a better choice. They range in price from "about the same as a netbook" to about $600, and don't have the whole unnecessary extra screen to break :) plus some of them have HDMI which may make hooking into the TV easier if your TV doesn't have a VGA port.

One such model is the "ASUS Eee Box", runs about $350
Dell has the The Inspiron 537s, a little larger from $269++ depending on the configuration.

Thanks for this and really, to all of you.

I nearly want for the mini-desktop, but I will travel enough and my wife will also need to be mobile with this enough that I went for the laptop option. Picked up a decent deal on a Dell, and then boosted various aspects to make it exactly what we need in a TV connection, computer for my wife, and mobile option for me.

Many thanks one and all.