Haleron brings dual-Atom netbook to market

If there’s one boring thing about netbooks, it has to be that they all have essentially the same specs. That will be changing soon with the Pine Trail Atom processors that Intel will be shipping soon, but that’s not enough for Colombian manufacturer Haleron. Haleron set out to make a netbook that’s more useful to students and professionals who do a lot of multitasking, while keeping it affordable to those in South America. The result is the Swordfish Net 102 Dual.

The Swordfish Net 102 Dual has, for the most part, standard specs: 10″ screen, 4-in-1 card reader, 2 GB RAM, 3G (WCDMA) module etc. What Haleron did differently, however, is modify the Intel M945 chipset to accept two Atom processors. The dual processors are meant to work much like dual-core CPUs do, split the workload between the two cores to increase the efficiency of both. What they don’t offer, however, is the Atom’s superior battery life, with Haleron claiming a three-cell battery will last two and a half hours, and a six-cell battery will last four and a half hours, neither of which are all that great.

The idea of a dual-Atom netbook, while nice at first, seems to just defeat the entire purpose. Yeah, netbooks aren’t great for multitasking, but that hardly seems to be what they were designed to do. A netbook is meant for using the Internet, and maybe one or two applications on top of that, which shouldn’t put too much strain on the Atom processor. It makes more sense to just buy a small laptop if you really need to do any sort of multitasking. The Swordfish Net 102 Dual does only cost $449, so that is a plus, and great for those who can’t afford anything better, but there’s a reason why few students have netbooks: they have other laptops that they carry around with them instead.

Read [InfoWorld]
Read [Haleron]