My question though, is, can it handle Unity 3D. I have a 4 year old notebook that’s on its way out. I’ve been thinking about replacing it with a netbook. It’d be more mobile than my 15 inch notebook. And without a doubt more powerful. (Which Unity 2.5) ran fine on there. So are they worth it? Are there any netbooks powerful enough to run/play Unity developed games?
I have an Asus NetBook for taking on moto rides with me and of course one of the first things I did was install the Unity editor on it. 
While it loaded and ran the island demo the frame rate was poor to say the least (3-5fps) and so I would generally caution against a NetBook for content authoring purposes (unless mine just happens to be woefully underpowered in terms of graphic performance).
Remember that most netbooks have Atom (low power) processors or similar, so the clock speed doesn’t tell the whole story. On paper it might sound more capable than your laptop, but in practice it’s going to run slower than a comparable desktop or even laptop processor. The small screen is a killer for any IDE-type software, too.
That said, I have an Asus eeePC 901 and it’s a dead handy little thing to have for basic stuff. If you’re looking for a portable development box though, you’d probably be better off with another laptop.
the only netbook I could see running unity on an acceptable level would be the Asus 1201N and comparable ones. The 1201N is an Atom 330 (so dual core - dual thread cpu) netbook with an NVIDIA ION gpu
my old 901 looks against that like the kids toy from last decade
I’m hearing a lot of talk about the Asus’s (Aseses?)[sic?]anyway. Has anyone else tried the HP brands of netbooks? Also Quadcore vs. Dual Core Max? yeah i think I’m going the notebook route.
I got an HP Mini 311 a few weeks ago. I tested a few Unity web players and one or two of my own Unity stand-alone apps on it and everything played OK (though very slowly). I haven’t tried the Unity editor on it. In a pinch it might serve as a test system, but I definitely wouldn’t want to use it to develop a full game.
I use a Dell XPS m1730 and its fine for all purposes…
Oh but its not a netbook, its more like a poorly disguised bulldozer.
I’ld like to have an atom based netbook, but it’s simply too slow!
Disadvantages:
- Poor CPU
- Poor GPU
- Poor memory
If you want a gaming system buy any other hardware (be sure to have a core duo system/quad core with lot’s of memory and a 3D-graphics card ati or nvidia/>256MB vid-ram).
But unfortunately thoose systems are quite expensive!!!
Harry
Hi,
if you don’t stick 100% to a netbooks, what about the 12" lenovos? i own a 3yrs old lenovo 3000 (2x1.6Ghz, 2GB) at the moment and it works fine (unity, cs3, maya).
Thought about the thinkpad x200 or the thinkpad edge for myself in 6 months or so.
greets siggi